Brothers  Stuart and Chris were competitive. But for a few days one summer, their rivalry took a worrying turn. Worrying too for Jack Kaye, who owned the corner shop.

Outside Kaye’s on Sunday morning, Stu shocked his younger brother by sharing the bar of chocolate he`d just pinched. Chris’s face went white. Stealing. Stu smiled at Chris’s horror. Said don’t be chicken.

Chris`s head rolled about all day at the insult. He could hardly sleep that night.

Monday morning, passing Kaye’s shop on their way to school together, Chris calmly picked up a bottle of milk from the crate, and walked on. Drinking the cream, then handing the bottle to his big brother. Stu burst out laughing, but Chris heard fear in it.

Jack’s checkout till was beside the doorway. The nerve. Right under his nose.

The following morning, Stu did exactly the same, keeping face.

On his way back from school, Chris called in to Jack’s, leaving with four chocolate bars, and the comic he`d paid for. He gave a bar to Stu, who could now see where this was going. Stu decided he’d bring it to a head, drop him in it.

“You had your jacket on. Bet you couldn’t do it without” said Stu.

“Bet you couldn’t either” replied the sly youngster.

On Wednesday night, Stu came out of the shop, jacketless, paying for a sherbert dab. He had a tin of sardines in his back trouser pocket. He thought Jack Kaye gave him a funny look, but had said nothing. Chris was not impressed.

“Sardines? You hate sardines. Why?”

“The chocolate was too big for my pocket. And Mrs Kaye was sniffin’ about”.

By Thursday both boys were feeling uneasy, especially Stuart. They agreed to call it a draw. That would be it. Finish.

Friday night was football at the youth club. Walking back home in his boots and footie strip, Chris called in to Kaye’s to buy a bottle of pop. In the shop, he tucked his shirt into his shorts and dropped a big bag of crisps inside the back of his shirt collar, heart racing as he walked past Jack at the checkout.

Advantage Chris, he thought, vowing never to tell anyone.

Jack Neasham is an elderly man living in north-east England.

We tangle out of the club, drunk and laughing about the chick in the too-short minidress who fell down on the dance floor and flopped like a strange pink fish. The man she was with took a picture of her, then texted or tweeted and/or facebooked it. She could have been having a seizure, but I don’t think about that until later. I’m sure you don’t think about that at all.

I step off a curb I don’t see, and you grab my wrist too hard, tell me to watch where I’m going. Your voice is Jack and Coke rough. Flash back to an ex who broke my same wrist, anger that began with his mother and ended with a fractured me. I yank it to my chest, muscle memory still stinging. You slit your eyes and flick your cigarette in front of an oncoming car. I see how easily you could be that oncoming car.

Across the street, a homeless man is selling tiny dolls made of string. His sign says Dolls 4 Cheap, and passersby tiptoe around it, as if on a tightrope. Untethered, we wind past rushing cars, over to the man. I take a doll in my palm and hand him two dollars. The doll has one eye, no mouth. I ask why. The man tells me she was his first try. She’s made from just one string. He hands me back one dollar, and I’m sad he’d sell her so cheap. You shoot me the “Let’s go now” face. It looks like anger, uncoiling from your center.

I regard the doll again. Not a thought in her small head, only nylon and cotton. No way to articulate thoughts, if she had them. Limbs and body and heart, the same fibrous stuff. Tucked into her left foot, I see the string’s end. Her fibril fragility. I finger it, glance at weak-chinned you, wait for the break. I know what will happen if I pull.

h. l. nelson is Founding Editor/Executive Director of Cease, Cows mag and a former sidewalk mannequin. (Yes, that happened.) Pub credits: PANK, Hobart, Connotation Press, Red Fez, Bartleby Snopes, blah blah blah. She is working on an anthology, which includes stories by Aimee Bender, Roxane Gay, xTx, and other fierce women writers. h. l.’s MFA is currently kicking her ass. Tell her what you’re wearing: heather@hlnelson.com.

