Working the Fire Line – Fierce Fiction by Alan MacLeod – October 21, 2018 The first time I saw her we were on the fire line digging a ditch to contain the blaze. “There’s Beth,” someone said. “ Bobby Freeman’s sister and a damn good digger too.” I saw a short, slender woman in her early twenties, wearing a bright… Read More »Working the Fire Line
My mother saw the raccoon first. She was chopping veggies in front of an open window, hoping for a breeze because it was August, and already hot and sticky…
I sat alone at the Shanghai Dumpling King on 34th Avenue in the same seat she always sat in. I came on a Thursday afternoon the way she always did…
I am six years old and I go to Yeshiva and my name is Moshe. In summer there is an old woman who lives in the radiator in the living room of my apartment.
The place I saw you. How you were walking, squinting, through the slowly-becoming-blinding dawn light. How you carried a large red and white tote bag.
Out of a mall. I have a feeling that I forgot to take something. Something that Lynn crucially needs and I’ll have to visit the mall again. But no.
Staring up at a velvet black sky, we watch millions of stars spark and swirl. On a quilt, soft and worn with years of washing and dreaming, we speak of the fate of humanity…
I have a theory that the nicest rooms, those with the best views, go to the sickest patients. If my theory is correct, I’m fucked. My room is on the second floor…
Chick Ernest had been chatting with other parents when his son nearly died. The basketball season ended around Thanksgiving and the Sharks went to Kat’s Kradle…