― John Berger, Keeping a Rendezvous
Gary Beck‘s one act play: Culture Clash
Scene: The outdoor dining area of an East Village, New York City restaurant. Enter three men in their late 20's. They sit at a table. Characters: Greg – White, Reggie – Black Edgardo – Hispanic Jennifer – White Nina – Hispanic Greg: I don't mind losing. I just can't stand the way they knock me…
Keep readingOrchi Saha‘s short story: A visitor at night
Rita woke up to a miniature plastic hand to her face and a soft chime of laughter. A low groan escaped her lips as she blindly reached for her phone and pried an eye open. ‘It’s too early to be up’, her body told her and the bright letters reading 3:27 A.M., agreed. She’d had…
Keep readingNilambara Banerjee‘s anthology of shortstories.
A little girl was sitting with her mother on the terrace under a starry sky which looked like the blue velvet lining of her mother’s jewellery box on which were scattered numerous starry shiny trinkets. The girl looked at the sky with awe-filled eyes. She pointed to the shiniest star and asked her mother as…
Keep readingDibyasree Nandy‘s short story: Subaru
11:15p.m. user@bagpipes: Did you know? The Professor who teaches the Renaissance Period special paper to the 3rd years died last night. On my way to class this morning, I overheard some students from the History department whispering about it. user@apple_pie: He didn’t just die. He was murdered. I’ve got a friend who attended his class. user@je_crois_en_moi: But I…
Keep readingMurali Kamma‘s short story: The Exchange
I’ve never belonged to a book club, but when a friend in town proposed a story club—perhaps because few of us were going anywhere that summer—I was hooked. For the wrong reason, it turned out. We were group texting, and the problem with that sometimes is my impulsive use of emojis, as if I’m letting…
Keep readingKeith Hoerner‘s short story: Swimming Back to Shore—With No Sign of Your Footsteps in the Sand or Sight of You on the Horizon
I. Foam sloshes ’round my scuffed black leather wingtips, laps up the ankles of my rumpled dress slacks, turns khaki to the colour of murky brown. Onlookers furrow their brows, incredulous I do not see I am in danger of drowning, that if I don’t make a move for it, the water will continue to…
Keep readingAndrew Paul Grell‘s short story: Blow
“Good morning, chuckleheads. Welcome to the fourth class, Practical Mathematics. Everybody ready to get their GEDs?” “Yo, perfesser, GED sand for Goddamned erectile dysfunction?” “Rod, stay up all night thinking that one up? Think up an answer for this. Lay-Z comes over, wants three spoons of coke. You had a 40-gram brick, took out five for yourself and stepped on the rest. How much blow is Lay-Z going to…
Keep readingGary Beck‘s one act play: Breaking Point
Scene 1 (The kitchen of the Rawlins, a blue-collar family struggling to make ends meet in the economic downturn. The apartment is low-income. Enter Fred, carrying laptop, logged onto a site. He starts to take out breakfast bowls, but is drawn back to the computer. He sits and continues to participate in a chat room.…
Keep readingLohran Jay‘s short story: I Know Her
Hundred of phone calls I never answered. Half of a thousand text messages I never replied. Nine events I never attended for at least 822 hours. The reason? I’m just being busy listening to the rhythmic sound of silence and staring at the glittering light of darkness. Summer have passed for several days but warmth…
Keep readingDeclan Geraghty‘s short story: The Stopover
The photos in picture frames on the walls made me feel sad, they made me feel like I missed out on something. The old man in the kitchen talked about old times, times that I’d have been too young too remember. Times that seemed too good to be true, and he kept pouring that drink…
Keep readingJohn Mueter‘s short story: The Mountain
The drive up the ghat road took nearly two and a half hours. From the verdant plains, now lush and gleaming after the monsoon, the winding road rose steadily over 7,000 feet to the top of the Nilgiri Hills. Edward had not been up this road or back to South India in over twenty years,…
Keep readingPawel Markiewicz‘s short story: About The Danube and Dreameries
One day, in the dreamy Middle Ages, three young friends lived in Moravia: a thinker, a poet and a dreamer. They loved every dawn. They have decided to visit Vienna, to buy jewellery there. They liked furthermore a gold of a starlit heaven. They passed the Danube River and a miracle happened. The miracles came…
Keep readingTodd Embry‘s short story: The April Fool and the Angel of Mercy
April 1 2035 As muffled sounds slowly became a fuzzy semi-consciousness, I could see lighting strips overhead, out of focus and passing quickly by. I was moving down a starkly white hallway. The last thing I remember was playing rook at the clubhouse… When suddenly an Angel of Mercy appeared, her face shrouded in white. …