After the accident, I could no longer pronounce the word trouble. My t’s did not exist. There was no longer the sound of hot tamales falling off the tongue. All I could say was rubble. It was as close to the word trouble as I could muster. And it seemed to fit my place.

The t sound that I had been so accustomed to came out my pursed lips like a little pocket of air, nothing there but breath. But at least, she told me, I was living. The breath in place of t was a good thing.

Like when poets count syllables, I asked her, ashamed I could no longer make others understand how beautiful words could be.

After the accident, she was a visiting nurse from the cancer ward who spent the night with me making my hands trace along the paper what my lips couldn’t quite understand—as if, when I had regained the use of my fingers and could write again, my mind would somehow recognize all that it could do with my tongue.

I told her, You don’t understand. You just can’t fathom what I am feeling right now, and she took my hand and put it beneath her blouse and I felt something else instead. It was warm. It was sensual. It was beautiful. And there was only one. The absence of the other was recognizable from the space between my finger and my thumb.

I knew then what she had already known and had not bothered to say. I said, You’re rubble, and she told me, You dou undersand. You jus can fathom wha I am feeling righ now.

We laughed, then smiled, then kissed. We knew we understood what the other was trying to say.

She was trouble. The only kind I could pronounce.

***

We wrote a poem together in the hospital, called it “Living”

“If you had a dagger for every time you stabbed at a thief—you’d be a dangerous man. A wronged woman. And I wouldn’t stab at you or steal from you at all.

If you had a sword for every time you stabbed at a king—you’d have a shield, no sword at all, because their knights are scary upon their horses, high above the ground, charging toward you. Kings make the laws. And they’re all men who have no trouble pronouncing their words or the sentences.

If you had a word, for every time I had a story—we would call each other more, converse and lie, tell each other what was wrong and what was fine. It’s been a day. It’s been a week. It’s been way too long.

If I had a month to tell you everything I should have told you—I’d be on a horse riding into town, telling you the cancer treatment is free.

If I knew life and you knew God—we’d call them both thieves and say, I have a dagger for you; don’t you dare look the other way.”

She wanted to read it at a coffee shop around the corner. When we arrived, I tried to leave. She took me by the hand and brought me to the front of the room. I stared at her blouse, at the rhythm of her breast, breathing steadily for the both of us.

I changed the name of the poem without telling her. She smiled when she heard me say it—Rubble—right into the microphone.

She was the only one in the room who understood like I did, and later that night when we shared ourselves with each other, I left my hand on her chest, knowing the title change didn’t really matter.

Christopher David DiCicco loves his wife and children—and writing short minimalist stories in the attic of his home in Yardley, Pennsylvania. His work has recently appeared in Nib Magazine, Intellectual Refuge, Sundog Lit, Cease, Cows and Bohemia Arts & Literary Magazine—and isforthcoming in The Cossack Review, WhiskeyPaper, Flash Fiction Online and Bartleby Snopes. You can follow him on twitter @ChrisDiCicco or visit him at www.cddicicco.com

Sofi heard them before she saw them. It was easy to hear and see them because he hadn’t closed the door. Ivan never closed the door. The woman was on his lap, bouncing there, her big unruly tits steadied in his hands, the areolae darker, triple the size of Sofi’s own, and Sofi could see the small jellyfish tattoo beneath the woman’s belly button, the kind of image that would have been a mistake, and then a badge, the hair below it destined to remind her lovers of seaweed.

Ivan’s eyes were blocked by the woman’s head and neck. The woman’s eyes were clenched and distant and satisfied.

Sofi turned around and walked to the kitchen and poured herself a glass of water. She stared out the window at nothing in particular.

When they finally joined her in the kitchen, Ivan made the introductions. The woman’s name was Jennifer. Jennifer was pretty and timid and polite. Jennifer declined both water and wine. Jennifer said, “No, thank you,” to a snack. Jennifer said she had to be going.

