by Dennis Pahl
Image: Luda Pahl

Everything was going fine when I entered my hotel room. Everything was going fine, that is, until the moment I opened up my suitcase and discovered, inside, a man I’d never seen before. At least he didn’t look familiar. Barely taking notice of me, the man nonchalantly stood up, stretched his arms, brushed himself off, and stepped out. He almost tripped over the edge of the suitcase, but somehow managed at the last second to keep his balance, shyly smiling at his near-fall.
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by Sheung-King
Image: Maari Sugawara
1

“There’s a bit of rice left on your plate.” You sip your wine.

We are having Thai food. It is a warm Sunday afternoon. I tell you a story – or rather, a series of events; I wonder what the difference is? Continue Reading →

by Erik Fuhrer
Image: Kimberly Androlowicz

A nightmare lived at the end of a rainbow and Charlie was determined to see it so he twisted his face into a star and visited the moon for some inside info since the moon sometimes bathed in the lake at the neck of the rainbow. The moon was to his dismay only a gaping yellow mouth in the belly of the lake which spoke no secrets but only slightly swished when a bird or Charlie’s toe slipped inside it. Continue Reading →

by Mwinji Siame
Image: Mwinji Siame

One of the only joys (if you could call it a joy because it seemed like a natural thing a woman should have been able to do by the new millennium) of being single or rather, a divorcée, was not having to answer to anyone and consider what others would say about how and with whom you spent your days. So, on a sleepy Saturday afternoon in the middle of very middle-class Lusaka (like where your moderately wealthy and/or educated aunty who can still tighten her wrapper before a fight would stay) two friends, both divorced, arranged to meet, spontaneously, to do whatever they wanted to do together on that day. Although, this was probably something these two particular women would have done without permission or fear anyway. Continue Reading →

by Christina Rosso
Image: Isabel Rock

The siren sits on a gray rock in the middle of the Wailing Lake cleaning her teeth. Her scaly blue-gray pointer finger twirls a section of coontail against her thumb. She lifts her hand, and her fingers work the forked leaves of the plant between her snow white fangs. The creature uses the tip of her tongue to catch some leftover pieces of pink flesh. She licks her full lips, and then closes them, creating a smacking sound as saliva and flesh separate and meet. Continue Reading →

by Frances Donnelly
Image: Frances Donnelly

She went to his house at dusk, when the sky and the ground and the buildings in between were all mixed into the same purplish soup. Dusk spreading over the village had always calmed Erica, but now she felt the thrill of intermingling currents and things hidden amongst them, and she trailed her fingers in loops ahead and behind her – night to day, day to night, light to dark, dark to light. When the boy she was walking with caught sight of what she was doing and gave her a knowing glance, she bunched her fingers into fists and fixed her eyes on the path ahead.
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