Shooter’s final print edition: #20, the Sweet Hereafter issue

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Not all endings are painful – some might lead to a wonderful new opportunity, or an unexpected adventure, or reveal a silver lining. This is the slant of our 20th issue’s theme, Sweet Hereafter. When it comes to death, perhaps there really is a glorious afterlife. If your marriage crumbles, a better love might be just around the corner. 

The Sweet Hereafter theme is partly a nod to the fact that this is the final print edition of the magazine, and partly to the death of my mother, Anita White, earlier this year. While there is not much that is sweet about that loss (apart from release from the ravages of cancer), it gives rise to certain, more uplifting reflections: appreciation of loved ones, gratitude for the good things we have, and – who knows – perhaps Mom really has attained her own personal version of heaven. If so, she’s got her feet up in a grand stately home reading good books by the fire, walking dogs amid a lush pastoral landscape, and hosting dinner parties full of scintillating debate and fine food that someone else, for once, has gone to the trouble of cooking.

In that vein, she would have been highly amused by Stephen Oliver’s take on a custom-made afterlife in “Müesli”. While what follows death is one of the obvious responses to the Sweet Hereafter theme, there are a range of other interpretations, too. Among the fiction writers, Mike Wheet imagines an unconventional route to late parenthood in “Sweetheart”. Michael Shelley depicts a young girl struggling with the new woman in her bereaved father’s life in “The Story of Emma the Human Toothpick”, and Julie Esther Fisher delves into a teenager’s post-traumatic escape to the Highlands in “Scottish Moon”.

The non-fiction writers also mine diverse terrain. In “An Apple for the Cool Kids”, Alexandra O’Sullivan rises to the challenges of her professional second act, embarking on a new career as an English teacher in Australia. Emily Larkin leaves the Mormon faith behind in “God’s Not Invited to My Wedding”, while Stephen Fabes laces up for a midlife marathon in “Late Blooming in the Pyrenees”.

The theme attracted a wonderfully rich and varied response from the poets as well. Amber Watson opens the issue with two compelling poems on foster parenting. In a bumper issue for poetry, eleven other poets explore adolescence and literary revisionism, birth and death in the natural world, life after relationships and life after life. A bonus feature is the winner of this year’s Shooter Poetry Competition, Bethan Murphy’s “Birth Plan”, in which stark, poignant contrasts challenge childbirth expectations. Sylvie Jane Lewis, whose beautiful pair of hare poems close out the issue, also won second place in this year’s contest.

Since devising Shooter more than ten years ago, I’ve gained enormous satisfaction from unearthing the literary gems for each issue, assembling each edition and sending the magazine out into the world. In 2015, when the first issue was published, I was sharing a small London flat with my beloved dog Robbie (of issue 12 fame) and, following a series of relationships that were not meant to be, yearning to have children. Shooter #7, the New Life issue, arrived in tandem with my daughter, and my husband followed five years later, somewhere between On the Body and The Unknown. Following our wedding in 2023, I would have felt squeamish about publishing a True Love issue, as far too on the nose.

So from the early days of all the time in the world to devote to Shooter, to the increasing squeeze of obligations (some welcome, some less so) of childcare, marriage, ageing parents and a day job, midlife has chipped away at my ability to produce the magazine on time and do it justice. I hope to keep the essence of Shooter alive online, perhaps with a new digital iteration at some point, and to maintain elements like the monthly Shooter Flash. In the wake of the print edition, I also hope that Shooter’s sweet hereafter might lead to the fulfilment of a few new dreams – and, perchance, some extra sleep.

To order a copy of the Sweet Hereafter issue, please visit https://shooterlitmag.com/subscriptions.

Shooter Flash: “Winter Camp” by Gary Finnegan

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The middle distance absorbed her gaze. Her sleeves, her nerves, frayed. Moths had chewed holes in the coats of the children; the children had eaten nothing for days. Days had been given to a journey, to the mantra, ‘Things will be better when we get to the camp.’ 

Now, her five-lined brow, like sheet music without a note, knew hope was a hollow lie. To be hungry and afraid and uncertain and on the move was the second-worst state of being. Hungry, afraid, uncertain and stationary was worse by miles. 

‘Did you wash those hands,’ she said, clawing at the paws of the youngest, fussing at a tap. ‘Got to wash those hands every time here, okay? Every time. Or you’ll get sick, like her.’

She nodded towards the next tarp, the day-old home of a family nursing a preschooler through the vomiting bug that was pinballing its way through the camp. 

Her own youngest straw-haired child stood passive and slack as her mother worked the gaps between the child’s fingers with a cement-coloured flannel. 

‘Did you change that vest,’ the mother asked. ‘Gotta change damp vests or you’ll get sick.’

