Jan/Feb 2007

e c l e c t i c a
f i c t i o n

Fiction


(These are excerpts—click on the title to view the whole piece!)
 

Boot Camp's Children in Need Marathon

Five flash fictions from Alex Keegan's Boot Camp's annual Children in Need Marathon.

Various Authors
 

People on the Other Side

Though he was content with the Lord's songs, Lawrence recorded Silver Ed's compositions, and in a Memphis blur with Alabama overtones, it all whooshed upon him—the cocaine, the prostitutes, the gold-digging connivers, the dark nights, the stray alleyways.

Ali Fahmy
 

Gemma

At tender ages Gemma and her sister Carlotta lost their parents in a car crash and were brought up by an unpredictable grandfather, who didn't have a tooth in his head but talked as if he did and ate steak as well as anyone else, for his gums rivaled the jaws of a snapping turtle.

Andrew Coburn
 

The Fancypants Rosary Company

Anyway, the Pentagon wanted fifty-thousand of my rosaries—the lead ones, not the hairy ones.

G.K. Wuori
 

Red

It was in the garden, amidst the weeds, stems of dead dandelions, tubers thrown about accidentally, perfunctorily, almost spitefully—amidst the very state of entropy, that consistent urge of the universe itself to drag all that is beautiful to decay, to utmost despair and disorder—it was there that, at night, the unruly grass and plants would form horrific shadows, demonic if not on purpose then through a joke of fate itself.

Bojan Pavlovic
 

Ten Who Made America!

Young Johnny traversed the globe before settling down to the life of a soldier. He fought in the Revolutionary and Civil Wars, on the side of the settlers and the slaves. He killed many a poor man, and when the fighting had ended, he hung up his Smith and Wesson six-shooter and took a seat in the Senate, where he defended a woman's right to choose.

David M. Ewald
 

The Resurrection of Lucille Posh

Even Posh, whom the Holy Ghost had never failed, suspected that pagan forces were conspiring to ruin the encomium.

Stephen Healey
 

Hijras on the Highway

The old Mullah turned almost hysterical at the mention of good luck. "What good luck? Look at my poor daughter: she's been turned out from her husband's home because of this baby! My poor daughter's virtue has been questioned by those scoundrels! Good Luck? Never have I met one as unlucky as my poor daughter!"

Rumjhum Biswas
 

In the Valley of Love and Delight

In bed with Hanako that night, my dreams were like Chagall paintings. Damn it, I was in love with her! More so than were any of her goofy, so-called boyfriends. And I was in my own way just as frustrated as I imagined them to be. No matter how much I made love to her, I did not have her.

Alex Shishin