“The Kick The Bucket Tour” by Jo Perry

The light turned red while the driver regaled her passengers with details of Ramon Novarro’s torture-murder. That’s why the Kick The Bucket Tour’s roofless matte-black van lurched so late from Laurel Canyon, where Novarro lived, into the tangle of westbound traffic on Sunset and forced a motorcycle cop to swerve into the next lane. Oops, […]

“XXX Marks the Spot” by J.L. Delozier

Ella flounced from the theatre, her diamond earrings scattering angry slivers of red light down the deserted street. Not a cab in sight. Not at this hour; not in this part of town. He’d planned it that way. She stomped one glittery Louboutin against the curb and turned on the lanky man hovering at her […]

“Wasn’t Tomorrow Wonderful?” by Melanie Dante

This piece is shared in memory of Greg Teetsell. “Oh, darling!” she exclaimed. Her blue eyes lit bright, lips tinted pink like an old photograph. “Wasn’t tomorrow wonderful?” Sparkling confetti fell through the air. “Wasn’t it just extraordinary?” They were dancing on top of the world. Band music played softly in the background. The moment […]

“Down Solo” [excerpt] by Earl Javorsky

Charlie Miner wakes up looking down at his body on a gurney at the LA County morgue. When he moves closer to the body, it pulls him in and he is able to make it get up and walk around. Charlie, a down-on-his-luck, heroin-addicted insurance fraud investigator, leaves the morgue with two priorities: to get […]

“The Hard Summer That Laura Made Harder” by Brian Greene

I’ll always remember Laura as the woman who made one of the hardest summers of my life harder. It wasn’t enough that the nation-wide recession took its toll on our town and that the restaurant at which I’d been bartending was forced to close, due to lack of business; that I had to turn to […]

“The Best A Man Can Get” by T.L. Huchu

Detective Munatsi watched the electric gate whir shut in her rear-view mirror. It was way too slow. In a city where criminals were given to tailgating, that could be the difference between being robbed or getting away in time. Then again, one often noticed the tell-tale dents on the passenger doors of rich people’s Mercs […]

“Wakes” by D.V. Bennett

The kinds of turbulence people leave behind when they pass through the waters of our lives differ in wild ways. There are those wakes which die out soon, unnoticed when they reach land, and those which make a brief series of rapid spectacular splashes against the rocks, disappearing soon after. There are wakes though, from […]

“Roadkill” by Stephen D. Rogers

After the knife slipped out of my hand, I fumbled for my belt buckle and pulled the thin strip of leather through the loops, screaming to keep myself conscious. The pain. The terror. I didn’t know which was worse or really care. All I knew for sure was I had to stop the bleeding or […]

“The Matter of the Smallgarian Wall and the Portuguese Undertaker” by Steve Levi

Captain Heinz Noonan, the “Bearded Holmes“ of the Sandersonville Police Department, was working on being inconspicuous at the Sandersonville Chamber of Commerce luncheon announcing the inauguration of a new police public relations campaign when he was spotted by Police Commissioner Lizzard who, unlike Noonan, was trying to be as visible as possible. This was hard […]

“Kind of Blue” by Andy Rausch

It was a hot night in The Blue Room, and Junior was really going to town on the trumpet, having his way with his audience. Drenched in sweat and enveloped in thick cigarette smoke, he wrapped up his set with a largely-improvised version of “So What.” The moment he finished, the audience erupted with cheers […]