Congratulations to the winners of the second Jerboa Lit 500!
June, 2025 prompt:
Genre: Road trip/quest
Item: Straight razor
Phrase: “friends we don’t see anymore”
First Place
ur move
By Celeste Amidon
Holly had plans to drive across the state and eat dinner with a man she met on the internet. She washed her car with coconut soap and a mitten before she left, then looked at herself in the shining window reflection, her skinny legs and her flabby arms, four limbs that looked like they belonged to two different bodies, a not-so-exquisite corpse. She grabbed a cardigan and her purse from inside and said goodbye to her parrot, Venetia, who said, “You’re gonna die!”—a habit Holly had tried and failed to train out of her. Holly went to the bathroom and used her handy straight razor to slash the last stray hairs off her chin. Smooth-chinned, she was ready for her date.
Holly had met Judd on an app called ur move for people who like boardgames. He was forty-two and liked swimming and loved Risk and worked at a Car-Mart in Sulphur Springs. They chatted about Viking See-Saw and their favorite ice cream flavors. They agreed to meet halfway, in Dallas, for steaks.
She set off at 3:37 p.m. She put on her favorite radio show, a girly motivational program called “Popular with Cleo Brown.” Today’s episode was about avoiding your toxic ex. “Ladies,” said Cleo. “Let’s stop doing this to ourselves. Instead of responding to the u up? texts, let’s try giving our grandmothers a call. Let’s try reaching out to friends we don’t see anymore.”
Holly drove fast through Hillsboro and Waxahachie. She practiced what she would say when Judd asked her about herself: “I’m a real, old-fashioned romantic.”
When she arrived at the restaurant, she felt a jolt, something sharp in her stomach. He stood outside, early, like her. Oh, and he was handsome, like in his picture. Red hair and muscular arms and lips clamped around a toothpick.
It was awkward at first. He was twitchy and she was sweaty. But, once they got inside, it was magnetic. They ordered Montepulciano and calamari and ribeyes and talked about their Settlers of Catan strategies. She made a joke about Mario Party, and he laughed so hard he shot red wine out of his nose.
When they left the restaurant, it was dark. They wandered to a spot by the dumpsters, and he kissed her. The kiss was warm and familiar. She pulled away. “I’m a real, old-fashioned romantic,” she said, and then she slid the razor under his ribs and watched him fall to his knees like an actor in an amateur play—bloody drool dribbling from his mouth—and die.
In the car back to Austin, Holly listened to the radio show and planned her week. She decided to pick a different app next time. The boardgame boys were easy, yes, but fucking God she couldn’t keep pretending she was interested in that shit. She also decided that, when she got home, she would ask a professional to help her stop Venetia from talking about death. That bird was going to give her away.
Celeste Amidon is a short story writer and novelist. She received her MFA in Fiction from Boston University, where she was a Leslie Epstein Global Fellow. She has had her work featured in Gulf Coast, POLYESTER, Broad Sound Journal, and elsewhere. In 2025, her short story, “Turtles,” was selected by E.M. Tran as the winner of the New Ohio Review Ellis Prize for Fiction. Also in 2025, her short story, “The Absinthe Drinker,” was selected for the Gemini Magazine Short Story Prize. She currently serves as a reader for Ploughshares.
Second Place
Three Slices of Lemon Meringue
By Racheal Jones
At sunset on July 4th, the body snatchers parked in my diner’s handicapped space. We were closed, but I’d invited them. Their 1954 Buick Skylark was Lido Green, the color of mint chocolate chip ice cream.
“Three slices of lemon meringue,” I called out to Julian. “Then go enjoy the fireworks.”
He was gone before I unlocked the door and punched four songs into the glowing jukebox. Take the A-Train and Over the Rainbow for Mildred. Hound Dog and Jailhouse Rock for Hazel. When I turned around, they were inside the diner.
Hazel, currently in her twenties, looked like a 1950s Vogue model in a pink dress with a cinched waist. Mildred was old and fat now, her linen dress wrinkled, but her hair was immaculate, its finger waves dyed auburn.
“Welcome back, ladies. How long’s it been? Four years?”
“Five,” Mildred said.