She was curt, she knew that, but child management was the only available task and had to be done with vigour. It was, she reminded herself, in the children’s interests that their mother maintained standards. If you slid into apathy, you accepted death’s call.

The child was silent, and had been since they arrived. The three of them – the father having stayed behind – filed down the line until they reached an unribboned tent. There they tied the piece of cloth collected at the gate around a pole ‒ their claim on nine square metres of shelter, open on one side to the brown dust and ceaseless flow of human anguish. 

‘When is food coming, Mom?’

The older child, listless now, spoke for her sibling, spoke for everyone in the camp. The mother changed tack, opting not to lie, not to say, ‘Soon, love, just wait another while.’ 

Instead: ‘I don’t know.’

Would it have been better to stay and spend their hope under a familiar roof? As she wondered, an unwelcome competitive instinct surged within her at the sight of more new arrivals. ‘They need to shut the camp,’ she exhaled in a whisper. ‘Place is full.’

How many could be fed here? How many could make it across the border when it reopened? Who would decide who stayed, who went, who ate, and how much? 

She could do nothing. And it killed her to seek help while wishing it were denied to others.

‘Come here to me,’ she barked at the eldest child. ‘Those socks need changing.’ 

*

Gary Finnegan’s fiction has appeared in Litro, The London Magazine, The Phare, Roi Fainéant and Flash Fiction Magazine. He is the winner of the Frazzled Lit Short Story Award 2025 and received an Agility Award from the Arts Council of Ireland in August 2025. He has an MA in creative writing from Maynooth University and is working on a novel. 

Shooter Flash: “On the Rocky Shore” by Clayton Lister

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We were happy. Fatherless, but who needs one? Money was tight, but if it wasn’t, would we have appreciated what did come our way?

My brothers tormented me, of course. Every youngest’s tribulation. Which is why I had escaped the house on this particular afternoon. Some trivial thing, I am sure, only blown big by excessive sensitivity. Mum’s favourite – youngest’s privilege – even she had warned me against this weakness. Why is anybody tormented if not for a reaction?

In any case, umbrage was nothing a buffeting wind couldn’t salve. And some hundred yards off the esplanade, close to the shore’s rocky drop into the North Channel, I recognised my sister as that there lass conferring with some fella. It didn’t take long to comprehend my redemption in this scenario. 

But had I time to run home? 

So, I gambled. I burst my lungs. Regardless, from the foot of our stair, drew air enough to holler, “Ali! Mac! It’s June! With a fella!”

Mum was off the sofa and in the hall doorway even before they had hurtled down full pelt like the heroes to me they truly were. She need pull me to safety out of their way. 

Ali had the advantage of ready-donned trainers and was gone. But Mac, eldest, most naturally athletic of us all, lost barely a moment slipping his on. The prospect of coming second to anyone in any pursuit galled Mac.

Mum’s squeeze of my shoulder told me, “Follow.”

Back on the esplanade, I clocked June strolling alone now and her fella soon enough. Picking his way across the sea-slick rocks, he paused to raise his binoculars; amid the wind, crash, suck and cackle of the surf, he heard nothing of Ali’s approach. I hadn’t a hope of hearing their exchange. This rankled. So, my raw lungs regardless, the scorch of lactic acid regardless, hauled my arse to the steps.

Mac, for his part, had slowed seeing Ali detain the fella. But by the time I gained the beach, he’d drawn level, and Mac wasn’t one for blather. He punched hard and without questions. How impressive do you think the thud of that wee fella’s head on the rocks must have been? Ali kicked him for good measure.

Upon clocking the action, June had doubled back. She checked the fella’s anorak and wallet. Mac and Ali rolled him off the rock’s edge. 

What would have been the point in my catching up now only to double back myself? But before they could thank me or give me my share, behind and above me, June spied someone at the esplanade rail. Our elderly neighbour Morag wrapped tight in her knee-length mac and plastic hairnet, no doubt awaiting the bus to her daughter’s. 

It would have been rude not to acknowledge her. At the top of the steps, in turn, we did.

“Perverts,” Mac lamented. 

Morag agreed. “Aye. They’re everywhere.”

So they are. And who needs thanks or money, anyhow?

*

Clayton Lister has had stories published online and in magazines, with a few shortlisted for prizes. In 2023, Stairwell Books published his first novel, The Broke Hotel. He’s now trying to interest publishers in his second, The KamaDevas: Opening.

Winners of 2025 poetry comp expose birth realities, celebrate sexual identities

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Bethan Murphy has won the 2025 Shooter Poetry Competition with “Birth Plan”, while Sylvie Jane Lewis came runner-up with “Small Town Pride Parade”.

Murphy’s poem pierces idealised notions of childbirth with its series of sharp juxtapositions, which powerfully drive home the contrast between fantasy notions of birth and the often quite different reality. As an English teacher from Salisbury, Murphy has previously published poetry and flash fiction in magazines including Green Ink Poetry, Eucalyptus Lit, Arkana, and Sugar House Review.

