Gloom Cupboard

Issue 129 of fabulous fiction brings you great distractions.  From life’s misfortunes to  frightful fortunes, these stories take you away from the here and now.  Sit back and let Neil Robertson, Andrea Danowski, and Eric Hawthorn take you on an out-and-back that may just leave you out there.

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Fortune Cookie

Eric Hawthorn 

That woman across the restaurant—dark hair, eyeliner, velvet blouse—yeah, her. She’s been watching you for the last 20 minutes with a mix of curiosity and desire.

Thomas sits more upright in the booth of the Chinese restaurant. He reads his fortune again, just to be sure: dark hair… velvet blouse… watching you

This may be the most specific fortune cookie ever.

The restaurant resembles an airplane cabin. On the other end of this noisy fuselage, the woman in question—Velvet, he’s named her—is sitting with her friends. She and her friends are finishing their meal and laughing about something. Lacking anything better to do, Thomas polishes his glasses on his faded Iron Maiden t-shirt. With his glasses off, the woman is a velvety blur. Glasses on, she’s—incredible.

Thomas works to fit his glasses more comfortably along his temples. He needs new glasses. Not a new prescription, but a new frame. As Mother puts it, he’s “gained a little weight around his head.”

Thomas doesn’t usually read his fortune—he’s just here for the orange chicken—and he only read it this time because he’s waiting for Mother. Still, he’s never known a fortune cookie to display such awareness. How could a fortune cookie know who’s looking at him, let alone what she’s wearing? The fortune is 100 percent correct: dark hair, eyeliner, velvet blouse (skin-tight, plunging neckline, Thomas confirms with another glance). Maybe some bored members of the kitchen staff enjoy spying on the patrons, printing out custom fortunes and slipping them into the cookies right before the waitress, who’s probably in on it, brings them out with a quartered orange and their check. But if that were the case, how would these pranksters know which cookie Thomas would open? There were two: one for him and one for Mother, who’s using the ladies room. Thomas is dying to open Mother’s fortune cookie, but she’ll want to do that when she gets back.

Thomas reads his fortune once more:

That woman across the restaurant—dark hair, eyeliner, velvet blouse—yeah, her. She’s been watching you for the last 20 minutes with a mix of curiosity and desire.

Curiosity and desire? What does that even look like? Thomas imagines Velvet gazing in his direction. Once they lock eyes, she’ll do something really provocative, like scoop an ice cube from her water and roll it across her tongue (which is pierced, Thomas decides), the melting ice dripping past her so-red lipstick and down her chin and neck, over her bosom.

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Issue 128 of fiction brings you the unwanted, the imprisoned, and the unhinged.  What is real?  Only the best writers can answer this with positive uncertainty.  Sit back and let Matthew Burnside, Timothy Bearly, and Jennifer Walkup turn your world over.

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Procession of the Dogface Lepers

Matthew Burnside

“The one thing nobody can do for you is walk on your own two feet.”

       ―Old Dogface proverb

Once a year, we clear the streets for the lepers. Old as sea, sun, and star, the Festival of Maw has been the most prized of my people’s traditions since the beginning of our recorded history. The horned hail from all directions: north, south, east and west. In ragged droves and clanking caravans they come, snaking through the hills and treading the sharp-pebble beaches, marching the sun-baked cobble streets of Lamsdown, weighty cowbells swinging from the necks of the adults and tinsel chimes tinkling on the children’s dainty wrists.

Barefoot and threadbare they walk―day and night, without rest, without drink―suffering the elements and bearing their burden in silence and humility. Some will sew their mouths shut in protest while others haul impossibly cumbersome items strapped on their backs in lieu of the conventional albatrosses. Lead anvils; sacks of dirt, sand, or seed; grandfather clocks; bedposts; small, uprooted trees; rubber tires; anything to spite the cruel lot of my tribe who go out of their way to make the long pilgrimage even more oppressive than it already is.

Those who relish the migration of the lepers like sport plant thorns or spread broken glass ahead of time along the Trails of the Filthy, pelt the Dogfaces with soured trash or spoiled food as they pass by their village. They’ll enjoy chilled purified water in their presence, a delicacy afforded only to those born of my caste, while the Dogfaces grow up drinking from the streams where we deposit our refuse, in which we urinate and defecate and dispose of our dead and contaminated.

