Category Archives: Shooter Flash

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: “Thursday’s Dresden’s” by Jacksón Smith

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Twenty minutes past my reservation. I’m late for a meeting. My foot taps; I check emails. The Barber – thick beard, leather apron – rolls up his sleeves. One-man shop. Too late to go anywhere else. 

Last week my new manager said I looked like a highland cattle. I had to Google it. Turns out: majorly insulting, and a brag about his Scottish whisky tour with the Board. Clean it up, he said, pointing his toothpick at my hair, or quit and go back to hacky sacking with your pals. 

Finally, the Barber’s done sweeping the last guy’s hair. The bell rings. In comes an old bald man. Tall-faced and sorta droopy, with delicate wireframes and a beige cardigan.

The Barber clasps the man’s shoulders and escorts him into the well-worn chair. 

What a way to run a freaking business. I stand and hold up my iPhone. “I have a reservation.”

The Barber’s face screws. “With who?”

“What do you mean with who?”

He points with his scissors at the clock. “Twelve thirty on Thursday’s always Dresden’s.”

“For what?” I point at the man, who is bald. 

“Well, oh.” The old man adjusts his glasses. “It’s not – well, yes. You’re right.”

“Ritual,” Barber says. His voice is mirthful, different than before. “Thursdays we have fun. Dresden gets The Works.” 

“Oh come on, I made a reservation online.”

The Barber taps his scissors on his beard like he’s thinking. “Huh, online!” He snaps the bib around the man’s neck. 

And what the hell do you say to that? 

So I sit, arms crossed. Make them feel bad for making me late. 

The Works: steaming towel, oil lather, peppermint, huge calloused hands massaging his scalp, the both of them talking, laughing (giggling, even), on and on. Twelve-inch feather dusters, leaky urethras, son-in-laws, thin mints (the Barber’s daughter is a Girl Scout). 

Emails buzz my pocket. I ignore them; my foot stills. The Barber’s cheeks flush (a joke about sauerkraut), and then he hands Dresden a mirror. Jesus, does he really need to examine his – but I catch myself. It doesn’t matter, his baldness.  

I rub my temples. I have a strange, beautiful image in my mind of a bunch of cattle playing hacky sack. The crisp sound of beans on a hoof.

I tried, boss. I tried to don the tie, to be a businessman, to have a nice framed photo on Mom’s mantel, just like my brother’s, but go ahead, mock me, fire me, because, well, I guess Thursday’s Dresden’s for Christ’s sake. 

“Hey,” I lean forward. “Do you have another order form? I love thin mints.”

*

Jacksón Smith is a writer based in Washington, DC. His work has appeared in G20, Diplomatic Courier, Childhood Education, and The Golden Antlers. He studied PPE and Creative Writing at Claremont McKenna College. His fiction explores the tension between logic and absurdity, the surreal within the mundane, and the strange ways people collide with their pasts.

Shooter Flash: “River Without Current” by Thomas McEvoy

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In Mama’s last letter, she wrote that there’s no opportunity at the Napo River Lodge, where Papa works. She warned that if I continued to live with Papa, I would end up like Yolanda, chopping vegetables in the kitchen, or Maria, who cleans rooms every day. She even asked him what future our girl has at the lodge.

When Papa finished reading the letter, he crumpled it and threw it into the bin. I had to flatten it and read it alone. I wanted to talk to Papa, to ask him when I could go and join Mama, but I was afraid. I’d seen the look on his face as he read it, and I didn’t want to see that again.

The Napo River is all Papa knows. He wouldn’t leave because there’s nothing else for him.

That night, I used a flashlight and cocooned myself under the bedsheets, going over every word about Mama’s city, imagining the hotel she worked at and the school I’d go to. Papa had homeschooled me all my life, but I yearned to be part of what Mama described. I fell asleep thinking of the capital’s smooth, asphalted roads.

The next day, I told Papa we should go out searching for caimans, just the two of us, like we used to when I was younger. I figured that way I could talk to him, convince him to let me go and join Mama.

