Subway Sounds
By Rasmenia Massoud
The old man with the accordion was gone. Instead of the lilting warble of "La Vie en Rose", echoing through the halls of the subway station, there were two young boys shouting unintelligible rap lyrics. Their voices squawked through the blown speakers of a dusty boom box
that sat where the old man's accordion case used to lay open, glittered with coins.
Every day, on my way to the city to see her, I stood and listened to the old man and tossed some change. I found it so relaxing, a moment to step outside the commuter cacophony. Disappointed, I adjusted my grip on my backpack and moved on. I had somewhere important to go, anyway.
Inside the train, the windows were open. Over the sound of the wind, the other passengers' voices were just a buzz broken up by the occasional laugh. The woman sitting across from me opened up her newspaper. She didn't seem interested in reading anything. She shook the paper, flitted through the pages, making dry, crispy fluttering sounds. She was flapping paper too quickly too read anything. I wrapped my fingers tighter around my backpack to restrain myself from taking the paper and beating her with it.
I had somewhere important to go. I didn't want to open my bag just yet. I was saving this for someone special and I couldn't wait to see her face when I showed it to her.
It was the man sitting next to me who ruined everything. His snorting and coughing. The wet, choking gurgles coming from him as he spat something thick into a tissue. I gripped my bag tighter as he sniffed and snuffled, filling my ear with the noise of his sick, slimy insides.
I opened my bag and removed the knife. I heard the paper crinkle and tear as the lady drew it closer to her as though it offered protection. I stood up. The sick man dropped his tissue. When I shoved the knife into his throat, there was a slurping and sucking, like pulling a boot out of the mud.
The screeching caused by the wheels on the track was unbearable when the train suddenly came to a stop. I lost my balance and was thrown down, back into my seat. The handle of my knife stuck out of the sick man's throat.
I felt so let down. First, the accordion player and now this. I had been saving that for her. I looked at the slack-jawed faces around me. Shocked, too frightened to move.
Too afraid to speak.
I closed my eyes, and tried to enjoy a brief moment of silence.
- - -
Rasmenia Massoud is a writer from Colorado currently living in France, where she spends her time speaking French poorly and writing fictional stories about what fascinates, confuses and infuriates her the most: human beings.
By Rasmenia Massoud
The old man with the accordion was gone. Instead of the lilting warble of "La Vie en Rose", echoing through the halls of the subway station, there were two young boys shouting unintelligible rap lyrics. Their voices squawked through the blown speakers of a dusty boom box
that sat where the old man's accordion case used to lay open, glittered with coins.
Every day, on my way to the city to see her, I stood and listened to the old man and tossed some change. I found it so relaxing, a moment to step outside the commuter cacophony. Disappointed, I adjusted my grip on my backpack and moved on. I had somewhere important to go, anyway.
Inside the train, the windows were open. Over the sound of the wind, the other passengers' voices were just a buzz broken up by the occasional laugh. The woman sitting across from me opened up her newspaper. She didn't seem interested in reading anything. She shook the paper, flitted through the pages, making dry, crispy fluttering sounds. She was flapping paper too quickly too read anything. I wrapped my fingers tighter around my backpack to restrain myself from taking the paper and beating her with it.
I had somewhere important to go. I didn't want to open my bag just yet. I was saving this for someone special and I couldn't wait to see her face when I showed it to her.
It was the man sitting next to me who ruined everything. His snorting and coughing. The wet, choking gurgles coming from him as he spat something thick into a tissue. I gripped my bag tighter as he sniffed and snuffled, filling my ear with the noise of his sick, slimy insides.
I opened my bag and removed the knife. I heard the paper crinkle and tear as the lady drew it closer to her as though it offered protection. I stood up. The sick man dropped his tissue. When I shoved the knife into his throat, there was a slurping and sucking, like pulling a boot out of the mud.
The screeching caused by the wheels on the track was unbearable when the train suddenly came to a stop. I lost my balance and was thrown down, back into my seat. The handle of my knife stuck out of the sick man's throat.
I felt so let down. First, the accordion player and now this. I had been saving that for her. I looked at the slack-jawed faces around me. Shocked, too frightened to move.
Too afraid to speak.
I closed my eyes, and tried to enjoy a brief moment of silence.
