fwriction

“…the mayor put one of his plump hands across her eyes, pushed the girl towards the flames, turned away and shouted hizzah! huzzah! while the children madly danced around the blazing lake of fire, their unseeing eyes mesmerized.”

Marcus Speh, “Candy”

“In the grey of the mirrors reflection, the bruise seemed to have spread further across the skin—the curve of my thighs and buttocks tracing a line against the frost white windowpane—nestling itself like a plump tarantula; the gaping open mouth of cave. In the bed, anger allayed by sleep, you pulled me in and I let you, the heat of your body felt scorching against the wintriness of my own. With one large insentient hand, you caressed my hip, my thigh, and came to rest upon the dark, as though you would cover it and render it invisible. But I could still feel. Its restless pulse throbbing importunately, like the two hands of a clock.”

Zoe Dzunko, “The Bruise”

“Snow floated in the next day, early in the morning, like a sifting, and the dark hill framed by my window slowly turned white behind the twisted black veins of barren branches and the wind rose and the snow got bigger and did not stop.”

Robb Todd, “The City From a Bridge”

“For the first time in my life, I was proud of my son. I went over and ruffled his hair and then picked him up. I asked if I could play with one of the trucks. He handed me both of the ones from his left hands. One was a fire truck and one was a dump truck. They were the most beautiful trucks I had ever held.”

Nathaniel Tower, “Two Hands Are Better Than Four”

“And during the story of us, here is what happened: Mount St. Helens erupted, Ronald Reagan was almost assassinated, a hotel walkway collapsed in Kansas City, killing 114 people, the Columbia shuttle was launched into the heavens. A baby got lost in a well, the Dow Jones fell on Black Monday, the Challenger became a diaphanous grief, Gorbachev and Reagan signed the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, Yellowstone caught on fire. Charles and Diana parted ways, Jimmy Swaggart confessed his predilections, the Berlin Wall was consumed. Massive flooding along the Mississippi River, swallowing livelihoods.

I had left long before I had the bag in my hand, you said.”

J.E. Reich, “The Story of Us”

“That first day, I rode home on the ferry to Manhattan, watching the sun set over the sparkling water, and I felt as though I had been granted a secret window into both the music that I loved and the city I was still coming to know. The Manhattan skyline looked so iconic as to seem unreal as it grew closer and, eventually, swallowed the boat as we docked…

It never occurred to me that any of the things I was doing were really real.”

Sarah Flynn, “Goodbye To All That”

The wonderful High School Writers’ Issue of fwriction : review:

“She let go of his hand. They both sat there, hip to hip, and outside the snowflakes swirled, drifting down in the top panel of the porthole and then caught in an updraft in the lower half sped away out of view.”

Ashley Stokes, “Ultima Thule, Part II”

“The snow reminded him of a piano tune he could no longer name, music that felt like falling down the stairs in slow motion, painlessly, without impact. He suspected he’d been sent here to fail. This mission was a pretext to get rid of him […] This was cross-double-cross.”

Ashley Stokes, “Ultima Thule” (Part One)

“Their eyes meet through the windshield for a long moment. Smaller kid’s eyes are questioning, beseeching… Max’s eyes are panicked, but the more he meets the Smaller Kid’s gaze, the more his terror softens[…]Bully shoves Smaller Kid again. He stumbles back. Then, in a flash, kicks Bully in the balls. Bully falls in pain. The other Boys stare at Bully in shock, then quickly wrestle Smaller Kid to the ground.

SHRINK (V.O.): There’s nothing to fear, Max. Not in our real world. When you realize that, you can get on with your life.”

Pat Rushin, “Nothing to Fear”

“Her childhood was gone. His had returned.
There was nothing to be done though there
was much she had yet to do. It began to rain.
She stared at her reflection. It continued to rain.”

Bill Yarrow, “Eleutheria” (from Three Poems)

               ”in the end the sentence of the day
               is cancelled 
when the night sneaks in”

Igor Ursenco, “‘The Trial’ (with or without) Kafka”