“We’ll go another time,” Papa said. He’d been out all day bird-watching with a group of Americans. Americans are the most demanding clients, but they tip the most, so Papa makes an extra effort with them. 

Then I lost the letter. I’d kept it under my mattress so nobody could find it. I’d read it every night, thinking that if I did, I would dream of the city. It was my way of bringing what I desired into existence. The letter was gone. I wondered if Maria had found it. I didn’t want to say anything in case she read it or told Papa. Instead, I tried to remember the letter, word by word.

One evening, Papa finished dinner with the Americans and looked for me.

“Come on,” he said. “We’re going caiman searching.”

I didn’t feel like going anymore.

“You wanted to, right?” Papa said. “Fetch your light.”

My flashlight was a prized possession. It was silver and looked out of place in the jungle. That’s why I liked it. It was a gift from a Dutch tourist, one of many who pass by for a couple of days, never to be seen again.

We set out in the canoe without a word. We knew the right spot. As we approached, we lifted our oars and shut off our flashlights. We floated on the river without a current, bathed in total darkness. At night, the Amazon comes to life. You hear the loud and constant buzz of cicadas, the croaks of frogs, and the howling of monkeys deep in the jungle.

Papa believes caimans are stoic. I didn’t know what that word meant until he explained. Caimans like to stay close to the shore, partly submerged in the river, motionless. Usually, the crest of their head, spine, and tail is visible. If you make a sudden movement or sound that scares them, they will lash or disappear quietly in an instant. The trick is to mirror them and relax. Papa showed me. If you do, they’re happy to lie still as you shine on them, their eyes blazing like marbles of fire.

“Papa—”

He turned on his flashlight. “There they are, look.”

Two caimans huddled together by the bank. The distance from their orange eyes to the tips of their long tails showed just how large they were. We illuminated their leather bodies, staring into their unblinking bright eyes. It was a game we used to play: shining on the caimans to see how long they’d stay.

We kept our lights steady, trying not to frighten them. After a couple of minutes, the bigger caiman went under without a sound, like a silent submarine. We focused on the remaining caiman, trying to extend the moment. The canoe ebbed side to side, mimicking Papa’s slow and deep breaths. Then the second caiman left.

“They’re gone,” I said, disappointed.

Papa closed his large hand around mine, placing a worn piece of paper in my palm. The weight told me what it was: Mama’s letter. It wasn’t Maria who had taken it from under my bed. It was him. He knew I’d been reading it.

“I wanted you to have it back,” Papa said quietly. His voice sounded like the creak of the canoe, something old and strained.

I berated myself, feeling as though my nightly rituals with the letter had sealed my fate. Holding it again, the city’s pull faded, replaced by guilt. 

“It’s time,” Papa said softly, as he picked up the oar. 

A man of few words, I knew this was how he let me go. I placed the flashlight in front of me, but I didn’t switch it on, not wanting him to see my face. I grabbed my oar to help us back. I opened my mouth to speak, but the jungle drowned me out.

*

Thomas McEvoy is a Paraguayan-born British writer who has lived in Panama, Honduras, Ecuador, Japan, Canada, Spain, and England. He is currently pursuing a master’s degree in Creative and Critical Writing at the University of Liverpool. His fiction has appeared in J Journal: New Writing for Justice, Scoundrel Time, and Collateral Journal.

Shooter Flash: “Lisa’s Little Lie” by Steven Bays

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The wheels of the gurney squeaked as an aide moved Lisa to recovery. Half asleep, she stirred, then moaned and curled into a fetal position. She pulled the sheets over her shoulder and stuck one foot out from under. When she saw the blue hospital sock, she remembered where she was. A feeling of nausea overcame her and she cupped her hand under her chin. A nurse noticed and held a small kidney-shaped bowl, just in time for Lisa to vomit.  

“It’s the anesthesia,” a nurse said. “It’ll pass. Drink this.” She gave her some apple juice. Lisa tried drinking but the nausea came back. She closed her eyes. “Could I have some ice chips instead, please?” she asked. 