Lewis captures with humour and energy the range of colourful characters taking part in Chichester’s first Pride Parade last year. Her poetry has been published in The London Magazine, Ink Sweat and Tears, and Them, all, and has been commended in the Ware Poets Prize and the Bridport Prize.

Both poems are available to read online at the Competition Winners page, and “Birth Plan” will also appear in the forthcoming print edition of Shooter (themed Sweet Hereafter). The magazine can be ordered via Shooter’s Subscriptions page; this issue, Shooter’s 20th, will be the final edition of Shooter in print.

Huge congratulations to this year’s poetry winners!

Shooter Flash: “The Chemistry of Friendship” by Alison Wassell

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It starts with us sharing a packet of cheese-and-onion crisps, and before we know it we’re sharing everything: sucking liquorice lozenges and laughing at our black tongues in the cloakroom mirror, buying an orange lolly every lunchtime from the ice-cream man who parks on the school field, figuring out that the vending machine outside the sixth-form common room dispenses hot chocolate for ten pence when it should be twenty. We giggle like a couple of conspirators, planning what we’ll say when our dishonesty is discovered, being almost disappointed when it never is. 

People describe us as joined at the hip, our names coupled like Tom and Jerry, Mork and Mindy, Starsky and Hutch. We meet up one Saturday to go Christmas shopping and buy cheap aftershave sets for our dads and stationery sets for our mums that will never be used. We watch Abba the Movie at the cinema and bump into Janice with her twin sisters, pointing at each other when Janice asks us who dragged who there. 

By the second year, the cracks are showing. We’re no longer we but you and I. Little things start to matter. The way you shield your work with your arm in class, the tall tales you expect me to believe about your dad being a Russian spy, the time you make yourself sick on the chocolates I give you for your birthday and blame me for buying them, the comments about my greasy hair, my crooked teeth, the spots on my chin. 

More divides us than unites us. When I come top in English you say the only thing I can do with that is teach. You’re destined for greater things with your science subjects. I secretly gloat over the way you use long words incorrectly. Hypothetical, lugubrious, lackadaisical, you haven’t a clue what any of them mean, but spit them out anyway. I start spending lunchtimes alone in the library.

We stop sharing secrets. When my periods start I don’t mention it. You cheat on me with Janice, go to see Kate Bush without inviting me, despite me having spent two nights copying out song lyrics from the album sleeve for you because all you had was a counterfeit tape. I  confide in my mother that I don’t think I even like you anymore. She says she can’t stand most of her friends, which doesn’t help.

I fantasise about breaking up with you, make a list of grievances and grounds for separation, imagine a blazing row, a stomping off, a slamming of a classroom door, everyone taking sides. You’re the one who ends it though, with a whisper rather than a scream, one Wednesday morning in the chemistry lab when I struggle to light the Bunsen burner. “Useless,” you mutter. Just that, nothing else. By the end of lunchtime you’ve emptied your desk and gone to sit next to Janice. That’s when I realise you’ve been making a list of your own all along.

 *

Alison Wassell is a writer of short and very short fiction from Merseyside, UK. Her words have been published by Fictive Dream, Does It Have Pockets, WestWord, Trash Cat Lit, Frazzled Lit, Bath Flash Fiction Award, FlashFlood Journal and elsewhere.

Shooter Flash: “Sink or Swim, or Both” by Billy Craven

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I saw her from the balcony of our hotel room. She was swimming lengths of the pool with expert strokes, legs and arms working easily, causing barely a ripple. I decided to forego my sullen teenage brooding for a while and make my way poolside.

As I approached, her beauty was even more apparent: tanned skin, lithe body, flowing black hair. I became painfully aware of my pale, skinny torso and unruly mop, but hoped our proximity in age and the general boredom of a resort miles from anywhere might afford me a chance.

Flip-flopping my way around the edge of the pool to the deep end, without pause or ceremony and trying desperately not to look in her direction, I cannonballed into the water. I sank to the bottom where I kicked up and out of the depths with flailing arms and eyes squeezed shut. I stole a glance in her direction but she paid me no heed. She swam one more length before exiting the pool and returning inside. The cannonball had missed its mark. 

Treading water in the deep end I realised that any potential for summer romance was going to take a little more finesse on my part. This was a sophisticated girl who would not be won over by immature splashing. My course of action was clear: I would have to learn to dive. 

I spent that morning perfecting my dive as disinterested tourists drinking watered-down mojitos reddened in the sun. My efforts from the pool’s edge were not too bad, and despite nostrils full of chlorinated water I found a method that I was happy with. But I was under no illusions. I knew what was required to woo the sweet siren of my dreams. 