“We’ve missed your lemon meringue pie,” Hazel said.
“Well, here you go.” I set two plates onto their booth’s Formica tabletop. “May I join you?”
Mama insisted I use my best manners around the body snatchers. I’d met them right here, in my childhood, fifty years ago. Mildred had been young then. Hazel had been black. I’d never been pretty enough to attract their predatory attention.
We ate and talked about their never-ending road trip. The violet cloud of the Milky Way above McWay Falls on Highway 1. Sunlight on the rust-orange rocks of the Grand Canyon. I breathed in the scents of lemon, sugar, and not enough Chanel No. 5 to mask the sour urine in Mildred’s diaper. Elvis and Judy sang. Children played with sparklers in the street. I cut the diner lights, so we could watch the celebration without our reflections staring back.
“Delicious,” Mildred said, putting down her fork. “Thank you. Now, the girl?”
“Yes.” My heart thumped hard. “She’s seventeen. I have a picture.”
My hands shook. Was I really doing this?
Yes, I was.
Julian might give up his scholarship for that slut. She’d ruin his future, then dump him. She’d done it before. With her gone, he’d move on. He’d learn that the lovers who leave us, the friends we don’t see anymore - that’s just life.
Speak of the Devil. The slut was right outside, waving a white sparkler.
“There she is,”
The body snatchers gasped.
Audrey was radiant with youth. Cut-off shorts and a red bikini top displayed her firm body. She jumped, and her perfect breasts and her long, brown hair bounced. Brilliant white sparks glittered around her.
Mildred sobbed, tears tracing her wrinkles, and the jukebox went quiet.
“Oh, Millie! Don’t cry.”
As Hazel plucked a handkerchief from her pink handbag, a gleaming straight razor clattered onto the table. She slipped it back into her purse.
I didn’t want to know the particulars.
“How about more pie and music?” I asked. “The fireworks will start soon.”
“Lovely.” Hazel clicked her purse shut.
I chose Moonlight Serenade and Don’t Be Cruel, then walked into the kitchen.
Racheal Jones has been published by Black Hare Press: Dark Moments and currently has a short story shortlisted by the 2025 Edinburgh Writing Awards. In 2023, she self-published 26 Tiny Tombstones, a collection of short stories inspired by Edward Gorey's "The Gashlycrumb Tinies". She lives in Texas with her husband and a yellow tabby cat named Minion.
Third Place
The Way
By Charlie Rogers
Steven stands in the bathroom doorway, his long shadow reaching to the other side of our tiny motel room, and I can immediately tell he’s upset. He clutches his leather travel bag under his arm like a football and refuses to look at me.
He yanks off his gym shorts like they’ve offended him sits on the edge of the bed, facing the wall. I could ask him what’s bothering him but he won’t tell me, not yet. His moods shift like tectonic plates.
In the bathroom, I find my first clue—the razor is missing from my toiletries.
A televangelist’s loud voice fills the room. We think we know the way, he says. We don’t.
Steven hasn’t shifted but now he glares at me like I’m an intruder in his room. If this were happening at home, I’d just go sleep on the lumpy couch, but that’s not an option here. Steven promised me this trip to see his sister would be fun—an adventure, he said—but I’ve been stumbling through a minefield for two days, and fun is not the word I’d use.
Listen, friends, we don’t see anymore than a blind man can see the path—
I turn off the television, casting us both in darkness. A thin strip of illumination from the halogens in the parking lot divides the room in neat halves: him on one side, me on the other.
“I was watching that,” Steven says.
I cross the imaginary boundary but rather than approach my side of the bed and ignore the tension like I normally would, I cross to Steven’s side. My second clue to Steven’s mood is a redux of the first one: my forbidden razor glints on his nightstand.
“I hoped we were past this.” I sink onto the mattress beside him.
“I’m sorry I’m so fucking crazy.” Steven’s tone is defensive but the moment he exhales the last word he drops his head onto my shoulder like a deflated balloon. This is the arc these conflicts always follow.
It isn’t the same razor he used last year—I threw that one away and have used an electric ever since. He doesn't trust himself, he says. I bought the straight razor last month as a treat to myself—no more neck bumps—and kept it hidden in our bathroom, my one secret. Until tonight.