All along the trails around festival time, you’ll spy horned dolls strung from tree limbs, snouts stitched smiling to mock the horned ones. At festival’s end, each doll is clipped down and tossed into the stream.

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Issue 127 of Fiction brings you great beginnings.  Our fellow soldier in ink, King Wenclas, hosted a contest for the best beginning to a story.  The top picks are here for your journey, each under 200 words.

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The Diadem

Anthony Jones

It was just like every other day in the land, full of darkness and evil. The evil king sat at his throne, thinking of what to do to the citizens next that would give him pleasure. At that time, a man dressed in black garments ran into the great hall. He didn’t waste any time.

“It’s been found!” he yelled. The king’s eyes grew wide. It was the very thing he had hoped to never hear. He stood up quickly and looked all around. He shook his head in fear. He thought he had hidden the diadem well. Such a good hiding spot, that even he had a hard time remembering where it was.

“Who has found it?” the king asked. “How much time do we have?” It had been long told that he who found the lost diadem would have the power to overtake the king. He would have the power to rid the land of evil and become the most powerful man ever lived. He knew it was only a matter of time.

“A boy,”

“A boy?” the king asked. Laughter filled the great hall. He sat back down and seemed to relax. There, he continued to laugh.

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Glas

Pablo D’Stair

I’d almost forgotten I wanted to keep an eye out for this certain customer after having seen him at a restaurant with his wife and kids two weeks prior—he walked into the store and I nodded hello before I’d even looked up. It was him, certainly the man from the restaurant. He lingered around the new release wall, then slyly ducked through the curtained partition into the adult section.

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Prose issue 126 brings you into the mind of those who live in a different world than the rest of us. Kick back and let Janice Soderling and Kim Bond take you to another place.

Planning For the Future

Janice Soderling

Waiting in the telephone queue to the call center, he had this idea for Plan B if Plan A didn’t work. He could teach a dog to do tricks—play dead, roll over, count to ten, or was counting something only horses did? He could hire the mutt out to producers of movies and TV shows.

Problem was, he didn’t have a dog.

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Prose issue 125 brings you one great story with a character we’ve all known.  Kick up your feet and let Mr. Potter take you his journey to the office and back; because the office is just another form of life.

Meeting Adjourned

Matt Potter

Once a month I fuck the boss. It’s not part of my job description. We have a meeting in her office, after thirty minutes she opens the door to what appears to be a storeroom but is actually a well-appointed fuck chamber, and we adjourn.

She likes being fucked on her back mostly: she enjoys watching me do all the grunt work. I grind and groan, looking into her chemically-peeled face as she grips my arse, the fingers of her wrinkling hands edging towards my tightened hole – the storeroom is soundproofed, the door to her office triple-locked, though no one would dare enter without her permission anyway – and not much is said beyond “Deeper” and “Harder” and “Faster”, all by her.

I don’t believe she has a similar relationship with any of my work colleagues. And if she does, I don’t care much either.

And if work colleagues heard of my ‘relationship’ with her, no one would believe it. I think she sees her conquest of me as a triumph of her supreme sexuality, her female carnality, or if nothing else, her economic power.

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Welcome to Issue 124 and a new year of Fiction.  From Fantasy to Fabulous to Final good-byes, fiction grabs our soul and turns it inside out.  Kick up your feet and let Adrienne Bard, Christina Cole, and Brian Tucker renew your soul with their words.

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Confessions of a Narcoleptic

Adrienne Bard

I don’t know when it started. For as long as I can remember I have been falling asleep almost constantly. I start to have a conversation, and I drift off within moments. I go off to work and I’m usually passed out on the lawn before I hear the first, “hi ho”. It’s terribly inconvenient when I sit down at night to eat dinner and I can only get in a few bites before I’m facedown in my spaghetti. I promise I’m not just lazy.

Grumpy hates it and tells everyone that I am faking to get out of going to work. He says when I sleep at night I snore and keep everyone else up. He thinks I have sleep apnea and he’s constantly yelling at me. I feel bad, but I can’t help my snoring. It’s been getting worse. Doc noticed there was a problem when Happy stopped smiling and when Bashful confronted me, saying that it was my fault the birds stopped singing in the morning. It wouldn’t be as bad if I were only sleeping at night. Lately it seems like I’m sleeping more than I’m awake.

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