Fiction

They filmed Blue Velvet
In an apartment building
In Wilmington North Carolina
Called “The Carolinas”
I know because I lived in the complex
Just across the street
Was an old southern style church
White and tall
Its steeple reaching into the heavens
With a clever little cross
Just on top
On Sunday morning you could hear
The singing
From our apartment building

What guest list at fete Grand Palais could boast such celebrated names? This is the Felon’s Salon. So haut monde as to be the living end in fatal snubs, people are just dying to get in. Definitive (with an emphasis on fin) its terminal disdain.

By Andrew J Parfitt

A portly gentleman sat at his usual morning table in his usual cafe in the 17th. He admired the miniature coffee whirlwind and enjoyed the luxurious feel of his cashmere scarf against his neck. The air was thick with early morning cigarette smoke but this never bothered him and he snapped open his daily paper. He liked to start the day like this and used to say that a man feels invincible with a copy of Le Monde in his hands. It was here that he felt cocooned from the world, immersed in all there was to know. Devouring the various passages, he felt his nostrils twitch uncontrollably. He smelt the creature before he heard it. He heard the beast before saw it.

by Ken Mackenzie

At the corner of my new carte de séjour
is a man frightened by flashes,
nervous about the coins he put into the booth
and whether his collar is straight.
Next to him on the French card
is the “date d’expiration.” Those flinching eyes
are looking at the certainty of death.
May the flashes grow less frightening.

By Lexi Ruditsky

MEMORIAL DAY

The facts were another thing:
your friend in the backseat
pretending to sleep
while we fought up front.

And over what?
It seems I misinterpreted
your dream. That is,
I presumed to know you.

A single lane of traffic
stretched all the way to the bridge:
everyone wanted out.
But there I went, interpreting again.

Your friend in the backseat
trying to tell a joke.
There must have been
something to laugh about.

I recall the sea was navy,
the sand white.
And we held hands at least
partway down the beach.

In your dream
there was no delete key.
Letters pelted you like pebbles
branding messages on your skin.

I did not even ask
what the letters spelled.
That was what enraged you:
I did not need to ask.

PRUDENCE ISLAND

Sliding a knife inside, you paused
before opening the shell
as if it were an envelope
addressed to someone else.

“Is that…saliva?!” Taylor is pointing rudely at the stage, his face contorted into a mask of disgust that reminds Elaine of the first time she made him dinner.

***

Taylor had always been one step ahead of Elaine. When she took him to the hip new bar she’d read about, he was already on a first-name basis with the bartender. He had “moved on” from the oh-so-contemporary novelist whose latest book she had painstakingly chosen from the London Times Book Review. When she learned how to cook foie gras, he immediately found a piece of vein she’d missed. Her new angora sweater? He was allergic to it. The premier of the “intellectual and moody foreign film” she got them into? It was actually more like the Japanese version of Single White Female, complete with a psycho woman who kills her roommate’s boyfriend with a stiletto heel (and a good inch taller than the heel in the original). He was not impressed.

Lois was proud of herself and rightly so. She had always worked hard. Even when she was raising her seven children, she had the biggest vegetable garden in the neighborhood, volunteered one day a week helping the poor, and taught quilting to girls at the local high school. In those days, Lois was known for her sweet and sour pickle preserves and her intricate original quilt designs, which year after year brought her blue ribbons at the local county fair. Early in life, she had decided that being happy had a lot to do with keeping busy and so the years had slipped by, one season flowing into another.

Yes, there is always a chance for chance encounters, a chance to strike up a conversation that can transcend the doldrums of everyday suffering and soul searching that can truly bring out an individual’s fullest potential, and that can uncover something meaningful (and even, although rarely, something of truly historical consequence). Yes, a chance encounter can be very fulfilling, that is, of course, if one is truly interested in meeting someone to begin with—and then dares to seize the moment.

Laundromats do appear to be somewhat more accommodating for those strangers who, for whatever reason, desire to speak to one another, than either Metro cars or buses. And if one is in absolutely desperate need of breaking a spell of intense loneliness, one can even take courses in pick-up lessons from presumed experts. The thrill, like the roll of dice, is that one can never know what might be the consequences, high rollers or low…

By Margo Berdeshevsky

She was humming Shakespeare's bawdy songs again. ...By Gis and by Saint Charity/ Alack n fie for shame/ Young men will do't, when they come to't, / by cock they are to blame...
She'd never had a prince.
Unattainable as a blue dahlia, all dressed up, she dallied in the pre-vernal gardens of Le Palais Royal, hoping to be approached many times, so that she could say No. But she was not.
A gorgeous stud on a dapple horse passed, looking in the other direction. The horse made direct eye contact, but what could he do? The horse?
Damn, she muttered. Coming from a Reverend's family, who never said Damn.
She comforted herself with the thought that he was probably a cad and a bounder. But for a woman with no date, he looked tall and dashing and good in bed. She'd never been in a bed with a man, but she did have an enormous imagination.