I drape my arm across him and pull him closer. “You’re not crazy. I’m sorry. I wasn’t thinking.”
It’s a lie.
I knew exactly what I was doing. I didn’t accidentally buy this new razor and it didn’t fall into my travel bag. I was tired of tiptoeing around Steven’s meltdown and made a very conscious decision to reclaim something for myself.
Steven releases a long sigh. “I know. You’d never hurt me on purpose.”
I glance over at the razor on the nightstand and remember what the TV pastor said. We think we know the way. We don’t.
“Of course not.” I tilt my head up to kiss his forehead.
Charlie Rogers (he/him) is a gay writer, former photographer, and aspiring hermit who lives in New York City, writing the same story over and over, ignoring birds and their portents. He is originally from Beacon, NY, and studied literature at Cornell University for some reason. He recently won the Elegant Literature prize, and his work has also appeared in BULL, Uncharted, and Ellery Queen. Website: charlierogerswrites.com
Fourth Place
Threadbare
By Katherine Reynolds
The trip had been Dad’s idea. The paper wanted him to write a piece about “the last traditional American barbers,” as part of their July 4th special (hotels and gas included), and he’d jumped at the chance for a free vacation. Anna wished he hadn’t. It was hot, and the AC was broken, and Logan had just learned that punchbuggy was a great excuse to hit his sister.
Seven hours and fifty-two punchbuggies later, the family Honda pulled into Santa Fe for what was to be the first barbershop in a total of fifteen–one per day until the end of the month. Dad had planned the route meticulously to optimize stubble growth and razor burn. He walked into the little barber shop on the plaza with arms swinging, notebook flapping out of his back pocket. He returned with chin smoothed and eyes gleaming, his hand stroking anxiously at the spot where stubble once pricked.
Early the next morning, the family piled into their Honda and peeled out of the motel parking lot, headed straight for Colorado Springs. Dad drove as if dreaming, his hand still stroking his smooth, smooth chin.
The end of June came and went, yet Dad showed no signs of wanting to return to Odessa. The trip wound ever northward, their stops dictated only by whether the barber used a straight razor. Dad’s face grew rough and raw and speckled red, until one day, a barber refused to shave him. He offered up his head instead, which the barber smoothed diligently until it shone as if polished. At the next stop, they did his arms, then his legs, then his chest, then arms legs and chest all over again, straight razors gleaming as they carved at Dad’s hair.
With every stop, Dad grew smaller and smoother until his head barely peeked over the wheel of the car, his spindly fingers winding around the gearshift like the legs of the spiders that watched Anna in rest stop bathrooms.
Mom’s fingers clutched at the pages of her magazine, and her voice shook as she coaxed Dad to talk about anything but the barbershops, even your mother is fine, or those friends we don’t see anymore because they smoked too much, just no more barbershops please. Dad drove on, blind to the whiteness of her knuckles and deaf to her pleas. He sang Sweeney Todd and composed haikus extolling the wonders of the close shave, Q-tip-thin legs kicking happily at the acceleration pedal (could he even reach it anymore?), stickbug arms swaying in the rush of the broken AC. In the brief moments where he let Mom drive he wrote furiously in his notebook, pencil too big for his stick-figure hands, what little remained of his brow scrunched in rapturous concentration.
Logan stopped punchbuggy around Salt Lake City.
One August day in some dingy little California suburb, a barber took one look at Dad’s gleaming skull and smooth, threadbare bones and quietly, firmly, shook his head no.
Katherine Reynolds is a fourth-year studying Biology and Creative Writing at the University of Chicago. Her work has been published in Esse, Jerboa, and The #TWP Quarterly Lit Zine. She is also the managing editor of the Chicago Shady Dealer (UChicago's only intentional humor publication) where she does her best to be funny. When she is not writing, she can be found in the tissue culture hood, on the couch crocheting, or out and about with her dogs.
Fifth Place
Ghost Gear
By Victor Cabinta
The tank's almost dry.
