Stories appearing in Spring 2016
The Family Ghost
by Rati MehrotraThe day before she left for her husband’s village, Urmila got her dowry: a goat, two gold bangles, and the family ghost. The bangles were pretty and the goat would be useful, but what would she do with the ghost? Dirty, smelly old thing. “Be
As You Were, Aggie
by Rhiannon RasmussenNow, I know it’s out of style to have a gentleman’s personal gentleman lately, what with the rationing inside the Beacon Wall and the outside lands ravaged by grotty beasts and all, but as soon as Keets came around I knew I’d
The Roving Bookstore
by Andrea CorbinIn July of my thirty-first year, I take to my bed. At night I fail to sleep and in the day I am too heartsick to do much more than stare blankly at the patterns of sunlight that cross my room. Food poisoning, I lie to the office.
Phasing In, Phasing Out
by Marlee Jane WardThey bring her in straitjacketed and I ache for her because haven’t we all been there? She’s a fighter though, a real lump of a girl, all muscle and cord, and she rips and pulls against the orderlies. I feel like I recognise
Down The Twisting Alleyways
by Kelly JenningsFor a long time, Izzy kept the dimes in the pickle jar on the bookshelf, along with all her other loose change. But one night when it was too hot to sleep and her bones ached from a double shift gutting dead chickens for Tyson, when even with
Pure and Without Savour
by Deborah WalkerWe sing the Songs of Salt. Salt is precious and complex. Sodium chloride is not. Sodium chloride is a chemical, easily manufactured in a vacuum process. Pure and clean, sodium chloride lacks flavour. Salt is flavoured with magnesium, calcium, halides and sulphates. Salt also has the savour of
Never
by Shane HalbachThey say the first thing the sea swallows is your sanity. I suppose if that’s the only part of me it got, I count myself lucky. I’m not going to say we’ve taken no harm, but here I sit, thank The Lord.
Tofino
by Andrew Neil GrayAhead of them, people fall from the bridge supports. They are visible as black dots from the roadway as it leaves Stanley Park and resolve clearly into the figures of men and women by the time the van is crossing Lion’s Gate. They blur past