Still Life with a Burger

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Another short story for a collection to be called Little Crimes

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…the conversation dies. First, they scorn her profession, and then they belittle her skills. Susie Clare feels insulted but flaunts her wealth to get in a final punch. The apartment belonged to her husband and came as a divorce settlement, but there is no need to go into all that, not with a stranger. She exchanged her child for an apartment in the wealthiest suburb in Sydney. He got custody of their son while…

By Jessika Jenvieve

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Wrote For Luck

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…stared at his computer screen and clicked spell check. The computer program ran through his short story, picking up on spelling mistakes and errors in grammar. Lloyd paused and selected the best option in each case. Spell check complete. He typed out a short email message, introducing his latest short story and hit…

By Chris Platt

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Crush

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…realize I had a crush on her until I had a dream in which she kissed me. I’ve no idea where the dream came from. Why now when I had worked with her twenty-five years ago? It’s been almost as long since I have seen her. Sure she comes up in my social media feeds and I appear in hers. We comment on occasion or react to what’s going on in each other’s lives, but we haven’t had a conversation in I…

By Elizabeth Jaeger

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Athena

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…looked in the mirror. He saw he had grown meaner, lost his demeanour. You ain't dangerest than me. A spark crossed his mind, in all fairness. He wasn't a hard boy; he was lying to himself. Nothing seemed different, expect his psyche. His determination hit the roof. He turned on some music. It was a 'certified bomb', and he felt like a…

By Otto Grey

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Bipolar Express

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Dealing with an episode of Bipolar Disorder

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… again arriving unannounced from the dark recesses of my mind like rude house guests. Drinking my last beer, their feet on my coffee table, rearranging furniture, hogging the TV remote and whispering their subversive agendas without culpability. They're hooligans with blatant disregard for…

By Judge Burdon

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Your Kind

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…are out on your own, having left your mama, who was left by your dada, but you don’t ever think about it anymore. Actually, you never did. You enjoy your neighborhood and you have never left it. You’re familiar with the streets and many of the inhabitants. It’s the whole world to you, yet you don’t stay in any one place too long within it. Except when you’re sleeping. And you sleep as much as you…

By Dan Brook

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Human Nature

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…the bombardment intensifies, she curls in the fetal position, hands clamped over ears. The bunker shakes, concrete walls quivering like paper, shockwaves vibrating through her bones. Screams catch in her throat as, all alone, she endures it. But when the onslaught eventually ceases, she crawls determinedly from her sanctuary to survey the wasteland she once called…

By Helen M Merrick

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His Gift

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…palpable excitement rings the atmosphere. The two pairs of yearning eyes meet covertly under the marquee; the first delicate touch of alien hands creates ripples through the spines. The heart pounds at the fragrance of a fresh commencement. The appetence for the anonymous swells in their bosom with each passing moment of their ebullient life. The mystery of the undiscovered selves gradually…

By Alipi Das

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Rebecca’s Diary

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…been exactly twenty three days eight hours forty one minutes and eight seconds now. I’m sitting on the same bench in the same corridor outside the same room with a white door reading the same letters - ICU. Mom is in there, on one of those lined up beds with people lined up to die. She has spent quite a lot of time in the hospitals and I’ve spent exactly the same and eaten more hospital food than her but this…

By Tamanna Malik

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