I eyed the diving board with a mixture of determination and dread. 

The following morning the object of my infatuation was again swimming effortlessly in the pool while the other revellers were still battling for space at the buffet, devouring sausages that didn’t quite taste right.

I watched her from the safety of my balcony, pining away, planning our future together, composing breathless love letters . . .

After she vacated the pool I made my way downstairs. I had a rough idea of the mechanics of a dive but the additional three-foot height of the diving board threw me off completely. My efforts were embarrassing. I belly flopped painfully until my body was red and sore and my skin felt like it might split apart if I continued to subject it to such torture. But, as Huey Lewis had informed me that summer, the power of love is a curious thing, and again and again I hauled myself out of the pool and back onto the diving board until I was eventually called away by my parents. (The power of love unfortunately did not extend to avoiding day trips to ruined temples.)

The mornings were my own and once my Love had left the pool I would go down to work on my dive. My dad began calling me Greg Louganis and my mother eyed me with suspicion, but I was undeterred. After five mornings my technique, while far from impressive, was certainly passable. I sprang up and out from the board, my biceps tight to my ears and my hands stretching out in front. My legs pressed firmly together and I had learned to time my body tilt so that I entered the water smoothly and straight. I would then proceed to swim a length of the pool underwater before emerging breathless and gasping for air at the far end. I spent another day or two practicing my breath control until I managed to swim a length underwater with a degree of comfort. 

After a week, I was ready. 

Following a night of jitters and absurdly complex fantasies I made my way to the pool early the next morning. I watched her lower herself into the water, breaststroking once or twice before transitioning into front crawl and swimming away. I took up my position on the edge of the diving board, breathing deeply as my heart pounded away in my chest.

I waited until she had swum two lengths, knowing she would customarily take a short break at this point at the far end of the pool. Once she had stopped and turned I seized my moment. 

The dive was flawless, perhaps the best I had managed all week. It caused barely a ripple and I swam strongly and steadily beneath the water towards the far end of the pool. Having touched the wall, with the most casual expression I could muster I stood up in the shallow end and smiled in her direction. Except it was no longer her direction. She was off again, swimming towards the deep end in her perfectly languid style. 

Seeing little alternative I hauled myself out of the pool and returned to the diving board where, again, I performed a perfect dive and swam to the far end. But to no avail. She was either deliberately ignoring me or remained unimpressed. Five dives later and I was feeling defeated. Mercifully, my dad appeared and told me to go and get ready; there were two-thousand-year-old ruins that couldn’t be kept waiting. 

The next few mornings played out in a similar fashion until it was finally time to go home and I was left baffled as to how she had failed to fall in love with me. My progress from cannonball splat to expert dive was a hero’s journey to be proud of, yet I had failed to win the girl. 

She was all I could think about for the rest of the summer and I wished I’d learned her name so I could yearn after something more tangible, but she was destined to remain a mystery.

After all, it had never occurred to me to actually speak to her.

* 

Billy Craven is a teacher living in Dublin, Ireland. He has previously had short stories and poetry published in a variety of magazines including The Caterpillar, Ram Eye Press, Ember and Paper Lanterns.

Shooter Flash: “Quantum Choices” by C Goth

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“Can you pass the salt?” Smith asked as politely as possible.

“Sure.” 

This wasn’t even small talk. 

“Thank you.”

Microscopic talk.

“Welcome.”

Quantum talk: the smallest blocks of syllables that could build a conversation. 

He was telling Smith how jealous he was, with icy indifference.

Weeks of this, and for what? Succeeding? Everyone in their cohort had applied, not just her. The mentors repeatedly stressed the importance of applying: “Our program only exists because of companies like Rockreed/Harken. They’re the reason we can accept so many students.”

Quantum physics was a tough field. The religious protests, the push for government funding into the military, the dwindling student population; it took a toll on the department. Funding was scarce in a field where success was frequently hypothetical and all but impossible to measure. Those who were in the department knew its importance, but that didn’t translate to marketability. The secrets of the universe were cool, yet grants were hard to come by. 

Smith’s application was done the same day the post went up. She knew she could help people.

Smith had a concrete vision for her research, and needed a certain amount of start-up capital you just couldn’t expect in academia. 

Rockreed/Harken agreed; she got her official offer of employment less than a week later. 

She’d been frozen out by her colleagues just as quickly. Today was the last of it. This luncheon was the last time she would be with the entire cohort, and she started at R/H tomorrow. The traditional graduation ceremonies had become steadily less appealing as her colleagues had isolated her. 

I got hired by Rockreed/Harken. Nobody said this was going to be easy. The mantra kept her going.

*

Smith’s hands trembled while signing the last line of the contract. Twenty-seven pages of fine print, most of which she’d skimmed.