Lisa did better with those. They soothed her thirst and she no longer felt sick.

The nurse asked, “Are you ready for a visitor?”

Lisa nodded, and her boyfriend Peter came in. He sat on the edge of her bed. 

“You okay?” he asked. “You don’t look so good.”

Lisa nodded. “Yeah, just a little nauseous.” 

Peter waived his hand. “What smells?”

“I puked. Sorry.” 

“How do you feel?”   

“Like I was out drinking all night.”

Peter waited until the nurse stepped far enough away that she couldn’t hear. 

“No, I mean now that it’s over. Any regrets?”  

“Peter, not now.”

“I’m sorry. I’m just having a hard time with this.”

The nurse came back to check on Lisa.  

“When can she leave?” Peter asked. 

“As soon as she can keep something down, use the bathroom. Won’t be too long.”

Peter had always been good to Lisa. She knew that someday he would ask her to marry him. Even now, after what she’d put him through. He’d brooded about her indiscretion for days but he forgave her. Still, he didn’t want her to have the procedure. She remembered the argument.  

“It’s not right. It’s a sin. We’re Catholic for Christ’s sake. I don’t care if it ain’t mine. We’ll get married, and I’ll adopt it.”

Lisa knew she wasn’t ready to be a mother and doubted Peter would make a good husband.

“Who’s the father?” he’d demanded.

“Does it matter? I made a mistake, I’m sorry. Can we leave it at that?”

“I know the guy. Is that it?”

“No, you don’t. And it’s better if it stays that way.”

“Can you at least tell me how many times you cheated?”

“Once.”

“Once?” 

“Yeah, imagine my luck.” 

“Does the father know?” 

“No. And I’m not telling him.” 

The nurse brought some apple juice and asked, “You feeling better yet hon?”  

Lisa smiled yes. As soon as the nurse stepped away, Peter asked, “Are we still going to Brian’s?” 

“Yes.”

“Why? Do we have to?” 

“It’s close by and I can rest. Don’t worry, he’s working. I have his key.”

“I’d rather take you home.” 

“Are you kidding?” She whispered so no one would hear. “You want me to sit on that train for a freaking hour? My mother will flip out when she sees me like this. What do I tell her? Oh, I skipped work to have an abortion? No. Take me to Brian’s.”  

“Is he the father?”

“Keep your voice down. No. Just a friend.”

They were silent for a bit. Peter worried whether he could ever trust her again. Lisa’s guilt about what she’d done to him made her wonder if she’d made the right decision.

The nurse broke the silence. “Do you think you could use the ladies’ room?”

Lisa said yes, and the nurse walked her to the bathroom.  

After being discharged, they took a cab to Brian’s.

“I’m gonna take a nap,” she said. Lisa went to the bedroom and climbed into Brian’s bed.   

Peter watched TV in the living room. After a while, he stuck his head into the bedroom. Seeing Lisa awake, he asked, “Are you okay?” 

“I could use some Tylenol,” she said. 

Peter checked the bathroom. “None in here. Guess I’ll run out and buy some.”

“Look in the kitchen.”

Peter did as she suggested. He looked in the cupboards, shuffling things around, searching behind cereal boxes and cans. Utensils rattled as a drawer opened, then slammed shut. The noise stopped, and Lisa heard the tap running. Peter walked into the bedroom holding a bottle of Tylenol and a glass of water. 

“Here.” He handed it to her. Lisa took two pills and then gave back the empty glass.  

“I thought you said you’d never been here before.” He stood with his arms folded in front of his chest. “How’d you know where he kept the Tylenol?”  

Lisa frowned. “I didn’t. It was a guess. Don’t your folks keep any meds in the kitchen?”

“I don’t know if I can believe anything you say.”

“Look, I’m not lying. I’ve never been here before. And Brian, first, he’s not the father, and second, he’s just a good friend from work.”

They started arguing again. The same argument they’d had when she first told him of her infidelity, only more heated. 