Keep readingLeon Taylor‘s short story: The Reluctant Traitor
They had their usual fare for breakfast—kasha and complaints. “I don’t see why you have to fly to Earth so soon,” Amelia said to her husband, ladling out his Russian oatmeal while he avoided her gaze. She was wearing her favourite sloppy sweater and jeans; Victor, a silk suit imported from the angry blue planet. “We…
Keep readingChidiebere Enyia‘s short story: Slay Queen
It is a cool Monday morning in Owerri, Imo-State. Stephnora sits on a soft settee, cross-legged, in a tight air conditioned hotel situated in the State capital. She has been invited by Chief Omego to collect the sum of one hundred and fifty-thousand Naira for winning the beauty-queen pageantry, organised by Chief Omego’s foundation in…
Keep readingBhumika R‘s short story: Shaheen’s Nightmare
Shaheen woke up coughing and gasping for breath. It was only two-thirty a.m as per the clock on her smartphone which meant that she could sleep for another three hours before the alarm would ring and wake her up. ‘It must probably be an acid reflux caused due to the cauliflower curry I had for…
Keep readingDibyasree Nandy‘s short story: Cupcakes
A misty haze rose above the wet, damp ground with puddles of grey as the relentless downpour refused to cease its assault upon the sea of hued umbrellas. The tinkling of a little bell was heard as the glass door of Eve’s Bakery was pushed open. Folding her umbrella, a young woman entered, the rich…
Keep readingDC Diamondopolous‘s short story: 1970
Drunk and stoned, Scott staggered out the door of the Whisky a Go Go and into the night. A blurred neon sign from the Sunset Strip flickered and shuddered through the ebb-and-flow haze that hovered from his high. The notice to appear before the local draft board was crumpled deep in the pocket of his…
Keep readingDuhita Banerjee‘s short story: Sins
“Pour another,” she said excitedly, while both the friends took another look at their favourite episode of their weekly favourite binge. It was a tough week for both of them, reminiscing the pain. The month of December is not only sombre due to winter’s grasp, but of the suffocating memory of losing a dear one.…
Keep readingZai Apte‘s short story: The bridge
There is a beautiful bridge near my house. I walk there while getting home from work everyday. I compulsively pause there each day and watch the ducks. I have made a couple of important decisions on that bridge and regretted some others too…. I have halted under the Tipuana tree that arches over the bridge.…
Keep readingAnanda Dasgupta‘s short story: Laptop
1. “Oh, this Shiladi …. she’s just too much” Sujata muttered under her breath as she slammed the laptop shut. Just three days to go to the program, and now she wants to change three of the songs that they had chosen? Of course, Sujata had to admit, Shiladi did have a knack when it…
Keep readingJibendu Narayan Mazumder‘s short story: The meek shall inherit the earth
[Loosely based on the attack on a Hindu temple in Bhong city of Rahim Yar Khan district, Pakistan in reaction to alleged defilement of a Madrasa by an eight-year-old Hindu boy] The relentless sun was beating down heavily on the parched land drawing out every drop of moisture in it. Roopchand gazed through the rusted grilles…
Keep readingDuhita Banerjee‘s short story: Help
“Move it aside, this is not how it is done!” squirmed Dinesh while trying to put the woods aside that are not yet burnt in the fire that companies him most of his nights to his brother who was leaving for the night. He pauses for a while and unloads the cigarettes for Amena who…
Keep readingPathik Mitra‘s short story: Good, Bad and the Grey
The worst thing I came across in the Covid times was the face mask. It not only makes me feel claustrophobic but creates a weird anxiety in me that culminates in a breathing trouble. So often my colleagues complained me of not wearing a mask. But honestly I am not good with masks. On the…
Keep readingArka Chattopadhyay‘s short story: The Fixator and the Ants
Monday. It’s evening and not yet evening. It’s taking a turn toward the evening, let us say. Three friends are sitting in a circle with drinks. In a long time, they have got something going there. After a sudden and helpless rain for two minutes, the last light of the day is glowing in the…
Keep readingNdaba Sibanda‘s short story: There is a method in her madness
“Does this bring food to my little table? How many times should I tell villagers here that I no longer want to hear about that name? Do you want my granddaughters and sons who are sweating it out in foreign lands to starve me after getting wind that I am attending useless meetings arranged by…
Keep readingDinesh Mohan‘s short story: Toothless Fairy
It was a rainy afternoon and the clouds were about to burst into tears. Logan Pereira looked for shelter around and ran towards the entrance of an old building. The building had an old-world charm and seemed to have been constructed in the late 19th century. He saw a flight of stairs ahead of him…