“Let me be the first to say it,” the HR representative said. “Welcome to Rockreed/Harken!”  Smith’s heart soared. 

Then she saw her office. 

Each door in the hallway had a sturdy bronze sign, with a section label and quote.

WEAPONS DEVELOPMENT

“A weapon isn’t good or bad, it depends on the person who uses it.” 

Jet Li

Smith looked at the guide, sure there was a mistake. 

“The atom bomb was no ‘great decision.’ It was merely another powerful weapon in the arsenal of righteousness.” 

President Harry S. Truman

The hallway stretched out before Smith in dizzying endlessness.

“The more you sweat in peace, the less you bleed in war.”

General Norman Schwarzkopf

Her guide kept walking. 

“Leaders must invoke an alchemy of great vision.” 

Henry Kissinger

She was supposed to be in renewable energy, her research had nothing to do with weaponry.  The thought of it disgusted her. 

“Is this…” Smith trailed off, but the guide continued walking forward without any hesitation. “Is this where I belong? I mean, this isn’t my department, is it?” 

“Of course. When we saw the drafts you provided, the immediate application jumped off the page.” 

The blood drained from her face. “I thought the offer – the job would be in the energy program?” 

“Yeah, we get a lot of flack if we’re too upfront about it. People want the safety of a strong defense, but get queasy about how we get there. Like the old saying, right, about hotdogs? Bombs are the same way.” 

He chuckled, as if bombs were just as much of a joke as hot dogs. As if a whole department dedicated to destruction was funny. As if death as a career choice was normal. 

“You’re going to be on Project Brooklyn.” He waited for her to get the joke. “Like first we had Project Manhattan… and Brooklyn is the new Manhattan?” She couldn’t laugh, preoccupied by the enormity of her mistake. He continued, “I guess you haven’t spent much time in New York.” 

*

Moses was told to hide from the face of God. It would have been too much for him to witness. Even for holy Moses the sight of the Almighty could not be risked. 

You can’t look at a nuclear blast. If you see the mushroom cloud, it’s too late. The pain is an instant away. That’s assuming you survive the blast to begin with: the acute radiation syndrome, the burns, the melting, the ongoing horrors. 

God did not show Moses the awesome power of the face. But we did. We used nuclear bombs to decimate a city. To kill tens of thousands of civilians. And then, days later, we did it again. Who are we to do what God deemed too dangerous?

*

A sleek computer displayed her research. Seven years of work – her hopes and dreams – displayed under the R/H logo. She shivered. Per the instructions, she opened the document labeled Background Memorandum and began to read. The devastation she felt upon seeing the bronze plaque was nothing compared to how she felt now. Her research would fit in. If anything had been in her stomach, she would have vomited. 

Smith was finally left alone to catch up on the status of Project Brooklyn. She couldn’t fully grasp the depth of it, but she had just enough of a view of the big picture to see how deadly the plan was. Out of habit, her mantra sprang to mind: I got hired by Rockreed/Harken. Nobody said this was going to be easy. 

*

Rockreed/Harken’s headquarters were surprisingly flammable. No one batted an eye when Smith stayed late. After all, she was catching up on decades of work. Nineteen hours into her first and last shift, she started the newest plank of her life plan. A safety search of the building, a quick check into office data-retention policies, a few well placed bundles of tinder, and a disconnect of a server. For all the technology in the world, fire was still more advanced. 

Smith turned away from the building, tears streaming down her face, unable to look directly at what she had accomplished.

***

C Goth is an artist, writer, and all-around sleepy guy. Goth works full time as a public defender, hence the pen name. On bluesky and instagram @g0thlawyer. Website: g0thlawyer.com

Shooter Flash: “The Escapologist” by Sherry Morris

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Dad didn’t wow crowds by bursting out of burning caskets like other escapologists. He didn’t wriggle free from straightjackets or emerge jubilant from chained trunks. Mom claimed he was a helluva Houdini anyway.

She meant his knack for disappearing whenever there were chores to do. Gutters stayed cluttered, grass grew high, the kitchen tap dripped constant as a ticking clock. Dad dodged other duties too: kissing boo-boos, reading bedtime stories. He vanished at the first sign of raging tears, monster-fears, or any kind of hug. Sometimes, Mom wondered aloud how we three girls had even been born. Then she’d smile and shake her head. 

‘Your father is a true magician. They never show their tell.’ 

Other times, when she thought we weren’t about she’d shout, ‘Marriage is more than smoke and mirrors, you know.’  

Dad would calm her with a kiss. ‘Shh, don’t break the spell.’