- - -
Rasmenia Massoud is a writer from Colorado currently living in France, where she spends her time speaking French poorly and writing fictional stories about what fascinates, confuses and infuriates her the most: human beings.
Burn Constitution Paper
By Gonkama Johnson
Lowered intraocular pressure cannabinoids
Combusted constituted on hemp paper vapor green smoke screen
Never rolling be rolling, anandamide bliss Sanskrit
Sacred Shiva no shake unless Keef Cheba need medicinal
Holy whole plants Ganesha reefer Rastafarian
In safaris botanical information
Buds my bud, past a buzz, pass a dub, when capillaries flood
Indica indication of divination above high
Reach the most high before we reach a flood situation
Daga boil from soil hash oil
Falsey illegal home grown from all laws
Allah, hydroponic skills with chlorophyll
Inserted roots blaze cell walls with grade A’s
Pass O’s Like hula hoops, Pass me a ruler
Green as snake scales
The kind you use to weigh great whales
Put it in cake
Metabolize start feeling real swell
Than realize what real eyes tell
When lids fell, as if
Cumulonimbus psilocybe cubensis
Take hits and rip
Travel mass distances.
- - -
Gonkama Johnson
SWORD News Editor
Writing Club President
By Gonkama Johnson
Lowered intraocular pressure cannabinoids
Combusted constituted on hemp paper vapor green smoke screen
Never rolling be rolling, anandamide bliss Sanskrit
Sacred Shiva no shake unless Keef Cheba need medicinal
Holy whole plants Ganesha reefer Rastafarian
In safaris botanical information
Buds my bud, past a buzz, pass a dub, when capillaries flood
Indica indication of divination above high
Reach the most high before we reach a flood situation
Daga boil from soil hash oil
Falsey illegal home grown from all laws
Allah, hydroponic skills with chlorophyll
Inserted roots blaze cell walls with grade A’s
Pass O’s Like hula hoops, Pass me a ruler
Green as snake scales
The kind you use to weigh great whales
Put it in cake
Metabolize start feeling real swell
Than realize what real eyes tell
When lids fell, as if
Cumulonimbus psilocybe cubensis
Take hits and rip
Travel mass distances.
- - -
Gonkama Johnson
SWORD News Editor
Writing Club President
In The Morning
By John Boden
Norman sat at the table, eating his cereal. He faced the far wall of the room. A blazing white blank. Forty square feet of drywall and plaster. The tongues were wagging. They jutted from the wall every four inches, like glistening skinned thumbs. Norman took spoonfuls of soggy wheat and flung them against the wall. The tongues strained to catch the droplets of food. Norman took a bite for himself and flung some more. When he was finished he stood and walked towards the wall, unbuckling his pants as he did so.
- - -
I reside in Harrisburg, Pa with my beautiful family. I'm an assistant editor at Shock Totem magazine. I like Diet Pepsi and barbecue potato chips.
By John Boden
Norman sat at the table, eating his cereal. He faced the far wall of the room. A blazing white blank. Forty square feet of drywall and plaster. The tongues were wagging. They jutted from the wall every four inches, like glistening skinned thumbs. Norman took spoonfuls of soggy wheat and flung them against the wall. The tongues strained to catch the droplets of food. Norman took a bite for himself and flung some more. When he was finished he stood and walked towards the wall, unbuckling his pants as he did so.
- - -
I reside in Harrisburg, Pa with my beautiful family. I'm an assistant editor at Shock Totem magazine. I like Diet Pepsi and barbecue potato chips.
35 Never Fail Writing Prompts
By David Macpherson
1. A young man comes home to find his mother in bed with is best friend. Write a story
starting there.
2. An anemic vampire works the night shift at a barber’s shop shaving melancholy
werewolves.
3. A young man awakens to find his left leg surgically removed.
4. Jesus wept. Write a story explaining why.
5. A young man downs his fifth whisky only to discover he is floating 4 inches above the bar
stool.
6. A woman leaves her husband for no reason that she can think of.
7. All the cats in the neighborhood grow spikes.
8. A one legged young man who floats four inches about the ground and who feels betrayed
by his mother and best friend finds out that many struggling writer are creating stories about
him.
9. Jesus wept. He was cutting onions. Write a story about the salad he was making.
10. A levitating man with one leg strokes the pelt of a cat with sharp spikes, his palm bleeding,
and thinks dark thoughts.
