My parents told me I could do anything I set my mind to. Then, when I tried to conjure a demon, they were mad about it.
They were also wrong. I couldn’t do it.
I’m not an idiot. I realize what can go sour when summoning some hell beast. It wasn’t that I wanted to use him or have his great powers. I wasn’t planning on freeing him, I Continue reading Reach for the Brimstone by Charley Daveler
Drumming a disjointed tune on the steering wheel, he squinted through the fly flecked windshield. The night, vast and starry, moved around him. A lone sign, frozen briefly in the dim glow of rushing headlights, flashed by in the darkness:
LA 315
Suddenly cramped, he yawned and shifted his weight in the seat. Morning was a long way off, but it would still arrive well before Los Angeles crept into sight. Hell, he thumped the steering wheel, he’d count himself lucky if this old car got him as far as Ventura County! With a sigh, he turned the radio off at last.
When the swallows have run, the sky is darker, tender in the chugging glow of clouds under sodium. Our embers tinge the hug of night, tinge the fat drops of autumn rain, tinge the grunt of buses, and the queues of names waiting to find a home. The doorways from the bus shelters, the corner offices, the trains, are dripping with acceptance, with anxious contentments, with weary stresses carried in holdalls and briefcases, laptops and purses. There is a street; a figure scurries in slow motion; there is a flicker before a window, the window of a terrace. A celestial angel sits faceless inside, white glowed by a television. I am on the street; I look in; you are home.
I was walking toward my car, carrying a garbage bag full of my shit. It was hung over my back and I probably looked lack a sad-sack Santa Claus. I was coming from the home of Mary Bermiano. We’d broken up the week before. We’d had another one of our vicious arguments over the phone, only this time it got a little bit out of hand. I was at her home to collect my various personal effects at her request. Mary had broken up with me because I had not been around much since the summer ended. I had become more Continue reading Never as Hard as You Thought by John Grochalski
On the way up, the Tom Waits song “Cold Cold Ground” was playing in the elevator. Not an elevator-music version of it, but the actual song. Even though I was by myself, the lift felt stuffy and cramped. The music made it more bearable.
When I reached the ninth floor, I stepped off and looked down the long, beige hallway for Apartment 903. It was to the left. I checked the gun in my pocket, a Browning Hi- Continue reading Blue Bullet Waltz by John Weagly
Marigold gazed out from the balcony of her third floor apartment admiring the clear blue sky over the city. She felt good. Today was special: the sky in her head was blue too. She moved along the row of window boxes and pretty-painted flower pots, carefully watering the plants in each with a pink plastic watering can; she spoke to them as she went.
I hear voices.
They creep like ivy up the walls of this once grand house, rising like smoke, scuttling like rats, sneaking like thieves, they rattle like the bones of the skeletons stuffed into the closets. They sound, these voices, like violent death.
After the hard edges smoothed away, I saw nothing but the sky. I knew the car was still burning.
I knew that he was still in there, but I didn’t care anymore.
*
The first time I saw Ed, he was passed out in an elevator. I was going out to lunch with my sister who worked in a bank on the third floor. When the elevator doors opened, he was Continue reading Love Me Tender by Melanie Browne
*
Nightflight is a film by Cecelia Chapman with the Austrian musician Susanne Hafenscher and Texas based artist Jeff Crouch photographs. Cecelia Chapman is Continue reading NightFlight by Cecelia Chapman
“Gannon, where have you been?”
“I just had a short stay courtesy of the New York State correctional system. I got one of those weekend getaway deals kinda like you see advertised by the Marriott or Hilton dudes.”
“What happened?”
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