“Yeah, you’ve been fucking Brian,” Peter said. “Who knows how many other guys you’re screwing behind my back.”

Stung by his accusations, she decided to tell him the truth. At this point, Lisa didn’t care if she hurt his feelings.

“I wasn’t going to tell you who the father was, because,” she hesitated. “Well. I figured keeping it a secret from you would be the best thing to do. So, I lied. I never cheated on you. The baby was yours. If you knew you were the father, you’d never let me have the abortion.”

Peter raised his hand to strike her. Lisa stared at him, daring him. He froze for a moment, then dropped his arm and stormed out of the apartment. 

*

Steven Bays was born in Greece but at the age of two immigrated to the US, where he was raised in Brooklyn, New York. He always dabbled in writing but took it seriously after retiring from a thirty-five-year career in telecommunications. He enjoys long walks, listening to music, working out at the gym, and playing guitar in a rock-and-roll cover band. His stories have appeared in various online magazines.

Shooter Flash: “If, Man, Son” by Al Crow

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And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son! – “If” by Rudyard Kipling

Pint up, contents down, and I’m up, down the corridor. Drink then piss. Same old drill for an old soul. No need to spell it out. Quite a walk actually, for an ageing gent like me who’s really, really got to go, but I get there fine. In time. Double take on the sign. Notice the rhyme. Didn’t notice the sign before though. A little horseman with an oversized sombrero and a machine gun on the door of the gents. Supposed to be funny. So little effort in the rest of what goes for a boozer in this Monopoly-board railway station and there this six inch gun-toting Mexican lad on the bogs. They must be making sure the really leathered blokes still get the right place. Well, I’m not that gone. Not by halves. I push. Pull the next one, and it gives me four urinals, a sink and a single cubical with the door shut. Quite the drinker’s vista. Two gentlemen already there. One in the crapper. Pair of jeans resting on lime green trainers. Some old rocker at the far wall-mounted john. Leathers, raggedy beard, and a steely stare towards the poster at his front, which is adverting erectile disfunction. 

A man like me. A place like this. All these ifs in my head. 

You can try and drink away the ifs, but they’ll get you in the pisser. That’s the actual pisser, I think. When the ifs come for you in the pisser. 

The raggedy rocker nods a hard-arse glare my direction. Spurs me into life. I take the second lane, so there’s one slot between this half-price Slash’s slash and me, while I’m not so bang up against the sink that this will turn into a problem. Not that anyone here is going to wash their hands, but thems the rules. Decorum, anyway. Me and the rocker, we’re both hoping no-one else comes in and has to tuck in between us, but we’re okay. For now. So, I hunt out my Johnson in these tight arse pants I got from Amazon about a month before the sixty seconds that I’m drinking so shit hard not to think about happened. 

I yank a boxer leg up first, which is too long to get myself under, so I try to unfathom the intricacies of a knob-tunnel system that’s more impenetrable than the Tora Bora caves. This might be taking a while, but I’m gazing forward. Always look forward in the gents. Golden rule, and the poster at my eye level blurs into focus. It’s goading me to Be The Best, and I realise I’m far from the best, so far from my best. Haven’t been the best in me for so long. Don’t need an ad to tell me that. I got sucked into something for my boy. He was infinite. Perpetual. So much life in those gleaming eyes that it didn’t seem possible that he could be anything but there – couldn’t be anything by twenty and sharp and charming, always catching a ball or a cute girl’s eye – and I didn’t encourage him. He found that path himself. 

Sure, he was playing up to his old man. Sure, there were footsteps. Boots to fill. An apple and a tree. Sure, he was imitating, emulating, coating himself in what he thought was the very best of me, only I never said he should go down that route. I never told him the person he should be. 

In the pisser, here I am, playing that card as if it’s a get out of jail free. 

Ha. There it is again. I’m a poet and I know it. A poet like all those messed up word-wankers that went before me with their drinks and their England. Take Kipling, my mirror. He wrote all that clap about being a man, then he bluffed his short-sighted son passed a medical and square into a cavalry charge, gifted the blundering vole the once in a lifetime opportunity to have a jog at a gun post. The national treasure never forgave himself. Funny that you learn that one at school. Funny, not funny. 