11. A highway patrolman insists on singing the Miranda warning whenever he makes an arrest.
12. A woman who left her husband for no reason takes a job as a rodeo clown.
13. All the characters from your last ten stories are put into a cattle car and taken to a secret
location in Romania.
14. A CEO of a large corporation gives each one of his employees two thousand, three hundred
and forty five dollars.
15. Queen Victoria goes to a drag bar, and fits right in.
16. A floating one legged man and a lost woman who once was a rodeo clown meet in the
fifteenth prompt of a writer’s exercise and begin a hazardous relationship.
17. A Duke of Milan is exiled to an island with his young daughter where he learns dark arts,
which enable him to shipwreck his nefarious brother and exact revenge.
18. Compose a story about a writer who steals all his prompts from Shakespeare.
19. A CEO, who gave away all his money to his employees, is brutally killed by two people he
didn’t know, a one legged man and woman with a face smeared with clown make-up.
20. Jesus buys a large box of Kleenex. Go from there.
21. An older man dates only men who have performed as Caliban in the play The Tempest.
22. An author of writer’s prompts receives threatening phone calls by two voices claiming they
are his children.
23. A sprite named Ariel teaches an angry young man how to take his power to float in the
air and turn it into flight. Not simple flying, mind you, but the flight of a predator bird
swooping down for the kill.
24. Things fall apart. The center is where the story can begin.
25. There is a knock on the door. The rain begins to pour. The lightening illuminates the
darkened room.
26.
27.
28. Help me. Please. This is no story. Don’t make me give you the idea. Just help me. Please.
29. Jesus does not weep. Dry as a desert, that one.
30.
31. A couple, covered in someone else’s blood, takes a stolen Ford Fusion and heads off to
anywhere, but a sunset.
32.
33. We are such stuff that schlock is made of, and our little lives are rounded by a rewrite.
34.
35.
- - -
David is a writer living in Central Massachusetts with his wife Heather and son George.
By David Macpherson
1. A young man comes home to find his mother in bed with is best friend. Write a story
starting there.
2. An anemic vampire works the night shift at a barber’s shop shaving melancholy
werewolves.
3. A young man awakens to find his left leg surgically removed.
4. Jesus wept. Write a story explaining why.
5. A young man downs his fifth whisky only to discover he is floating 4 inches above the bar
stool.
6. A woman leaves her husband for no reason that she can think of.
7. All the cats in the neighborhood grow spikes.
8. A one legged young man who floats four inches about the ground and who feels betrayed
by his mother and best friend finds out that many struggling writer are creating stories about
him.
9. Jesus wept. He was cutting onions. Write a story about the salad he was making.
10. A levitating man with one leg strokes the pelt of a cat with sharp spikes, his palm bleeding,
and thinks dark thoughts.
11. A highway patrolman insists on singing the Miranda warning whenever he makes an arrest.
12. A woman who left her husband for no reason takes a job as a rodeo clown.
13. All the characters from your last ten stories are put into a cattle car and taken to a secret
location in Romania.
14. A CEO of a large corporation gives each one of his employees two thousand, three hundred
and forty five dollars.
15. Queen Victoria goes to a drag bar, and fits right in.
16. A floating one legged man and a lost woman who once was a rodeo clown meet in the
fifteenth prompt of a writer’s exercise and begin a hazardous relationship.
17. A Duke of Milan is exiled to an island with his young daughter where he learns dark arts,
which enable him to shipwreck his nefarious brother and exact revenge.
18. Compose a story about a writer who steals all his prompts from Shakespeare.
19. A CEO, who gave away all his money to his employees, is brutally killed by two people he
didn’t know, a one legged man and woman with a face smeared with clown make-up.
20. Jesus buys a large box of Kleenex. Go from there.
21. An older man dates only men who have performed as Caliban in the play The Tempest.
22. An author of writer’s prompts receives threatening phone calls by two voices claiming they
are his children.
23. A sprite named Ariel teaches an angry young man how to take his power to float in the
air and turn it into flight. Not simple flying, mind you, but the flight of a predator bird
swooping down for the kill.
24. Things fall apart. The center is where the story can begin.
25. There is a knock on the door. The rain begins to pour. The lightening illuminates the
darkened room.
