The Eyes of the Crowd

by Bruce Boston

As rain began to speckle the partitioned windows of the station, an ancient engine groaned into view. Villers soon found himself squeezed into a dingy and narrow car of questionable vintage. Making his way to a window seat, he noted his fellow travelers were exclusively of the lower classes. Peasant women, shapelessly hunched within their shawls. Dark men who drank from bottles concealed in their coats and ate pieces of bread right from the loaf, breaking off the chunks with large, uneven teeth. Scampering children who seemed to belong to no one, or at least recognized no one’s authority.

In his suit and vest, Villers was uncomfortably aware of his relative affluence. He checked his watch chain to make sure it was securely fastened, shifted his billfold so that it was lodged deeply within his breast pocket. As Sophie had once warned him amidst the rumpled sheets of their conjugal bed, “Some people will steal the gold out of your teeth if you give them half a chance!”

The Duel

by Michael James McFarland

“A what?! What did you say? A duel?”

“You heard me, Vanderbilt. D-U-E-L. Duel.”

“You mean like with pistols… ten paces, turn and fire? That kind of duel?”

“Something like that,” John Lawrence affirmed, hands planted on his hips, the breeze blowing casually through his stylish hair, making him look like a young Michael Douglas, right down to the ass-shaped cleft in his chin. Twenty years old and living life like it was a goddamn movie. That was Lawrence all right. This was just the latest example of his madness.

A duel.

Bait

by Joel Arnold

It was a cold January when Paul Robinson parked his flatbed pick-up on the edge of Shady Lake. The ice was ten inches thick. Plenty thick, yet it still didn’t compare to the rind of ice that had settled around his heart.

He let the tail-gate drop, hauled out his wooden fishing shanty and slid it over the ice to a spot a good fifty yards from the other fishermen. It was dusk, and many were already leaving, their perch, walleye, and trout packed in coolers to take home to their families.

He began to arrange the inside of the shanty, a homemade thing of clapboard and two by fours. He lit a pile of pre-soaked coals in an old coffee can for extra warmth, the flame swirling for a moment like a dervish, then settling to a comfortable glow. As he slid his Styrofoam bait bucket across the shanty’s floor, steam seeping from beneath the lid, he heard the crunch of cleated boots behind him. He turned.

Grave of Ships

by Richard Marsden

I know you come from the States and you see this Isle of St. Mary as nothing but quaint. Well, we is a quaint folk and content to be in our cups at the Bishop n’ work the fields and tend to tourists and pull fish from the sea. But as your kin I am to say that the Scilly Isles hold secrets. Every day some of them are shown but only the wise would know it. Only an islander can tell you of it. I want you to listen because you are my kin and so you’ll be told of the Isles of Scilly.

If you look out from any portion of St. Mary’s out to the wide and gray sea you can gaze at the Grave of Ships. The isle is not friendly to outsiders who sail and never has been. It was in 1707 that a whole treasure fleet was dashed unto the rocks and drowned many a soul, including Shovell, the lord of that ill-fated expedition. Since then the Crown hasn’t much use for Scilly or the government we have nowadays. Since Shovell’s treasure spilled on our beaches, along with the bloated bodies, the isle has claimed hundreds of other vessels. Some drawn too close by storms, others lured in by Wreckers with their false lights and sharp blades.

The Valknut

by Dan Dworkin

When I wake I’m craving almonds and want to die. Pretzeled in the top sheet, fighting the light… hurts when I move, go easy… something died in my mouth, breath could bring down a plane, and the light… Jesus, that’s… fuck, that’s bright. Hot too… pores fuming booze… sheets wet, what the… oh God I must’ve… I mean, I haven’t been that fucked up since… clothes on still, one shoe, nice touch… stomach in revolt, just thinking about it makes… aw Christ, I’m gonna… run for it, wait… that was close. Too close. Why do I do this? Now if only I could remem– Wait a… I catch my reflection in the mirror, one shoe on, halfway to the bathroom… I approach, stick out my neck and the new mark there… what the f…? Is that…? Aww man, what did I do? What the hell did I do?!

The Greatest Adventure of All

by Ian McHugh

By the time I cleaned myself up, Arj had scrounged me a fresh t-shirt. I stopped outside the recovery room to pull it on.

“How is he?” I asked, rather indistinctly. My top lip had blown up like a balloon. My head ached, too, where I’d hit it on the cold bed.

“Awake. Calm,” he said. “Whole – we think. Physical responses are normal. He’s in mild shock. Hasn’t said anything yet.”

“Abby?”

He shrugged. “Gone real quiet.”

Abby and Dole were a couple, the ringleaders of our little cabal. They were the kind of adrenalin addicts who see extreme sports as a mystical experience. Who’d mangle J.M. Barrie to tell you: “Death is the greatest adventure of all, man.”

Of course, the rest of us were fear junkies too, otherwise we wouldn’t be sneaking around the labs after hours like the cast of Flatliners.

Bottle Babies

by Mary A. Turzillo

Allie first saw the fairies in the flower garden beside the driveway, and they were naked. But maybe they would be her friends. She didn’t have any friends because Mom and Dad didn’t want people to come into the house and discover Bobby.

How to make friends with them, when they were almost invisible?

She thought the spicy-fragrant petunia blossoms were small enough to make skirts for them; she knew they were girl-fairies because of their long hair, lavender, pink, and pale green, but her eyes weren’t good enough to see if they had nipples, like her own, which must be concealed.

Perhaps a tiny cloverleaf could cover each breast, though she wasn’t sure how to keep them in place.

“Mom,” she said, “May I borrow some thread?”

Mom’s sharp gray gaze flicked away from her needlework, a scene of a Japanese garden. Mom had all sorts of hobbies. “You may have that black spool that’s almost gone.”

Allie chewed the end of her braid. “Colors would be better.”

Mom threw down her needlework, annoyed.

“I want to make little clothes.”