Tag Archives: growing up

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. 

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: “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

Shooter Flash: “The Last Day of the Rest of Your Life” by Johanna Bernhuber

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It’s the first day of middle school and you’re still in bed. I laid out your clothes for you last night, warm from the dryer and freshly folded. Now, I pour your juice, flip your pancakes, and call your name for the third time. You already sleep like a teenager, though you’re one year and two months short.

Summer has been long. Your hands are more used to a fishing rod than a pen. Every day you trail grass and dirt into the house from your sneakers; your bare feet spatter chlorine trails across the kitchen floor. School seems like an impossibility after two months of total freedom.

You slouch to the counter and eat, monosyllabic. My upbeat chatter bounces off you like a cartoon forcefield. You carry your breakfast things to the sink and I give you a hug, which is momentarily accepted. I’m proud of you, I say, feeling the bird bones of your shoulder blades beneath the thick sweatshirt. You’ll do great. 

I hustle you out the door and grab my own keys, handbag, scarf. You hoist your new bulletproof backpack over one shoulder. We play your music in the car as you gaze out the window: wide front lawns, trees dripping crimson leaves. The right turn to your old school, where we turn left. You can probably ride this journey on your bike but not yet. For now you’re safe in my car.

I pull up at the kerb and can’t resist smoothing your hair, though you shrug me off. A big kid now. Have a good first day sweetheart, I say. You get out and swing your backpack over both shoulders. 

When you shut the car door, you stoop and give me a small wave. I can tell from the look on your face that you’re being brave, masking the nerves. A new school, new kids, new teachers. Part of you wants to get back in the car and drive back to summer, even as you lope toward the stone steps. I put on a big smile and wave back, thumbs up. I keep looking, and waving, just in case you look back again, one last time. 

You climb the steps alongside the other kids and all of you wait, one by one, to pass through the metal detectors, into the unknown.

*

Johanna Bernhuber is a psychologist who has written for the Chicago Sun-Times, and has published short fiction and nonfiction in Whitefish Review and Denver Quarterly. She has three children and lives in Illinois with her husband, one dog, and too many books.