26.
27.
28. Help me. Please. This is no story. Don’t make me give you the idea. Just help me. Please.
29. Jesus does not weep. Dry as a desert, that one.
30.
31. A couple, covered in someone else’s blood, takes a stolen Ford Fusion and heads off to
anywhere, but a sunset.
32.
33. We are such stuff that schlock is made of, and our little lives are rounded by a rewrite.
34.
35.
- - -
David is a writer living in Central Massachusetts with his wife Heather and son George.
A Southern Six-Year-Old Psycho
By Keely Christensen
"Sophie? Wha—what are you doing?"
"Oh . . . Just feedin' the puppy, Gramma."
"Sophie, darling, step away from the dish, okay? It's really not safe to do that."
Gramma was talkin' to me all soft and slow. She didn't think I knew why, though. But I knew just as much as a grown-up would.
I stepped back from the puppy's food like she wanted me to. I was kinda mad that she messed up my fun. Maybe I shouldn't-a left the rat poison out. Then I wouldn't-a got caught.
- - -
Keely Christensen is administrator and editor at Writer's Beat. She is also the administrator at the new online magazine, The Red Asylum. She hopes to one day catch the voice of Elvis via EVP.
By Keely Christensen
"Sophie? Wha—what are you doing?"
"Oh . . . Just feedin' the puppy, Gramma."
"Sophie, darling, step away from the dish, okay? It's really not safe to do that."
Gramma was talkin' to me all soft and slow. She didn't think I knew why, though. But I knew just as much as a grown-up would.
I stepped back from the puppy's food like she wanted me to. I was kinda mad that she messed up my fun. Maybe I shouldn't-a left the rat poison out. Then I wouldn't-a got caught.
- - -
Keely Christensen is administrator and editor at Writer's Beat. She is also the administrator at the new online magazine, The Red Asylum. She hopes to one day catch the voice of Elvis via EVP.
Frequency Bed
By Tantra Bensko
The wheelbarrow full of occupants on many levels of reality, frequencies and concepts, bumps over the mole hill, the columbine flowers tied on to decorate the handles nearly falling off, which would be a shame as they mimic the shapes in the abstract mural along the sides of the barrow.
Sweat is pouring out of my arms as I reach down to rearrange the personae. The weather is spiking, and it’s time to plant the different personae around the breezeway in the old log house. The people who live here are vacationing this week. Space in the breezeway is more meaningful and real than around the house. Conceptually. And these personae thrive on concept. (Sometimes in newer places, we plant them in large forts made by children in the back yard. But usually only after the children move on.)
The multi-dimensional folks like these wheelbarrow occupants have been fighting for space on the other realms, which is getting sparse, and they are growing too thin there, too choked out. So, they’re moving down to the earthly dimension in larger numbers these days, and thus my job takes too much out of me. Some are “looking” at me with a twinge of blame, and that, coming from higher dimensions, hurts in a complex way.
I dump them out in the breezeway. They get grumpy harrumphy. Especially the higher dimensional ones used to a lot of hoity toity. I work fast, as they are getting attached to the area and sinking into it willy nilly. I weed and organize them at equal distances from each other, make little hills, for the two most powerful ones. They get feisty.
Their different levels argue among themselves without words. The astral bands getting sloppily colorful at each other, sloshing their rounded edges into each other. The etheric layers getting paranoid and nitpicky about details and sharp, too precise to merge well when they start overlapping. The higher frequencies forgetting boundaries and expanding too far, getting too bright and blinding some of the others on more mundane paths. Once I get them planted, though, they’ll thrive.
And I will put my hammock up. Lie in it, and sing ballads to them, opening up their astral pores with the sounds and images, feelings and characters, similar to the way bird songs open up stomata on plants so they can exchange gases through the holes. For a week they’ll learn the ways of the world through the intonations, learn gently how to interpret stories, how to feel about them.
And one day, the people who live at the house will see ghostly imprints in the breezeway, growing more substantial as the month go on. And the mysterious, questioning, intensely whispered stories about them will begin, around the house. Which will become all their lives.
- - -
Tantra Bensko, MFA, teaches Experimental Fiction Writing online, and is the editor of Exclusive Magazine. She is the author of Watching the Windows Sleep, published by Naissance Press. She has over 120 creative writing publications in magazines.