We loved our escapologist dad. Even when he evaporated from birthday parties, family reunions and long stretches of Christmas day. We kids would sit outside his locked study door. We’d chant all the magic words we knew – Abracadabra, Hocus Pocus, Bibbity-Bobbity-Boo – then wonder why our words took so long to work. Agreed the budding feeling in our guts was simply anticipation. And when he eventually reappeared, looking crumpled and spent, enveloped in a strange scent, we’d rush to him, ask him where he’d been. He’d sneeze. Look over our heads. Take in air like he had a long answer prepared. Then smile and shrug. In a rushed exhale he’d say, ‘Magic is complicated work.’

We got used to his non-appearances at our school plays, music recitals and high-school basketball games, but never that odd feeling in our guts. We accepted we’d never pin him down for photos and tried to engage him in other ways: asked for homework help, advice on boys, tips and tricks to pass our driving tests. We said, ‘Tell us about your day.’ In the middle of telling him about ours, we’d suddenly find ourselves alone – the image of his lopsided grin shimmering in mid-air.

We did our best to interest him in our lives and when Dad took early retirement, Mom said for sure we’d see more of him. Instead, he announced he was moving out. He’d found the love of his life – Janice – and planned to live with her, her cat Bunny, and Barnaby, her ten-year-old son. We looked to Mom to see if it was true – she looked like a lady cut in half. 

Things didn’t quite go to Dad’s plan. He developed a severe allergic reaction to Bunny. And Barnaby didn’t like sharing his mom full-time with Dad so he moved into a bachelor pad, temporarily, while everyone adjusted. Then Parkinson’s got hold of Dad. He couldn’t escape that.

Mom took him back to convalesce. She said she did it for us kids though we were nearly adults by then. She repeated what the doctors said – the disease made him behave the way he did. We couldn’t blame Dad, she said. We all nodded our heads. No one wanted to believe Dad was an escapologist at heart. 

We looked on the bright side: We still had time with Dad. But with the tremors and balance loss, he wasn’t up for much. We tried to reminisce, but our best memories didn’t include him. He shrugged when we asked what he remembered about us. We joked Dad was so skilled, he’d find a way to dodge death.

He didn’t, of course. And Mom shocked us all with a curse-laden outburst, shouting maybe Dad was finally f-ing happy now that he was free of us. We supposed this tirade was Mom’s grief speaking. Enclosed her in a group hug. Told her he’d loved us in his own way. Reminded her of his charm, his magic touch. We said all the things he’d said himself a million times. But from our mouths the words sounded hollow. Clichéd. 

Somehow, the words worked on Mom. She pulled out a smile from somewhere and ta-dahed it to her face. Said it was our duty to keep Dad’s memory alive. We went through his stuff (there wasn’t much) and found a cheap cutlery set he’d bought while living on his own. Mom announced we’d use it for our Sunday roasts, his favourite meal he sometimes ate with us. 

At first when we gathered around the table each week, it was nearly normal. We talked, laughed, reminisced. Dad’s empty chair was reinstated so it was almost like he was back. It wasn’t exactly the same though. Our voices were too loud, too rushed, ventriloquist-dummy high-pitched. We shovelled in mounds of food blink-quick as if we had both hungry hearts and empty bellies to fill.

Then one Sunday, instead of his face, all I saw was his shoddy fork and dull knife in my hands. The white plastic handles had already started to discolour. And yet, these bargain-basement utensils were more real to me than Dad. 

I listened to the clink, clatter and chatter that tied us to him. Wondered why we still worked so hard to maintain the illusion. Why we never allowed ourselves to be mad at our always-absent dad. And why we weren’t enough for him. 

I pressed the fork tines deep into the meat, securing it to my plate. Too bad we couldn’t use cutlery on Dad. I positioned the knife to slice but stopped. My appetite had disappeared. My eyes pricked as the world blurred. I wished we hadn’t shushed Mom’s rage. Or called the childhood anger resting in our guts ‘anticipation’. I took a deep breath. 

‘Dad was a complete shit,’ I exhaled. ‘I won’t be his complicit assistant.’

Into the speechless silence, I said the words again – louder this time, then once more. Something lifted; a spell was broken. I released my grip. Watched the cutlery fall to the floor. Opened the windows. Slid open doors. Walked outside to the sunshine-filled yard.

*

Originally from Missouri, USA, Sherry Morris (@Uksherka & @uksherka.bsky.social) writes fiction from a farm in the Scottish Highlands where she pets cows, watches clouds and dabbles in photography. She presents a monthly online spoken-word radio show featuring short stories and flash fiction on Highland Hospital Radio. Many of her stories stem from her Peace Corps experience in 1990s Ukraine. “The Escapologist” was originally published with The Sunlight Press. www.uksherka.com

Shooter Flash: “Whiteout” by Julia Carver

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The ski lift bumped Rick onto its metal bench and toted him skyward. Glittering slopes fell away, frosted runs and dark crevices of trees winding down to the valley floor far below. In the distance, toy cars pulled into the parking lot from the snaking highway, which ribboned back along the edge of the foothills, over the frozen river and behind the humpbacked mounds of earth that sheltered town.