“This country grinds you down.” 

It’s the rocker speaking, breaking the rule of not talking to strangers in the gents. He’s pressing the dispenser as if he genuinely believes there might be some soap in there and it’s like time has slipped. I didn’t notice him move from the urinal and the thought strikes me that perhaps he’s God and Jesus is taking a dump above the lime-green trainers in trap two. 

I wipe a stray tear. Guess that’s a more logical explanation of why he’s talking at me. 

“Too fucking right,” I say. 

As I do, the room is filled with the sound of the toilet flushing. It echoes about the bare-walls until it feels like the place is going to be filled, and I imagine drowning in there. I picture myself floating above the urinals and the sink, being washed higher until my head knocks on the ceiling and I smile at the rocker and take a last breath, which allows me a few moments under the tear and bog water, before the air seeps from my lungs and the darkness comes into my head, pushing away all the ifs with its milky-black ooze. 

“Well, you have a good afternoon Buddy,” the rocker says. “Perhaps go a little easier on the sauce.”

I smile.

I’m about to say something when the cubical door opens, and the kid who comes out is about twenty, blond hair, slightly foppish, and one of those smiles. For a moment, I think it might be him. My boy. I think it might, and he looks across. Those eyes unchanged. For a moment, I’m flooded, dragged further beneath that boat load of ifs.

*

Al Crow works across fiction, creative non-fiction and poetry, exploring this challenged world and human fragility. Recent work is featured in The Last Song, Words for Frightened Rabbit; Masculinity: an anthology of modern voices; Last Light, an anthology of Apocalypse Poetry; Lighthouse and The London Magazine.

Shooter Flash: “Drift” by Sammi LaBue

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Alex wore her half of our heart necklace long after high school, but when they found her across the bay, she wasn’t wearing jewelry. Just her long hair around her neck like a noose of wet string. 

She finally moved to New York from Tampa two years after I had. She lived in Queens and I lived in Brooklyn, but we made Beach Day an official weekly holiday, no matter the weather, to remind us of home, and I got her a job at the bar where I worked.

She found me in the walk-in refrigerator during the shifts we shared. I’d mix cheap vodka with cranberry juice and slices of lemon, our seventeen-dollar happy-hour cocktail, and she’d talk about her new friends, her roommates, her artsy kind of sadness. The refrigerator’s vacuum seal suctioned us in behind her, as if to preserve us. 

*

We’d walk down the beach warp-powered by the Adderall she brought. I thought of our purse of shells and treasures, our iPhones and keys left behind, thinly veiled by faded bath towels. But she’d say, Let’s never go back, smiling. 

Days would slip by without a whisper from Alex. “Sometimes friends drift apart,” Mom said when I called her instead. Then Alex would be back again, our teeth hard-set against the cold of the walk-in. Her voice sounding more and more like the silent void of her voicemail.

Want an adderall, a xanax, anything else? The sand-stained coin purse started to fill with chalky blue-and-white pills – nothing like sea glass. 

*

Still on for Beach Day?

Is it going to rain?

Meet at DD, right?

Im Here

?

I waited outside of Dunkin Donuts flipping between my doppler app and messages and back again. A green mass crept across the screen pixel by pixel.

When the smell of rain had washed over the roasted nuts cart and the car exhaust, Alex appeared with her hands shoved into the pockets of her leather jacket. I was getting worried. She wasn’t wearing her necklace. Where’s your bag?

After the intersection, she threw a laugh over her shoulder then ran across the boardwalk and down to the beach. I chased after her, rain needling my skin.

She dropped her clothes in the sand. The metallic reflection of the waves striped her skin, her hair melted out across the water’s surface as she waded deeper. 

Alone on the beach, time expanded as she pushed out and out. 

I remembered bike races to the beach back home and how you could eat the heavy evening heat right out of the air. 