By Tantra Bensko
The wheelbarrow full of occupants on many levels of reality, frequencies and concepts, bumps over the mole hill, the columbine flowers tied on to decorate the handles nearly falling off, which would be a shame as they mimic the shapes in the abstract mural along the sides of the barrow.
Sweat is pouring out of my arms as I reach down to rearrange the personae. The weather is spiking, and it’s time to plant the different personae around the breezeway in the old log house. The people who live here are vacationing this week. Space in the breezeway is more meaningful and real than around the house. Conceptually. And these personae thrive on concept. (Sometimes in newer places, we plant them in large forts made by children in the back yard. But usually only after the children move on.)
The multi-dimensional folks like these wheelbarrow occupants have been fighting for space on the other realms, which is getting sparse, and they are growing too thin there, too choked out. So, they’re moving down to the earthly dimension in larger numbers these days, and thus my job takes too much out of me. Some are “looking” at me with a twinge of blame, and that, coming from higher dimensions, hurts in a complex way.
I dump them out in the breezeway. They get grumpy harrumphy. Especially the higher dimensional ones used to a lot of hoity toity. I work fast, as they are getting attached to the area and sinking into it willy nilly. I weed and organize them at equal distances from each other, make little hills, for the two most powerful ones. They get feisty.
Their different levels argue among themselves without words. The astral bands getting sloppily colorful at each other, sloshing their rounded edges into each other. The etheric layers getting paranoid and nitpicky about details and sharp, too precise to merge well when they start overlapping. The higher frequencies forgetting boundaries and expanding too far, getting too bright and blinding some of the others on more mundane paths. Once I get them planted, though, they’ll thrive.
And I will put my hammock up. Lie in it, and sing ballads to them, opening up their astral pores with the sounds and images, feelings and characters, similar to the way bird songs open up stomata on plants so they can exchange gases through the holes. For a week they’ll learn the ways of the world through the intonations, learn gently how to interpret stories, how to feel about them.
And one day, the people who live at the house will see ghostly imprints in the breezeway, growing more substantial as the month go on. And the mysterious, questioning, intensely whispered stories about them will begin, around the house. Which will become all their lives.
- - -
Tantra Bensko, MFA, teaches Experimental Fiction Writing online, and is the editor of Exclusive Magazine. She is the author of Watching the Windows Sleep, published by Naissance Press. She has over 120 creative writing publications in magazines.
Dangerous Life
By Ben Pullar
The crab candles sounded glum in that wheeze of rocking chairs. That rasp of rocking chair pine Watts and Gruel were using. They worked on their giant pie and rocked back and forth and they ignored the doctors playing with the tawny cards. Watts was stabbing at the pie’s top with his knife and looking at Gruel. Gruel was lightly tapping the roof of the giant pie and singing to herself.
Her mouth shook with the song she was singing, which was Edgar F. Wandfire’s ‘Reef Barney’, a psych folk lobster of arms swinging fists west. Her mouth was working it out perfectly. Watts was really trying to cut through the pie but he was fascinated by Gruel’s cover of the Wandfire song. Watts had known Wandfire in the seventies. He knew Wandfire’s discography well. He had it up on the wall in his Grange toilet. He was measuring Gruel’s lip ticks and combs. When the third doctor in four minutes swore mid card game Watts lost his temper and reacted.
He reacted with his shoes. One of them thumped onto the dining table, the other one kicked at the chair leg. The third doctor watched Watts’ flagrantly aggressive arm reach out towards his face. Palm open, hands wriggling like guests, a lot of hatred went echoing out of Watt’s injured nose. The third doctor reacted.
He thrust his tawny queen of clubs at the Watts palm, missing three calluses and slicing Watts’ little finger almost entirely off. Watts immediately reacted to that.
And things got very heady, because Watts and the third doctor were both extreme balancing act types. Both of them were ready to bleed all over their elbow patches if it meant some sort of local celebrity. Both of them had nostrils the size of live telecasts. They stood in the table between the saltshakers and the paperback stacks and they dueted on a piece of filth called Violent Retribution. It was a dreadful obscenity of knocking gestures and they did it with their fierce teeth drooling biscuit materials in every possible direction. The two other doctors went on playing with the tawny cards. But Gruel wasn’t tapping the giant pie anymore.
