The Tragedy of Dewey C. McCray

Elizabeth Eve King
99 words


Our hero, one Dewy C. McCray was an animal lover. His pet food company specialized in vegan food for cats.

Unfortunately, cats that don't eat meat grow blind. So Dewy began a subsidiary business, "Dewy's Seeing Eye Dogs for Blind Cats."

He hoped this would not only aid the blind, but promote interspecies harmony.

It was an unfortunate side effect that some of the dogs ate their charges. Revolutions are never without casualties.

The bloodlust of his hitherto furry friends embittered Dewy.

He changed his name to Kim, moved to Korea and opened a restaurant specializing in dog fricassee.

Elizabeth Eve King has performed and worked both nationally and internationally in theater, comedy, dance, teaching, painting & science. The Tragedy of Dewy C. McCray was published in a "top 12 short story booklet" by Glimmer Train Press and has received first place in the 2005 Innermoon Lit Award for Best Short-Short Story. An excerpt of 'Dirk Snigby's Guide to the Afterlife' was long listed for the Aeon Award and short listed for the Biscuit Publishing International Short Story Award. This excerpt of Dirk Snigby will be published and recorded as a CD by the Biscuit Publishing. Another excerpt from the novel is readable on the Descending Darkness website.

Natural Selection

by Kevin White
54 words

Under a steel-blue, morning sky the air is crisp and cold like a fresh, green apple.

Tiny feet scamper across twigs and frost bitten leaves as birds sit silently in the trees like sprinters waiting for the starter's gun. Hunters stalk warm blood out of season but park rangers will not check for permits.

Kevin lives in Portland, Oregon with his wife and three German Shepherds. Links to more of his work can be found here: Horrificmusings.com

Gracie's Mom

by Rosanne Griffeth

100 words

We rode insane Shetland ponies and petted rabbits at Gracie's house. Her dog bit me but it was my fault. Her mother, a dark-haired beauty, cleaned the punctures and kissed my forehead. I apologized to the dog and we went back to play, running on the dock over oyster shells.

Her father was big and scary, a crabber--rough and stinking of brine and shellfish.

I hadn't thought of Gracie in years, until her mother disappeared.

Missing persons assumed she had run away. But the townfolk, they whispered Gracie's father cut her mother up and used her for crab bait.

Rosanne Griffeth's work can be seen in The Angler, Writer's Eye Magazine, Smokelong Quarterly, Keyhole Magazine, Cautionary Tale, Static Movement, The Dead Mule and Dew on the Kudzu. She lives on the verge of the GSM National Park with her herd of goats and spends most of her time writing and documenting Appalachian culture. She is the blogger behind The Smokey Mountain Breakdown.

www.smokeymountainbreakdown.blogspot.com

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Matt, with apple

by Emily Nonko
97 words

We sat barefoot on thick grass as you ate your apple whole. I asked, can you do that? and you didn’t answer and I, well I only watched as you bit carefully to the core, chewed one, two, three, swallow: teeth abrupt as piano keys. You considered the apple skeleton before biting hard into its heart - eating seeds, innards, stem, leaving nothing to prove it ever existed. And I tried this eight days later and two hundred twenty-five miles away from you. I ate an apple whole, and I, well I felt no different than before.

Emily Nonko grew up in Denver and is a student in New York. She likes writing, trees, and babies.

Poor Snuffie

by Doug Mathewson
85 words

We needed warmer costuming for our travels to the north. The money was already spent on on plane tickets, art supplies, and snacks.

A gift from above - 50% off coupons from “Bargain Barn” came just in time! Always fashion forward, we choose the blackest of ultra-soft vests.

At check out time my wife says “these things are so soft, I bet they’re made out of muppetts!”

Eyebrow piercings scrunched together as our clerk slowly read the label, ‘no mam, says here it’s all acrylic”.

Doug Mathewson writes very short fiction that occasionally changes of its own volition into poetry or essay forms.

Most recently he has been published by The Boston Literary Magazine, Doorknobs & Body Paint, Pen-Pricks, e-Muse-zine, riverbabble, Six Sentences and Tuesday Shorts. His current project, True Stories From Imaginary Lives, can be found at www.little2say.org

The Entertainer

by Kate Kaminski
71 words

When Berger got that summer job driving for Good Humor, he couldn’t possibly have foreseen that he would be driven mad by having to creep along at 10 miles per hour (evidently the exact speed at which children can run if chasing an ice cream truck), accompanied by that repeated four bar refrain of Scott Joplin’s “The Entertainer” rendered as dairy treat Pavlovian bell-call. Yet that’s exactly what happened.

Kate Kaminski is an underground writer-filmmaker whose motto is “Go ahead, swim upstream. It’s better exercise.”

http://www.myspace.com/gitgoproductions
http://www.myspace.com/tripmovie
http://milkisforbabies.aminus3.com

Middle Eastern Transport

by Channie Greenberg

99 words

Two punches left, I move past aisle-sitting shopping carts and filled baby buggies. A few steps more, beyond the space where bus segments are linked by incredible plastic, I find a gum wad, soda-stained seat.

The fellow, with legs splay across that spot, grumbles as I nudge my way toward the window. Behind him, a woman whose scarf reaches around her chin, over all of her hair, and up to her eyes, squints at me.

Her narrowed gaze provokes not half as much does her bundle, which neither mewing nor leaking dust, shakes, nonetheless. First chance, I disembark.

Channie Greenberg is a writer and a teacher of writing. Her work has appeared in places ranging from The American Journal of Semiotics to Calligraphy Magazine. In the future, her articulated irreverence will be published by Fallopian Falafel Zine and by The Mother Magazine.

When not fooling around with words, Channie paints, builds ceramics, and supplies small spatulas to imaginary hedgehogs. She also dreams about the day when her children will correctly sort the laundry.

Bottom of the Barrel

by Lydia Suarez
87 words

"Albumen causes the sediment to sink ensuring the Rioja's clarity."

Carla swirled, poked her crooked nose, swallowed and spit, "Not fruity enough," she said to Cliff her husband whom she had stolen from her depressed friend. During the double date, Carla had shanghaied the conversation with witticisms and flashes of her long legs. Cliff, a widower, recovering from the loss of his sweetheart to a drunk driver, succumbed.

The tasting group wanted to smash Carla's head against the barrel. Even among wine connoisseurs, she was a snob.

"We won't be bringing this back," she said. Cliff offered an apologetic smile.

Lydia's stories and poems have appeared in 971 Menu, All Things Girl, and Literary Tonic. Work is forthcoming in Girls and Cars and apt.

She Rides Me

by Mike Munsil
100 words

She rides me – as always, this time of day – and it's time for a rumcola, it is. She drapes herself over my shoulder, braces her hind feet on my hand and swipes at the fanchain. I reach for the Brugal, canejuicy, dark and sweet like that maid - that girl hardly older than me - and ohsogood. Dark, like her. She rides me, still.

Lime, quick quick! Spill over the ice. Pool in dark rum, fizzz with cola. Umm.

She watches from her perch, wrinkles her nose, sneezes disdain, digs in her claws. Vulturey, she rides me.

The bottle is almost empty.

Mike was born in Chile, raised in Panama, and now lives in Texas. He has published poetry and creative non-fiction in a variety of places online and in print. Someday he will learn how to write weller, and then watch out! It'll be badass Bunnahabhain time, baby!