As they’d put the newspaper to bed later than usual the night before and he’d woken to a whiteout, Rick figured he could be late for the weekly editorial meeting. The editors would gripe but after three years of covering small-town courts, cops and haemorrhoid-inducing council meetings, he didn’t care.

He propped one ski on the footrest and let the other swing, gently rocking the chair. The landscape lay silent and serene, air refreshing as ice water. He nodded to a beat in his head. He’d left his headphones in the house this morning, as well as his ski gloves, hustling to get out of there while Candice was in the shower. She was wigging him out with all the baby stuff, having ramped up her mission since turning thirty.

He couldn’t imagine having kids. It just didn’t compute. He figured it would happen some day, sure — later, down the line. But this was his first job out of grad school. He was living in the now; the future was a nebulous concept hanging somewhere in the distance, blank and unfathomable as the winter sky.

The chairlift groaned and, with an icy scrape, clanged to a halt. Rick’s chair bounced and he stopped swinging his leg, waiting for the cable to resume its uphill tow. He craned his head to see what was happening at the base. No-one was in sight and no-one else appeared to be riding the lift, either.

Rick sighed and settled back. Empty quads dotted the way ahead to the exit ramp, an aerial ellipsis that marked time between the end of one run and the start of another. He blew into his hands and watched the thickening snowfall settle on the swaying chairs. He would miss the whole meeting at this rate, but whatever.

A crimson ski patroller was flashing down from the lift tower, carving swift turns beneath the stalled chairs. He slid to a precise halt under Rick, skis perfectly parallel.

“How you doing up there?” he called. “You alright?”

“Yup. What’s happening?” Rick called back.

“Bullwheel’s stuck. We’re takin’ a look at it. Just be a few minutes I reckon. Otherwise we’ll have to get someone out here to evacuate you. You ok to hang tight for now?”

“Yeah,” said Rick, startled at the prospect of being winched down like a cat from a tree. “How will—” he started, but the patroller had pushed off already, surfing the sparkling snow drifts around the chairlift pillars like powder waves.

Damn, he thought, a cold crackle running over his body. Why in hell had he come out here before work? He could have gone to the meeting, on time, and driven out here afterwards to hit a few runs during lunch.

The fingers on his left hand were tingling now, a pins-and-needles sensation. What if he didn’t get down soon? His fingers were nipped; soon actual frostbite would set in. What if he lost fingers? How would he do his job?

Candice would leave him. She was already disgruntled; why would she stick with a digitally-compromised freak? She might have to support him. Would loss of fingers qualify for disability? This thought calmed Rick slightly. Benefit money. Ok. He could take some time, write a novel. That might not be so bad.

He peered down at the ground: it was a solid fifty, maybe sixty-foot drop. This was crazy; he was stranded. His phone was sitting in the car. No skiers had gone by in thirty minutes.

To the east, he could see skiers riding the Marmot lift. Because Thunder was down, everyone was avoiding the area. Rick’s goggles began to steam up. He worked a rigid finger behind the lens to wipe it clear and finally spied someone, a snowboarder, carving turns down the Ampitheater run. 

“Hey!” he shouted, waving his arms. “Hey! Over here!” The boarder had seen him, had cut away from the centre of the run and was sliding towards him. She sent up a powder spray as she swung the board round sharply and edged to a halt. She pushed up her goggles.

Oh god, Rick thought.

“Rick?” The girl peered up at him, first in disbelief, then amusement. He found himself, momentarily, flashing back to their last interaction, when he’d laid into her for missing an assignment at the courthouse. “What’re you doing up there?”

“Hi Jaz,” he said. “They sent you out here?”

“Mike heard ski patrol was gonna evacuate someone over the scanner,” she said, slinging her backpack onto the ground and fishing out equipment. “Told me to come get the shot.” She grinned, fitting lens to camera.

“Come on, Jaz,” Rick said. “Give me a break. Mike’ll flip his lid. Can you go get ski patrol instead? I’ve been sitting up here for over half an hour. My fingers are about to fall off.”

Jasmine cocked her head. “I’ve got to get the shot, Rick,” she said.

Two patrollers swept towards them towing a rescue sled. “We’re gonna get you down,” called the one from earlier. Jasmine planted her snowboard next to the pillar, trudged through the snow for a better angle and started snapping the rescue mission. Rick wished he’d jumped when he had the chance.

The patrollers slung a rope over the lift cable. One of them rooted himself into the snow to belay the other, who climbed up to Rick’s chair. “Howdy,” he said when he reached the top, strapping Rick into a harness with expert efficiency.

“I could probably just climb down myself,” Rick grumbled. Jasmine was clicking away.