She was standing at the other side of the room, next to the green armchair, one fur-gloved hand on her heart, another charging a microphone. She was performing Wandfire’s ‘Reef Barney’ with every bit of Keith Almond she had at hand. She was deep in the third verse, between the line ‘the hutch purse wrong / the window sung / the shell well rung’ and the line ‘carry tea trunk / the teak tock toll / everyone young one would.’ It was a terrifying mixture of beads, because when she wasn’t roaring the words out in descending stair hutches, she was making the chords hum, and the lead guitar land, and she was opening and closing her eyes, a lighthouse of bleeding Norwegian brothers chuckled in damp.
The two men battled on over the table, losing hands and fists at a top rate of whales, but Gruel was outclassing them in the corner. She had another seventeen verses to go, and verses fourteen and fifteen were the ugliest collection of wounds anyone had ever caught, hideous bookshelves of welts smelling difficult. Gruel looked forward to them, all of her ears alert, her elbows on fire like wolves.
- - -
Ben Pullar is a writer living in Brisbane Australia. He writes short stories, reviews, and produces comedy audio. He is writing a novel that has nothing whatsoever to do with golf.
By Ben Pullar
The crab candles sounded glum in that wheeze of rocking chairs. That rasp of rocking chair pine Watts and Gruel were using. They worked on their giant pie and rocked back and forth and they ignored the doctors playing with the tawny cards. Watts was stabbing at the pie’s top with his knife and looking at Gruel. Gruel was lightly tapping the roof of the giant pie and singing to herself.
Her mouth shook with the song she was singing, which was Edgar F. Wandfire’s ‘Reef Barney’, a psych folk lobster of arms swinging fists west. Her mouth was working it out perfectly. Watts was really trying to cut through the pie but he was fascinated by Gruel’s cover of the Wandfire song. Watts had known Wandfire in the seventies. He knew Wandfire’s discography well. He had it up on the wall in his Grange toilet. He was measuring Gruel’s lip ticks and combs. When the third doctor in four minutes swore mid card game Watts lost his temper and reacted.
He reacted with his shoes. One of them thumped onto the dining table, the other one kicked at the chair leg. The third doctor watched Watts’ flagrantly aggressive arm reach out towards his face. Palm open, hands wriggling like guests, a lot of hatred went echoing out of Watt’s injured nose. The third doctor reacted.
He thrust his tawny queen of clubs at the Watts palm, missing three calluses and slicing Watts’ little finger almost entirely off. Watts immediately reacted to that.
And things got very heady, because Watts and the third doctor were both extreme balancing act types. Both of them were ready to bleed all over their elbow patches if it meant some sort of local celebrity. Both of them had nostrils the size of live telecasts. They stood in the table between the saltshakers and the paperback stacks and they dueted on a piece of filth called Violent Retribution. It was a dreadful obscenity of knocking gestures and they did it with their fierce teeth drooling biscuit materials in every possible direction. The two other doctors went on playing with the tawny cards. But Gruel wasn’t tapping the giant pie anymore.
She was standing at the other side of the room, next to the green armchair, one fur-gloved hand on her heart, another charging a microphone. She was performing Wandfire’s ‘Reef Barney’ with every bit of Keith Almond she had at hand. She was deep in the third verse, between the line ‘the hutch purse wrong / the window sung / the shell well rung’ and the line ‘carry tea trunk / the teak tock toll / everyone young one would.’ It was a terrifying mixture of beads, because when she wasn’t roaring the words out in descending stair hutches, she was making the chords hum, and the lead guitar land, and she was opening and closing her eyes, a lighthouse of bleeding Norwegian brothers chuckled in damp.
The two men battled on over the table, losing hands and fists at a top rate of whales, but Gruel was outclassing them in the corner. She had another seventeen verses to go, and verses fourteen and fifteen were the ugliest collection of wounds anyone had ever caught, hideous bookshelves of welts smelling difficult. Gruel looked forward to them, all of her ears alert, her elbows on fire like wolves.
- - -
Ben Pullar is a writer living in Brisbane Australia. He writes short stories, reviews, and produces comedy audio. He is writing a novel that has nothing whatsoever to do with golf.