I feel it when the car stutters over the broken asphalt, how the windows flash with leftover images of things I used to know, cherished. Mother singing in the kitchen. Brooke giving me my first kiss in the fifth grade. I’ll forget them soon—burned away to push us past the next checkpoint.
"We need more," I tell Rafe, slumped in the passenger seat, eyes hollow from what he gave up last night. We stopped calling it remembering. Now it’s trading. Slicing pieces of ourselves off with that straight razor and feeding them into the Memory Box wired into the dash. Since the world collapsed, memory became our currency. No more dollars, no more credit—only what you can recall.
He hands me the blade. It doesn’t shine anymore, just flickers like it’s tired too. Fuel costs more now. The car wants bigger things. The first joke. The sound of my sister's laugh. Names. Birthdays. The feel of rain.
I slice.
The engine hums to life. The road opens like a scar across the wasteland. Ghost towns blur past, filled with people who forgot themselves.
Our destination’s starting to feel like a myth. The Archive, a place where stolen memories sleep, waiting to be woken and reclaimed. Sometimes I wonder if we passed it already and forgot. If we’re just looping, circling some cosmic drain with no memory left to realize it. Can we really get them back? Is there even a chance to save us? Is there anything left to save?
"When the time comes, go on without me," Rafe said. "And then trade your memory of me."
I want to forget that conversation. He’s the one thing I never want to lose. He’s my anchor. My reminder. But he doesn’t talk much anymore. Just hums and traces things into the fog on the window. Symbols. Names. Once, he wrote mine—Castor. Then wiped it away.
We hit a stretch where gravity feels thinner, like we’re climbing into space. Stars flicker overhead even though it’s noon. My knuckles go white on the wheel.
I glance over.
"Do you remember me?" I ask.
Rafe blinks slowly. He shakes his head. "No. But I think I loved you."
I don't cry. I traded tears weeks ago, along with our first night together. Whatever made me cry went with them. All that’s left is a ghost ache in my ribs, the kind we get when we run into friends we don’t see anymore.
The car keeps driving. Up ahead, a checkpoint. I know what it’ll ask for.
My name.
I reach for the razor again. I pause and glance at Rafe—his hand twitching like he's already forgetting his skin. If I don’t slice, the car stops. Maybe that’s okay.
But I remember his love. His laugh.
I take the blade, and trade again.
Victor Cabinta is a Filipino author from Guam. He holds an MA in Creative Writing and hopes to pursue a PhD in the same field. He has released his debut novel Superstring and is available on Amazon. When he’s not writing, you can find him in the gym, dancing in a studio, or playing video games.
Honorable Mentions
Péng - Friend, Mythical Bird
By Hanna AR
The track winded endlessly before the pair of exhausted men, the stench of corpses wafting in the air behind them like a snail’s trail. The two pressed onwards - wire biting their ankles - towards the presumption of safety, the sound of their footsteps muffled by night and the quiet hiss of bamboo vipers.
After days of travelling like this, like baby deers in a three-legged-race, there came a night where they sought cover beneath sweetgums turned amber in the cold. The first man, with blonde hair, moved his foot slightly in his sleep. They’d both long forgotten what the tender flesh surrounding their talus was supposed to feel like.
Close by, Japanese soldiers were boasting in boisterous voices of their triumphs at Nanjing.
“The stupid sluts wouldn’t stop screaming,” one of them complained, his voice echoing sharply through the forest. He was crouched over the stream, tilting his head left and right in the reflection of the water that the pair of men had been following to Wuhu, using a straight razor to haphazardly cut through thickets of wild mushrooms.
Through the dense foliage, the second man peered with interest at the soldier who was speaking. Unable to comprehend what they were saying, he readjusted his position and flattened himself against the ground.
His sleeping counterpart stirred, waking slightly. A rush of fraternal affection coursed through him.
Once on this journey, the white man had, unaware, bent over water distinctly littered with poison and cupped his hands, raising it to his blistered lips. As the Chinese man had knocked the water out of his hand urgently, the man had looked at him with desperate, puzzled eyes.
It was those same eyes that peered out of the darkness at him now.
“Not Japanese,” he said, his voice hoarse with unuse. “These people,” he gestured to the Japanese. “These are just… friends. Friends we don’t see anymore.”