But before Jennifer went, Sofi told them both about her day, told them her news, the news she had been waiting for, working for, hoping for, and Ivan, it was easy to tell, was becoming as excited as she was, and proud, and Jennifer too, Jennifer seemed happy for her, seemed capable of care, and Sofi appreciated that, that choice of his, and then Jennifer left the apartment, and when Jennifer was gone Ivan embraced Sofi with all of his warmth and affection, and later, after a celebratory glass of champagne and some cheese, they went to their bed, the same bed where Jennifer had been, comforter still rumpled, and Sofi wanted to be fucked like he had fucked Jennifer, and they did that, and Sofi thought about Jennifer’s body while they did, her big breasts, her nipples, her silly-cute tattoo and the hair below it, and it turned Sofi on, thinking about all that and the warmth and the pleasure and the passing happiness and comfort and knowledge Jennifer had given to him, and maybe would again.

Kevin Tosca’s stories have appeared in Fleeting, Litro, More Said Than Done, The Bicycle Review, The MacGuffin and elsewhere. He lives in France. His published work can be found at www.kevintosca.com.

Crack! That was the sound of our hearts stopped, the crunch of my soles against the pavement, and I pushed off, straight up from the curb, a thousand feet into the air . . . And what can you ever really do given the situation? Even had any of us been able to act, to move, what was there to say? Time never slows, in fact those are the moments where your mind moves like the hummingbird; touching, dancing over each little thing, or floating, time as an ocean, and that break-beat is wave upon wave of perspective. Could I have known, for instance, as we watched that girl crossing the street in front of us, that one day, years later, Valdez would stand-up at his office job, tear off his tie and begin screaming at the top of his lungs? Or that Goezman would end up living as a kind of pasha, retiring before age 35 with two women to a small country estate? How many times between now and then would I say I’d stopped stock-still to watch some girl’s ass from behind? Ass from the future. Ass encompassing everything, like two snow-capped mountains crashing together. And not to dwell on it too much, but I felt ashamed to be there frozen. All I could think that night was about the plot of the shitty movie we’d just seen, about the Trojan war, with that white hero killing everybody, giving those speeches about immortality and whatnot. And who’s to say those moments don’t last forever, that somewhere behind us we’re not still making the same mistakes, taking the same wrong forks in the road, overestimating ourselves again and again?

Uzodinma’s favorite color is Aqua—no, Lapis. Or maybe Sky Blue. He still doesn’t own a cellphone . . .

On her fifty-eighth birthday, Enid asked herself, “If not now, when?” Her life had been too careful, she decided. She flossed daily and wore sensible shoes. She consistently put the needs of others before her own, politely and grew angry as a rabid dog, silently. Often, in the morning, her jaw ached with a night’s worth of grinding. Her sleep was restless, disturbed by dreams of a violent nature. The last nightmare left her exhausted, hiding, running from “It,” escaping at the last moment into a manhole at the center of the Core States Stadium. A baseball game was in progress.

But this day dawned bright, warm for early spring, and Enid decided to explore an alternate route to her office in downtown Chester. This was somewhat of a challenge because she feared, more than anything, getting lost. When her psychiatrist had asked Enid about her earliest memory, she told him all about being lost on the beach in Atlantic City at three years of age, unable to recite her address or last name. She was certain she’d never see her parents again. She thought with the logic and terror of a small child that she’d more than likely perish or be living in an orphanage before night fall. She’d heard about them. Of course, like many mental calamities, this one lived and died in the space of about ten minutes. Enid’s parents were hyper-vigilant and noticed her missing almost immediately. They searched without delay and found her under the boardwalk, holding on to her yellow bucket and sobbing. But that memory stored itself inside Enid and was as easily reconstituted as orange juice whenever the road looked unfamiliar and she was alone.