I remembered her theory about being adopted, even with her mother’s round, clamshell eyes, those straight eyelashes, the scattered sand freckles across her nose. 

I remembered the first day she showed up to work drunk, when she breezed past the walk-in window.

The storm faded as fast as it arrived, and then so did she. I could see her. I could see her, until I couldn’t. Like a star stared at too long in the night sky, she flickered out as the lifeguard’s whistle blared. 

* * *

Sammi LaBue is a Brooklyn-based writer and educator. She founded Fledgling Writing Workshops (Best Workshop in NYC, Timeout 2019) and is the author of Words in Progress (DK 2020), a creative writer’s guided journal. Her writing can be found in Literary Hub, Glamour, The Offing, Mutha Magazine, Hobart, and Sonora Review, among others. She received her MFA from the Vermont College of Fine Arts, is The Penn Review’s 2024 Poetry Prize winner, and has recently finished a dual memoir written in collaboration with her mom.

Shooter Flash: “Pool Wolf” by Robin Dennis

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I pull the handle and the door nearly comes off in my hand. I take a plate as thin as a sucked Polo, thin enough to crack over your knee. Just the weight of it puts me off my dinner. 

Dad’s busy at the sink like all this is normal. Maybe it is normal for him now. But if it’s normal now, then it must’ve been normal before; you can’t just change who you are. All that time he must have been pretending, hiding the fact that he can live like this. 

He turns to me, then turns back without speaking, like I’m miles away. There’s barely enough of him to dry up the dishes. 

*

He takes me to his room in the attic. He shows me the banister over the stairs. He puts my finger on a groove in the wood. He asks what I think made it, the groove in the wood. 

We sit at the table, and I can’t leave until I eat. In Africa, kids are starving. They lie with flies in their eyes, bored as horses. I guess it’s normal for them. 

*

Wednesday’s swimming, so we go to the pool. Dad pays us in and sits on a fold-out bench with his fists on his knees. 

I bob in the water, swim to and fro. The wolf doesn’t seem to be here today. I ask someone if he is, and he says no. Underwater, I open my eyes wide enough to check the grates, blood beating in my ears.  

*

In bed I watch Steven Seagal put holes in people and roll their bodies off his boat. I can hear him in the attic, the man who was here before. I can see him on the stairs, a rope round his throat – perfectly still, as though he’s floating. The plates are his. The plates and pretty much everything else. He made the marks and the rips on the lino, broke the cupboard door. My dad just came and took it all. 

*

The wolf’s back on Wednesday, walking on hind legs and running his claws along the walls – plaster crumbling, wires pissing sparks. One’s dancing like a snake, shooting fire across the tiles, and I wonder what’d happen if it went in the water. Sparks falling like upside-down fireworks, glutting the bottom with gold. 

He takes a woman’s head off and her girl starts to cry. She’s young, maybe five. He takes a bite and drops it, then disappears round the corner to the little pool, through the footbath that connects the two. I look to my dad, but his bench is empty, folded up. A lifeguard’s already coming over with a bucket and mop. 

* * *

Robin Dennis is from the East Midlands, and teaches English in southern Germany. His writing has previously appeared in Stimulus Respond.

Shooter Flash: “Teenage Kicks” by Billy Craven

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When we were young, there was a man in our town named Shotokan. He was pale and balding and sported a ponytail that was at once tragic and defiant. More importantly, he could dodge bullets.

Growing up in the suburbs in the 1980s, bullets were hard to come by so we were forced to take him at his word which I, for one, did happily. Anything that broke the monotony of housing estates and skinheads and the endless talk of unemployment was to be applauded. Whether you believed him or not, the very idea of Shotokan dodging bullets was a chance to dream of something beyond the ordinary.