He did not say ‘peng’, which would have meant friend - instead, he stressed the syllable to refer to the mythical bird he had read about in his childhood. He hoped, in his next life, the bird would find him. Or maybe in this one, if they made it to the Northern Ocean.
The man did not understand, but accepted this explanation and closed his eyes once more. He did not know his name, nor speak his language - from the limited exchanges they had been able to muster, in a broken mix of Mandarin and English, he had been a tourist visiting Nanjing - but he knew the precise shade of blood, staining both their ankles.
The Japanese voices grew distant as they continued, almost in a mechanical rhythm, pouring pollutants down the river.
The man did not know which of them would die first, with their ankles growing increasingly infected by the day.
But once the soldiers had left, they would continue. If not in Wuhu, they would find safety in death.
Either way, we are all trudging somewhere.
Hanna AR has been an aspiring author ever since she first learnt her ABCs. Born and raised in Australia, she grew up influenced by multiculturalism, with a profound interest in the diversity of ethnic identities and religions. She is passionate about cats,history and art, and lives a family-oriented lifestyle, with her parents, at home. She is a first year at university, currently studying a double bachelors in AI & International Studies. She will continue to write stories that she hopes will inspire change, and more importantly, foster compassion in the world. She hopes you have a lovely day, and that you stay smiling.
Phantom Person
By Manu St. Thomas
In the queer penumbra of dawn, Dinah’s hands unclasp themselves from her wrists, write a goodbye note and sneak out the window like rebellious children.
They skitter to the bus stop, their palms sweaty with the glow of adventure, and get off at the boat terminal. Bright haze spills across the sky when they board the ferry and climb up to the deck.
Dinah wakes up with absent fists clenched, a dreadful desire in her stubs to squeeze, grasp, hold on to something. She knew this moment would come, knew they would leave. They had been raging against her fear of the vast and wild outside, against her unwillingness to leave the stale safety of her little bungalow. They dragged her to the door, scratched wails on the furniture and stretched with desperate yearning.
“Forgive us,” the note says in delicate cursive. “We miss the wind, the work, the friends we don’t see anymore. There’s so much life in us and so much world out there.”
The hands get off the boat on the shores of a fishing village where Dinah’s cousins live. They pay them a visit and shake their hands. They find work in the harbor, raking oysters from their shallow beds and pulling nets heavy with silvery harvest from the waves.
In winter, they take a train to the capital. They sleep above a bakeshop and during the day, they learn to temper the viscous fury of chocolate and pipe daffodils that can fool bees. From there they hitchhike to the valleys, where the slopes are combed in neat verdant rows and the grapes are ripe and eager. They spend their time cutting gemlike clusters from their vines and squeezing them into red potion. Then they wave goodbye, and in the back of a pick-up truck, they ride east through the shrub-stained landscape, under the sun like a white song. In a small town with wrought iron balconies and lazy cafés, they work in a barbershop, lathering the faces of burly old men, mastering the swift strokes of straight razors. They travel further, until they reach the salt plains, where they taste the clouds in the glassy overflow of skywater. Up in the mountains, they wear mittens, make snowballs and warm themselves by the fire. They ride in dog sleds, hot air balloons, rickshaws and canoes. They wander through the unfathomable innards of big cities, where they buy rings and get manicures. In golden cathedrals, bathed in the watercolor of stained glass, they clasp each other in prayer.
Huddled inside her house, Dinah can feel the snow, the grapes, the dust film of the pavements, the rough paper of train tickets in her phantom hands. Or maybe, she thinks, she is the phantom person of her limbs. Maybe they never left. Maybe she did.