Keep readingDavid Mellor‘s short story: Disgruntled
They all looked so new. If this had been paper, it would have turned yellow, be covered in beer, wine, cigarette ash, over illegible hand writing. But here on the computer the document of my poetry looked as if it was written yesterday, all clear and shiny. I had enough to wrap around the Eiffel…
Keep readingSubhasree Mitra‘s short story: Friend
This Saturday is bank’s half yearly closing and will be closed for public. So, the day before is very crowded and all the employees are very busy to manage the hustle. HDFC Bandra branch is well known for its huge public transaction and a long queue as well. Indeevar calls, “Token number 78?” An old…
Keep readingYaaminey Mubai’s short story: Pulkanjari
Land. Turf, Country. Ideas created from dust, marked on the ground through imagined boundaries branded on people’s minds by the force of politics and history. Crisscrossing lines, overlapping both in mind and on the ground. New ones claiming greater validity in strident voices. Older ones dimmed with age and disuse, left behind, obscured by the…
Keep readingYaaminey Mubayi‘s short story: Night train to Gujranwala
Bells jingling, the black horse pulling the tonga trotted through the gates of Lahore railway station and came to a stop at the platform entrance. Shankar sprang lightly to the ground, briefcase in hand. Dropping two annas into the driver’s outstretched palm, he hefted his holdall in his other hand and strode purposefully towards the…
Keep readingNbada Sibanda‘s short story: Friendly wars
Ever since his appointment to the lofty position of defence minister, he seemed to be gripped by some phobia. Some residents claimed the irrational fear stemmed from the possibility that he did not know what he was expected to do. Others thought that he was a lucky coward who found himself having to oversee a…
Keep readingNbada Sibanda’s short story: That Day`s general knowledge lesson
It was early morning, but already her ship was shaky and unhappy. If anything the first two lessons were a complete mess and nightmare for the science teacher who had just got married to another teacher in another nearby school. The man kept coming for her in spite of her humblest and loudest pleas and…
Keep readingNiles Reddick‘s short story: Security Guard
Dillon got word he had the above minimum wage security guard job from his cousin a few hours before he had to report to the subdivision entrance. Typically, Northwoods didn’t have a security guard at the guard shack at the entrance because residents didn’t pay their homeowners dues on time, or in some cases at…
Keep readingOrchi Saha‘s short story: The nightmare house
The house was derelict, the porch scattered with leaves and pieces of broken glass from the windows. Weeds and plants covered the walls of the house, naked bricks peeping from the parts where the plaster had peeled. Bracketed on either side with houses decked in colourful lights in the spirit of the festivities, the dwelling…
Keep readingDavid R Mellor’s short story: The 1786 Russian invasion of Blackpool
Of course, the Russians didn’t invade Blackpool in 1786, but nowadays everything is possible. In fact, if you Google the title, you will find that the Russians did plan to land on the pleasure beach during the Cold War. Nothing is out of bounds now, or impossible, think it and it has happened. It is…
Keep readingBenjamin Wylde‘s short story: An unquiet grave
I never had but one true love, In cold grave he was lain, I’ll do as much for my true love As any a young girl may; I’ll sit and mourn at his grave, For twelve month and a day I have heard that song since I was lain in my cradle. Still it follows…
Keep readingOrchi Saha‘s short story: A lonely night
Kavya finished typing the last sentence and checked the time. The white numbers at the corner of her screen informed her that midnight had come and gone without her notice. She shut down her laptop after saving her work and stood up, stretching her muscles as she went and let out a relieved sigh as…
Keep readingNemo Gupto‘s short story: A crushing fight
— while one may encounter many defeats, one must not be defeated… Maya Angelou The light A photograph hung, three quarters of the height, on the west-wall, scrimmed with a mosaic of arbitrary patterns of damp-spots. The window in the south-wall, the most coveted in Kolkata, brings in the morning and evening Azaan every day.…
Keep readingZai Apte‘s short story: A beautiful day (the day I watched my first porn film in India)
Editor’s note: This is not a work of fiction but the narrative had acute semblance to that of a short story and hence although this piece was submitted as a personal essay, it is published in the fiction section. My story takes place in the mid 2000s of India when mobile phones could only call people and…
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