Short stories

by Gary Beck I had trouble containing my excitement on the bus ride from my house to my new summer workplace, the Neighborhood Community Center. Just before my sophomore year in high school ended I saw an ad on a bulletin board for junior counselors at a day camp. I called, got an appointment for an interview, went, made a good impression and got the job. This was important to me for many reasons. The biggest was it got me away from the gang five days a week. In my early chil

by Onyinyechi Anyalenkeya He began with the bedroom. She had smashed everything that could be smashed and shredded anything that could be shredded. He wasn’t particularly bothered, they were just things. He never had much property anyway. He had returned to the apartment exactly three weeks after the incident. He got a mop and a bucket of water from the bathroom (thankfully, these had been left out in her destruction-spree). There was no laundry soap so he added   lemon-scent

by Sarah Reynolds Have you ever heard the story of how the mouse got his big ears? As all the animals were formed, some were made bigger and others smaller. As the years passed, the animals forgot why, and so did I. One of the smallest animals that I’ve seen living on a farm was Mouse. Now Mouse didn’t always have large ears. It all started one day, when Mouse was eating seeds in the barn. That’s when Horse stepped on his tail. Mouse yelped out, “eeeekkk, eeeeekkk.” Several m

by Kelli J. Gavin When I was a child, I was quite close with my Grandma Collova. Grandma and I enjoyed games of rummy at her kitchen table and T.V. dinners watching Wheel of Fortune. She would doze after finishing her meal and wouldn’t rouse again until her show had finished. If it was terribly warm, we would sit outside under her shade tree and she would fill a small pool with water where we could cool down until mosquitoes drove us in for the evening. When I received an inv

by Malkeet Kaur The café was always too bright, the kind of light that made you squint even on overcast days. She sat by the window, her hands wrapped around a cup of coffee that had long gone cold. The steam had stopped rising minutes ago, but she hadn’t noticed. Outside, the rain tapped against the glass in uneven rhythms, like a song someone had started but forgotten how to finish. He was supposed to meet her at three. The clock on the wall, its hands chipped and yellowed,

by Neil Brosnan Life has been good to me; I could name many less fortunate, starting with my own mother. It was she who’d had to work...

by Carys Crossen The first fox, the very first, she spotted in the spinney crammed between the dual carriageway and the perpetually...

by Sharon Berg It’s been four days. My knees are pulled up under a long flower-printed skirt, heels resting on the seat of the kitchen...