Manu St. Thomas is a Romanian writer who has lived in Austria, Ireland and Kenya, and who has been calling Germany home for the past five years. Her stories won first prize in Mslexia’s and The Failing Writers' flash fiction 2023 competitions and have appeared in Flash Fiction Magazine, Elegant Literature, Friday Flash Fiction and 101words. She loves to read nonfiction about expeditions and explorers, has a mild obsession with Marcel the Shell and prefers writing after dark.
keeping the stars apart
By Em Laure
30 Sept. 23—,
from Bacchus Marsh we set off as two, EV humming Cage as the eucs fled by in soft blurs. old town Ballarat offered water. Then mountains south, & a Pink Lake pinker than the evening sky. asked Gaile, :you think we’ll find her?:
:dunno’,: she replied. :last night, couldn’t sleep well. dreamed we’d get there, everyone waiting.:
:everyone who?:
:everyone. Frost, June. friends we don’t see anymore. imaginary lovers. Joan of Arc.:
:then?:
:don’t know. woke up early.:
her dream bothered me, lay awake, attuned to her susurrant breathing.
1 Oct. 23—,
drove through old city of Adelaide; saw nobody. river gleamed & the road rolled on underneath. saw ocean today, first since childhood. torn between looking out/talking with Gaile driving. towns drifting by like clouds were Ports Wakefield & Pirie & Augusta, Kimba, Wudinna. asked if we’d end in Perth.
:what do you mean?:
:could seek others, across the seas. in the old conurbations.:
:don’t know they’re out there. how’d we cross?:
:could learn to sail. dunno’.:
:y’okay ace?: she checked. had felt the motion of the world and grown dizzy.
:little carsick.: she slowed down then on.
slept again in the back, lying beside her. don’t usually get cold, ergo she gets the blankets. outside were dingo rustlings and frogmouths crooning.
3 Oct. 23—,
yesterday recharged the car. at dinner, the fire danced effusive of warmth. camped under a sidereal sky. she produced a straight razor straight as the road, Huon-handled. began shaving her whiskers.
:can you do my legs next?:
:sure.:
the sky flooded dark. envied newer models like her many things: antifollicle skin; eccrine sweat glands; seaweed-rich eyes. envied her having a name.
:lean back.:
obeyed and the stars enveloped me. felt water splashed from the bowl, the razor glide down my legs.
:we’ll find an old piano somewhere,: she offered. :love to hear you play again.:
lacertine smile crept along my lips. countered, :a chalkboard. you can weave maths I don't understand.:
:you'll one day.:
she finished/stretched out beside me. the embers crackled, glowing red & grey, softly in the night a proclamation of life, :see me.: looked over Gaile at them beautiful.
:ace,: she began, :the sky.:
gazed up at the inky empyrean. she crawled close, nestled her head in my shoulder’s nook. :stunning.:
:yeah.:
:how far to Perth?: didn't really care.
she nestled deeper. :two days, tops. dead towns lead the way to the ocean. Norseman, Coolgardie, Southern Cross. then we're there.:
:what's Perth like?:
:evanescent in my memory. but... glimmering. still want to travel on after?:
:only if you'll come. Perth sounds like home.:
:anywhere you go.:
we lay for a while, thoughts turning faster than Earth, a strange, empty planet on whose soil I—we—did not really belong. felt Gaile's breathing, wished I had a name. one thing consumed my mind: was feeling a flutter in the chambers of my heart.
is this how humans felt? I'll never know.
Born in Maryland, then transplanted first to Houston and then Chicago (to remain in the Midwest), Em Laure is a full-time grad student, mathematics teaching-assistant, and lover of physics, music, and literature. When not teaching or studying, they bike, cook, rock climb, and write short stories and prose fiction. In their writing they focus less on physical action or drama, and more on the relationships between the main characters: what connects them to each other and what happens when these connections fail. They draw literary inspiration from Jane Austen, James Joyce, Ursula Le Guin, and others.
Internet Shopping
By Michał Przywara
Only when Andrew reached for his electric razor, when his hand closed around nothing at all, did he realize something was amiss. There stood the charging station, as always, but the razor itself – vanished.
Not on the floor, nor in the sink, nor anywhere.
“Hmm.” He frowned, and palmed his stubble. He needed a shave. The success of his date depended on it.
Suddenly, he heard a voice behind him.
“Hello, Andy.”
Andrew, unaccustomed to others being in the bathroom with him, shrieked. He spun around and felt dismay punch him in the gut. There, upon the toilet’s tank, stood his old straight razor – the Manly Ultra Face Sword 9000 from RealMenUseThis Inc., which he impulse bought for $300 one drunken lonely night.