Dodge might be the wrong word actually. As he explained it, it was less about dodging and more about bending the flow of the bullet around him. Everything had a flow, and everyone had the capability of disrupting that flow, but it took years of training, concentration and discipline. On summer evenings he would stand in the middle of the green wearing full karate garb. It was his Gi, he informed us, much to the delight of my friends. He had studied martial arts throughout Asia. He had mastered Bushido, Aikido and even Shen Long, and he was held in the highest esteem on the island of Okinawa. Along with his Gi, he wore a black belt with three red tips. He said the black of his belt was the darkest shade possible and the red was a reminder of the blood on his hands. When pressed on this he would get a faraway look in his eyes and remind us that Karate should only be used in self-defence, a lesson he had learned the hard way. 

Shotokan was the subject of ridicule among my friends, and though I laughed along with them, I noticed that nobody dared mock him to his face. The potential of his fighting skills and his supposed mastery of the dreaded Dim Mak technique kept the sceptics in check. And even if there were those who doubted his tales of unsanctioned death matches, the fact remained that standing in the centre of the green in his pristine white outfit performing his kata while twenty teens and children waited impatiently for a game of football, took courage. 

To me, his powers bordered on the supernatural and I would watch fascinated as he worked his way methodically through his routine, half expecting him to conjure a fireball in his gracefully twirling hands. He didn’t punctuate his movements with any sound effects, no hi-yahs or Bruce Lee wails, but the whip-crack of his loose fitting Gi as he performed roundhouse kicks and Karate chops against invisible enemies accompanied his strikes. He was a study of poise and concentration. His moves went from meandering and balletic to sudden and violent in the blink of an eye. None of us knew where he lived, which only added to his mystique, and we would never see him approaching the green. He was always just there, as though he had materialised from the earth beneath him. He became a fixture of the summer of ’88, as ingrained in my memory as the European Championships and Ray Houghton’s winner against England. I can still see him, side-kicking and leg-sweeping his way across the grassy surface, oblivious to everything but the imagined foe in front of him.

The summer was stuttering to a close and my thoughts were turning with apprehension towards secondary school. I’d been working up the courage to ask Shotokan if he would consider taking on a pupil, when he abruptly vanished. There was joy amongst the youth of our estate as they reclaimed possession of the green, reestablishing football in its rightful place above Karate. And while I shared in this general happiness I couldn’t help but wonder what could have caused his sudden disappearance. Had he returned to Okinawa to avenge his murdered Sensei? Was he fighting in some underground tournament on an exotic island in the Pacific? Maybe he was in Nepal, high up on a snowy peak, bending bullets, time and space to his will. I really didn’t know, but I was content to leave it a mystery, to let my imagination fill in the blanks. His absence would only enhance his legend and if, like me, you prefer the legend, then at this point you should stop reading. 

It was my friend Daragh who showed me the article in the local newspaper. He was waiting for me at the top of the road, a football in his hands. He handed me the ball and took a page from his back pocket, unfolding it carefully, like a treasure map. And there he was, not Shotokan, but Sean, his smiling face pictured above the caption: Sean Murphy (29) of Leixlip Park was struck by a car and killed in the early hours of Saturday morning. Grief and shock nestled in my stomach. I felt sick and strangely betrayed. He hadn’t gone anywhere. He wasn’t mystical. He wasn’t even Japanese. He was Sean Murphy. He was mortal, and now he was dead. Daragh folded up the page and snatched the ball from my hands.

 “You’re trying to tell me he could dodge a bullet, but he couldn’t dodge a bloody Toyota!” he laughed. He turned and booted the ball onto the green where a group had gathered to play. “Come on. You’re with me. We’ll be Brazil,” he said, chasing after the ball. I watched him run away and found I couldn’t follow. As he disappeared amidst the roiling bodies, I turned away and walked slowly home. 

It was late August and the summer evening light was waning. The sky in the west was a deep amber and the first chill of autumn could be felt on the breeze. In Japan, the people of Okinawa were sleeping soundly in their beds.  

*

Billy Craven is a teacher living in Dublin, Ireland. He has had short stories and poetry published in a variety of literary magazines including Ram Eye Press, The Madrigal and Paper Lanterns. His first full-length manuscript was longlisted for the Mercier Prize. Twitter/X: @billycraven2