“Gotta strap you in. Safety regulations,” said the patrolman, signalling his partner to let out the rope. Dangling Rick between his legs, he rappelled them both earthward. Rick felt like a bit of meat on a line: editorial bait. His legs buckled when he reached the ground.

He dreaded to think how he would explain himself to Mike. His job, his relationship, his life — everything seemed suddenly, thanks to one innocent matutinal detour, to teeter at the edge of a crevasse. He dug his poles into the snowpack and pushed off, quickly, to catch up with Jasmine.

“Jaz!” he called out, drawing level. She’d strapped her pack back over her neon jacket and was rocking her way downhill in the slouchy, rhythmic manner of snowboarders. “Jaz, just say they evacuated the person before you got there. Don’t show them the pictures.” She turned, but Rick couldn’t see through the tinted lens of her goggles.

Jasmine pulled ahead. Snow was falling in fat, heavy flakes, whiting out his view. Like broken bar lights, her neon form started to sputter behind the curtain of snow. Whatever, he thought. He’d catch up with her in the parking lot. Right now, he’d just try to focus on the short run he was going to get, and forget about the other stuff. It was really blizzarding; he could hardly see five feet in front of him. The earth, the sky, the world was white: a blank, empty void, full of nothing, and he was skiing right into it.

*

Julia Carver is a former news reporter who lives in Gunnison, Colorado, with her husband and two dogs. She has published fiction in the Whitefish Review, Salt Hill, Helix, Tahoma Literary Review, and elsewhere. She is currently working on a novel.

Coming of Age issue explores sex, loss, and startling changes

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Readers of the Coming of Age edition will note a discrepancy between the issue date of Autumn/Winter 2024, and the publication date of May 2025. Sadly this was caused by the rapid decline and death of my mother, Anita White, during the early months of 2025. 

Being in midlife myself, I was somewhat prepared for this inevitable though devastating loss. My mother was not terribly old at 77 but, pushing 50 myself, it still felt in the natural course of things.

For those who suffer such a bereavement during childhood, the loss of a parent can trigger the worst, most abrupt transition to adulthood: a severe trauma that jolts them out of carefree innocence, straight into adult responsibilities and painful life lessons. Some of the pieces here grapple with this harshest of coming-of-age experiences, in particular Saturday Mars’ “An Ode to Dewey Dell Bundren”, a literary reflection on William Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying that opens the issue.

Approaching loss from the polar opposite direction, Probert Dean’s short story “A Thing That Presents Itself to the Mind” explores with black humour the demise of a very different sort of mother. Douglas Cole in “A Game of Chicken” and C S Mee in “Amy Sullivan” also tangle with death and the transitional impact it makes in their tales.

Another equally significant coming-of-age theme, sex and sexuality, crops up in much of the issue. “The Sex-Education Fairy” by Monterey Buchanan offers a fantastical method of getting embarrassing questions answered at school, while Paul Hammond’s “An Odd, Odourless Scent” takes a more oblique approach to such matters in rural Ireland. In her memoir “Love in a War Zone”, Alison Watson dissects her youthful recklessness from Budapest to New York City with honesty and verve, showing how using sex to gain love and validation rarely pans out.

The poets largely grapple with sex and death as well. Elizabeth Wilson Davies, Kait Quinn, Brian James Lewis, and Craig Dobson explore some of the thrills and implications of dawning sexuality in their poems, while Alison Tanik and Eugene O’Hare suggest the darker side. Kent Leathem and Emily Cotterill conjure burgeoning homosexuality, from the challenges of feeling like an outsider to the rewards of awakening sexual identity. Kevin Grauke, the only poet to engage with death, does so with poignant simplicity.

A few writers took a more left-field approach to the coming-of-age theme. In his poem “September Cohen”, Bradley Taylor muses on an alternate reality for musician Leonard Cohen. Cat Isidore closes out the issue with her surreal story “Milkteeth”, about a girl forced into a violent confrontation with her mother’s garden flora.

As the winner of the 2024 Shooter Short Story Competition, “The Bunker” by Dilys Lovell also appears in this edition. Competition winners are not bound by the magazine’s themes, but Lovell’s piece could easily fit the category, featuring a girl on a remote island who yearns to be free of parental constraints. Her sheltered existence is shattered by the imposition of the wider world, as well as an interloper who reflects the tension she feels between safety and the call to adventure.

It is apt that, following an edition about major change, the next issue (our twentieth) will mark the end of Shooter’s life as a biannual print magazine. Shooter will evolve, but the final print edition will be themed Sweet Hereafter, both in honour of my mother and to mark the end of Shooter’s print identity. As the Spring/Summer 2025 issue, it will follow hot on the heels of the Coming of Age edition – but as with all things that die, Shooter will not be gone, but simply carry on in a different form.

To order the Coming of Age issue, please visit the Subscriptions page.