“How the hell did you get here?” Andrew said.
“Well, that’s a fine way to greet the friends we don’t see anymore.”
“I put you in a box! In the crawlspace under the stairs!”
“Yes,” said the razor, extending and contracting on its hinge, as though rolling its shoulders. “I am well aware of the box.”
“And the door to the basement is locked!”
“Yup.” The razor chuckled bitterly. “Oh, friendo, it certainly was. You have no idea how hard it was to get from down there to up here – especially for someone like me, without any hands or legs. A real ordeal.”
“But… how?”
“Like a worm, Andy. Like a worm.” The razor demonstrated by folding almost in half, and then extending, inching along the top of the toilet tank. “I mean, getting out of the box was easy enough, and the locked door has a gap beneath it that I could just squeeze through. But the dark basement? The stairs? It was a herculean effort that took me many days and nights. I may also have done a number on your carpet.”
“What!?”
“But my quest was worth it, just to see you again. To see that face again. The others say hi, by the by.”
“The others?”
“Yeah, the others in your cave of shame. The not-one-but-two guitars you don’t play. The encyclopedias, never read. The meat smoker. Your weights. Camping gear. French language DVDs. The penis enlargement pump.”
“Ahh!”
“All of us broken dreams,” the razor continued. “We miss you, asshole.”
“You were mistakes! Impulse buys. I was weak.”
“You still are, Andy. And it seems to me, you need a shave.”
“I have a razor. Somewhere.”
“Ah yes. That lazyman’s electric gizmo.”
“Well at least it never cut my face!”
“Sure, sure. A fine craftsman you are, blaming your tools. Anyway, your little paramour had an accident.”
“What did you do?”
The razor tapped the toilet. Andy lifted the lid and gasped. The slashed remains of his electric razor glimmered beneath the water.
“Monster,” Andrew whispered.
The razor cackled. “Guess you need me now!” It snapped erect to its full height, light gleaming on the blade. “C’mon – give me your face!”
Andrew gulped.
And grabbed the handle.
Michał Przywara is a Canadian writer who has written hundreds of short stories, in various genres. Most contain elements of humour and the absurd.
Fuckups Are Welcome, All the Same
By Russell Mickler
“Best get started.” Preacher Joe removes his Stetson. “Sun’s no good for any of us, least of all the corpse.”
Otis tugs at his corduroy jacket refusing to admit it’s too damn hot to wear it. I picked him up in Chillicothe — home of paralyzed assembly lines, cold smokestacks, toppled brickworks; aged, battered, but still standing, like him. Earl, Otis, and me served time at Idaho State Corrections in the 80s.
Earl’s in the box.
My nod sends Joe preachin’. “We’ve gathered today for Earl Brewer. Not a perfect man, no, sir, but none of us are.”
Unlike Otis, Earl and me kept in touch. But when I swung by Otis’ home unannounced and told him Earl’d passed, the man didn’t hesitate. He grabbed his cane and jacket and waddled out to my Chevy. Otis hadn’t spoken Earl’s name to me in forty years, yet here he was, broiling in Pocatello’s heat like Earl meant somethin’. Go figure.
Joe crosses his hands. “See, folks got the wrong idea. Christ didn’t get nailed to that cross for just virgins and choir boys. He died for men who fucked up. Men like Earl.”
I bow my head. Earl was the bravest fuckup I knew. In ‘83, a skinhead cornered Otis in the laundry during lockdown before Earl and I rounded a corner. I raised my fists, but it was Earl who put a contraband straight razor against that Nazi’s jugular. They backed off, but it cost him. Earl took a beating and spent weeks in the hole, bruised, ribs busted; he never walked right again.
Preacher Joe squints at the sun. “The worst can happen to friends we don’t see anymore. But when a man takes a knee, even at his bitter end, well, Peter ain’t got locks on Heaven’s gate. Fuckups are welcome, all the same.”
Swallowing guilt, I side-eye Otis.
Esophageal cancer’s slow, mean, painful shit, but it ain’t what killed Earl. He didn’t want to die in a hospital, so he ended it with a revolver, reclined in a plaid La-Z-Boy. Preacher Joe found Earl days later while checking on his wayward parishioner. Afterwards, he called me.