Enid developed many fears as she grew up. She was never permitted to ride a two-wheeler because her parents were convinced that she’d be crushed by a pickup truck. There was always a story on the radio or in the newspaper to corroborate such concerns. Learning to bike at past mid-life presented itself as an unnerving ordeal. But, learn she did despite scraped knees that took a week or two to heal, despite her mother’s words, “That could be very dangerous.” Enid’s mother issued that warning about almost anything from slicing a bagel to eating Halloween candy. Once she cautioned Enid against sleeping in the same room as an oscillating fan. When Enid asked why, her mother responded, “No one knows the long term effects of snoozing in front of a fan.” Skiing, even the bunny slopes, presented opportunities for dread as did driving across bridges and through tunnels.

Nevertheless, Enid faced this Thursday, her birthday, in a red dress, a color she rarely wore, climbed into her gray Honda Accord and, without her GPS, made a left onto Hollow Road.

Recently retired, Marian Brooks has begun to write some short fiction. Her work has appeared in The Linnet’s Wings, The Story Shack, ThickJam, Barefoot Review and others.

The Applebee’s on Main for lunch, despite the fact that he never bartends on Tuesday afternoons; a quiet café on Landon Street – isn’t it just called Café? – that he frequents after work for a chai latte with extra foam, which is better than it sounds; the loud, smoky pool hall by the Civic Center where the two of you would play poker – in the back on Thursdays – and skee-ball; the Food Lion by Waterfront Road that’s only three blocks from his apartment and has beer for a dollar cheaper than any other grocery in town; the Lowe’s you went to – the one on Corrine Boulevard – to get him a new drill and wrench set for Christmas last year; the voodoo shop on the boardwalk, owned by a woman who really is Creole and will build a doll out of a sock and three stray hairs for thirty dollars; before home, to bed, where the sheets smell faintly of beer and sand, and there’s nothing to remind you of how recently he was there.

Austin Eichelberger completed his MA in Fiction in May 2009. Since then, he has taught English and writing courses at several universities. His fiction has appeared in Flash: The International Short-Short Story Magazine, GoneLawn, Extract(s), Eclectic Flash, and others. He is co-founding editor of the online journal SPACES.

In high school people were always asking Gabe what it felt like to be dead. Because he did too much coke once and died for about twenty-five minutes. Almost every party, someone asked him what it felt like to be dead and he always said the same thing.

He’d start out by asking them if they remembered the farthest floating dock in the reservoir, the rickety one that you could barely see from the shore, the one that all the kids were always daring all the other kids to go out to but everyone was always like, no way. Up until that Troy kid did it and then it became a rite of passage type thing. He’d ask if you remembered all that and if you were one of the kids that went out.

And then if you said, yes, you’d been one of the kids who had gone out, Gabe would ask if you remembered how when you passed the last close-to-the-shore dock you’d be like, there’s no way I’m going to make it. You’d be sure about that. But then you had to keep going because if you turned around you were a pussy. And then if you made it to the dock, you’d be so tired you’d have to lie there for like an hour, it felt like, knowing that the way back was going to be harder because you’d be weaker and the water would be colder.

He’d ask if you remembered how when you were on that dock, so tired you couldn’t move, part of you would be like, I’ll just stay here. I’ll just stay here.

Being dead for twenty-five minutes was like being on that dock, he’d say.

I remember he told that story one time at a party while the bong was going around, everyone nodding along like he was singing us a song. I remember Riley, the kid who peed his pants in the seventh grade, looked up and said, “Well that doesn’t seem too bad.”

And Gabe was like, “I guess it wasn’t the worst thing in the world” and he blew out all the smoke he had just inhaled. “Maybe lonely.”

And everyone kind of nodded like that was a real wise thing to say and I guess it did sound pretty good.

