Struggling

by Nathan Good

Today feels a little like the day I saw the dog with its head stuck in railings. Sometimes I think back to the way I stood there and watched it struggle. Its hind legs scrambled for grip, its back arched and straightened, its neck muscles spasmed and saliva dripped from its gaping mouth, passing panicked breaths. Now as you raise your head I see that same look in your eyes. "Please," you say, and hold out your hand hoping that I will cover it with mine and tell you it's all going to be ok. "Please," you say again, but I'm still thinking of the dog and how I should have helped him.

6S

Nathan Good lives in Derby. His friends do not call him "The Enigma," and he resents them for that.

Blood Bath in Strings

by Anne Earney

Elizabeth had time to play the harp these days, for one could only spend so many hours roaming the castle alone. She experimented with finger placement and rhythm. It was difficult to coax the sounds she wanted from the harp, sounds she might have heard before, in the days of the servants, in the days before… She tried not to think about it, but the harp made ugly sounds, which were pretty sounds, but ugly to Elizabeth, for what she wanted to hear, what she yearned to recreate, was the fearful skittering of thin shoes across the tiles, the screech of bitten nails on the stone walls, the wails women make when… Elizabeth could almost hear those sounds, almost, as she tore her fingers across the strings. She thought it too bad there was no one left to enjoy her artistry.

6S

Anne Earney lives in St. Louis, Missouri. She works in a grocery store, making good use of the MFA she earned from the University of Missouri-St. Louis. Her fiction has been published in places such as Dossier Journal, Night Train, Versal and Big Ugly Review.

Six Small Meals

Six Sixes by Peggy McFarland



6S

Peggy McFarland, a longtime friend and supporter of this site and community, is celebrating a birthday today.

Word

by Felicia Gregory

Can you tell how intelligent someone is by how they write? If someone uses big and difficult words are they smart? If I call myself a writer am I gifted, insightful and cultured? No. What we read is not a test to be graded. The words we read, whether from a shopping list or a great novel are nothing more than a hand shake or a smile; they are merely another brush with humanity.

6S

Felicia Gregory completed 3 1/2 years of college. She works at a grocery store as a cashier with better people than she ever met at school.

Toward Landings

by Jonna Beck

He never asks twice, but he always asks. I lie in this translucent state between awake and asleep wondering if he can tell that I want to fall asleep but can't and try to talk about the day before but instead I say, "The sheet is broken and all I could do was wrap it around my head." He rubs cream into my wounds, trying to heal the past, but the future rapidly infiltrates the interstitial space between here and there as Godamer the Cat climbs the curtains. Tomorrow, he'll take the car, and I'll walk, but today he walked. When I picked him up, the kitchen grease dripped from his shirt and all he said was, "You're late." We drove the five, long miles home in silence.

6S

Jonna Beck attends Texas State University.

The Stool

by Luke Wilson

I buy a stool from a car boot sale; it has three legs, is upholstered in sweaty faux leather, and has a button in the middle of the seat. I get the seat home, sit on it, and yelp with pain as a sharp object breaks the skin of my behind. I run my fingers over the red seat of the stool, and I find that to one side of the button, a pin like object is embedded in the stuffing in such a way that it doesn't protrude through the leather unless pressure is applied. Gingerly, I investigate further, and find it to be a syringe which is half full of an unknown brown liquid. I take the syringe to the police, and they send off its contents to be analysed as a matter of urgency. When the results come back, they tell me that the syringe was contaminated with the HIV virus.

6S

Luke Wilson works as a software developer for a semantic web company, holds a degree in theoretical physics which he doesn't use, and spends some of his spare time trying to write.