“So,” Joe continues, making the Sign of the Cross, “in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, we commend Earl to God’s mercy. Will Peter let him in? Well, shit. Some’d say no, but I think he just might.”
Then Otis reaches into his jacket to pull out that folded razor, dull with rust.
He carries it with him?
I honestly didn’t know he had it, but before I can say a word, he flicks it into the grave. “Earl owed me nothin’,” he mumbles, turning away, “but I owe him everything.”
I clear my throat. “Hey, Otis.”
Otis glances over his shoulder.
“You still got the same number?”
He nods once.
“I’ll call.”
His eyes narrow, measuring whether I mean it.
Preacher Joe reseats his Stetson to shovel dirt. “I’ll bury the remains, Charlie. The rest’s up to you.”
Russell Mickler writes short-form fantasy and science fiction. His micro/flash work appears in several short story anthologies and magazines. www.black-anvil-books.com
The Train After Death
By Tyler Forth
‘Why is it,’ began Arrow through his bandana, setting fire with his flame thrower to another Silent as it crawled up the iron frame of the Peregrine, ‘that monsters are never physically attractive? He grabbed onto the railing as the Peregrine train raced at six hundred miles per hour over a particularly large boulder in the sand, turning sharply to avoid crashing into a cliff. Below the open level of the train, stored below their feet, were hundreds of ghost-like figures huddled together – the souls that they were in charge of protecting and getting to the Afterlife. The soundless Silents saw only food.
‘Because then we might think them not monsters,’ shouted Kingfisher, head scarf threatening to fly off into the brown and yellow smog, as she slammed a mine onto the trains side, which activated and sent a bolt of electricity onto several grey-faced Silents climbing closer up the train with their metal-ripping claws. They fell and were crushed under the train's wheels. The air stank of smoke, infested with creatures scuttling on hands and feet across the sand towards the train.
‘How much longer?’ Kingfisher called to the train driver sitting a few feet in front of them, enclosed in a glass dome for protection.
‘Five minutes,’ he yelled, ‘but if you have the power of teleportation, do let me know.’
Arrow rolled his eyes.
Near them, a huge man was struggling with a Silent that had managed to get onto their level of the train. He seemed one second away from having his face torn off, so Kingfisher quickly removed a straight razor from her hair, flicked the blade out and dealt with the Silent for him before the worst happened.
‘Thanks,’ he said.
She nodded. They all jolted forwards, some falling onto their bones, as the train suddenly put on its brakes with a screech loud enough to split their brains, sending up a rainbow of sparks. It was slowing down because the end of the bridge was so amazingly close, the silver gates of the Afterlife beyond opening for their welcome.
The last few seconds were a blur of fire, metal and bolts of electricity as the last few Silents perished. Those that remained scuttled away from the train as it got close to the gates, burrowing themselves into the ground until the next opportunity to feast arose.
The gates closed as they came through, the train grinding to a halt. Arrow and Kingfisher watched as the souls stepped off the Peregrine onto the platform, whispering to one another. The workers of the Afterlife swiftly came to help them, guiding them off to better places.
Some of their own people had stepped onto that platform, as they both remembered, looking down. Kingfisher started talking about them, but Arrow interrupted.
‘Don’t, they’re just friends we don’t see anymore.’
So, she leaned on his shoulder, exhausted, as the train reversed, empty of the souls, back across the bridge, back for those who were yet to cross over.
Tyler’s ultimate dream is to be a full-time novelist, though he currently studies English Literature and Creative Writing at University so that he has a degree to fall back on and get a ‘proper job’. While novels (mostly fantasy) are his favourite form to write in, he also writes poetry (sensitive, some might say) and short stories. He has a poem published on The Poetry Society website and Young Poets Network and was runner-up (loser) in a picture book competition once. When he’s not writing, he’s sinking further and further into the rabbit hole of YouTube, procrastinating, writing ideas in his many notebooks, drawing characters, playing Call of Duty, rewatching Heartstopper or just sitting in his room, drinking tea, one headphone in, dreaming about writing stories.