The thing is, I never knew what to make of that story because I’m pretty sure Gabe never made it out to the far dock. I was with him the day that he tried. This was back when we were kids and it was just me and him, all the time. He got maybe halfway between the last close-to-the-shore dock and the far dock. I was watching him from the shore and I remember being able to see his pale torso and black hair stop moving forward and just bob in the water for a minute. And then he turned around and by the time he got back to the shore he looked like he’d lost about fifteen pounds and I remember it freaked me out how much he was shaking. He lay down in the hot sand and made me lie there too and we stayed there for a long time, not saying anything about him not making it even though I could tell it was bothering him bad. And neither one of us ever mentioned it again until people started asking him what it felt like to be dead.

Sonia Christensen lives and works in Boulder, Colorado. She graduated with a degree in Creative Writing from the University of Colorado in May 2012. She has a story published in Corvus magazine and another one accepted for publication in the fall in Devilfish Review.

My best friend and her fiancé show me the church by the water, and I ask where the dirt path below the cemetery leads. To the dock, Anna says. Graveyard, he says. Cemeteries aren’t attached to churches. Okay, I tell him. I’m sure you’re right. You can look it up, he says. I look over at Anna, but her face is blank.

Weeks go by. I want to ask if she is sure, but it’s like there’s a curtain in front of her face and I can’t pull it back.

The day of the wedding, Anna, her mother and I wait in a dressing room by the women’s bathroom. The air smells like spicy perfume. Once her dress is on, Anna won’t sit down. Her face is blank again, this time slashed with red lipstick. She points to the window that looks out toward the parking lot. Tell me when he gets here, she says. Please.

Should I say that I’m sure he’ll show up? It wouldn’t be true. I’m not sure. And I don’t know which would be worse, if he comes or if he doesn’t. I stand there without saying anything, looking out at the parking lot. Earlier in the afternoon, there was a thunderstorm. We waited in the car until it was over. It had stopped raining by the time we got out, but Anna held a magazine over her head as we walked toward the church.

Now the sun has come out and it’s hot again. Steam is rising from the black asphalt. I hear a car pull up and I lean closer to the window. It’s only the minister and his wife. They pull up close to the concrete bumper at the front of the parking space in their big, black sedan. She hands him what looks like a breath mint as they walk toward the church.

Anna’s mother comes up beside me. She is wearing a navy suit with an iris corsage on her shoulder and she smells like hairspray.

Anna asks if anyone has seen her lipstick, and I picture the gold tube on the bathroom counter. I turn away from the window and walk past the chair in the corner where Anna’s bouquet is waiting, a purple bruise on the cream damask. The lipstick is on the counter and I grab it without looking in the mirror. Outside, there are people talking and car doors closing.

I go back to Anna and she looks past me. There’s still time, I say. It’s not that late.

I know, she answers. The organist has started to play. I hold out the lipstick, but she doesn’t take it.

There’s a knock at the door and Anna’s father says it’s time. She presses her lips together and reaches for her flowers.

Later, as we leave the church, I walk down to the dock. The sun is setting, and it’s as though the water is on fire, glowing with the fierce knowledge of the bodies buried beneath.

Heather Bell Adams writes essays, poetry, and short fiction. She can be reached at http://heatherbelladams.com and on Twitter @heatherbelladam.

During a lull in an extended mistake I met a man who never seemed to finish a cigarette. One morning I bummed him one and said, “Maybe you should finish something for once.”

In his hotel room he had a complimentary cup filled with vodka and spit and cigarette butts and he just kept putting more of each one in it. The night of the morning I bummed him a cigarette he started yelling and throwing shit and an empty bottle collided with a painting above my head.

It was a great big sailing ship, a real shitty piece of hotel art. A small, round burn from a stranger’s cigarette was mashed into a little painted seagull.

The yelling was exhausting. I thought about that real shitty piece of hotel art. His forearm trapped my neck and I wondered about the men on the ship and if they had families and if they had daughters. I thought about how the sea looked a bit rough and how the men were probably praying down there in the ship basement.

I thought about praying for a second.

I didn’t pray or anything.

Gwen Beatty is a barista, a sorority dropout, and she still lives with her parents. She can fold a dollar bill into a tiny hat. She hopes to die soon.