Tag Archives: short stories

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

Posted on by Standard 4

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: “On the Rocky Shore” by Clayton Lister

Posted on by Standard Reply

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.

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

Posted on by Standard Reply

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: “Quantum Choices” by C Goth

Posted on by Standard 2

“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

Posted on by Standard 1

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

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

Posted on by Standard 2

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. 

Submissions open for “Sweet Hereafter”

Posted on by Standard

Submissions are open for issue #20 of Shooter Literary Magazine, with the theme of “Sweet Hereafter”.

We’re looking for stories, essays, memoir and poetry to do with afterlives: life after death, life after work, life after having a baby, life after divorce… Anything to do with what follows a major change in life, when someone or something ends and significant adjustment occurs. Pieces that treat heavy subject matter – grief, heartbreak, loss, bereavement, ageing, death – with a light or humorous touch would be especially welcome. A positive (or wild, or bizarre, or comic) spin on what comes after a difficult ending or change would be in keeping with both parts of the theme.

The theme is open to wide interpretation, but please adhere to the submission guidelines. In addition to thematic relevance, we seek engaging, elegant writing that maintains a high literary standard.

Writers should send short stories and non-fiction of 2,000-6,000 words and/or up to three poems by the deadline of June 22, 2025. Please submit according to the guidelines at https://shooterlitmag.com/submissions.

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

Posted on by Standard Reply

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: “If, Man, Son” by Al Crow

Posted on by Standard Reply

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: “Trash” by Bethany Swett

Posted on by Standard 1

Marg got used to the smell after her first week on the job. Slinging the slick black garbage sacks into the oily maw of the truck all morning, she got so steeped in the stench that she ceased to notice it. It was like water: once you were in it, you were wet. The smells, like drenching rain, only bothered you if you had something to keep nice in the first place.

She tied up her waist-length dreads after Cal, the jerk-off, pretended to feed them into the chomper on her first day. Jack, who drove the truck, more kindly suggested she might want to consider restyling if she didn’t want to end up processed like meat through a grinder. But her dreads were the product of years, connecting her way back to Burning Mans (Men?) of yore. Another life. She’d rather chop off a leg.

The loose bags sagging into each other on the sidewalk she tossed straight into the chomper. Trash cans and recycling got slotted into the mechanical arms and lugged in a big metallic hug into the bowels of the truck, then dumped back down again, like a kid too big to get picked up for long.

Marg hustled to the next set of bins on the worn-out street, its townhouses faded from lack of care and grayed-out by a drizzle of rain. The buildings were mostly brick with concrete stoops; sometimes old people shuffled around out front and hobos, towing errant shopping carts, rooted through the trash. Anyone looking like they had a job tended to scurry in and out like mice after cheese, wearing the cheap suits of office drudgery. Marg knew they looked down on her, if they looked at all, yet she wouldn’t trade places. She didn’t like sitting still, feeling pinned down.

She set a can into the last empty slot on the truck and hit the lift button. As the arms hauled up their load and dumped the contents, something clinked out onto the sidewalk near Marg’s boots. Its glint caught her eye, and she bent to pick it up: a silver ring set with a small diamond. Marg turned it over awkwardly with her thick padded gloves. She looked up at the nearest house, which had a matt-black door and window-frames, recently painted, not peeling like most of the others. No-one was racing out after a missing ring, anyway.

“Come on bird nest, let’s move it,” Cal yelled as the truck lumbered up the street, leaving Marg in its wake, gawking.

Quickly she tugged off her glove and shoved the ring in her pocket, fumbling with the zipper to yank it closed before hustling on up the street to catch the blundering truck, which was gassing and steaming like an old bull elephant.

Later, when Marg returned to the high-rise apartment she’d occupied for the last three years, she sat down and pulled the ring out of her pocket. It winked at her weakly in the dim light. She tried to slide it on. It was too small for her ring finger, but it fit on her pinkie. She twirled it there for a moment, then pulled it off and sank back into the sofa, opening up her phone.

She swiped and tapped to a familiar profile, bracing for the usual self-flagellating burn that came from scrolling his photos: the man she’d loved with the woman he’d left her for, living their best lives. The woman who, in fact, he’d been with before he did Marg the courtesy of leaving. She’d got better lately at resisting the urge to torture herself, but the ring had reminded her, and lured her back.

To her disappointment, though, his feed hadn’t been updated much for several months. Taking time… said one of his posts, captioning a mountainscape with a trail of hug emojis and hang in there buddy comments – and one saying, girls come and go but beer is always there!

With a crackle of anticipation Marg sat up and clicked through to the girlfriend’s profile page. She saw, among her numerous public pictures, the woman draped around the shoulders, torso, and assorted other body parts of a bronzed, toned, tall, and very much different man.

“Wow,” she exhaled to herself, flopping back into the cushions. She felt giddy, but also oddly queasy. Marg realised she was still in her work clothes, faintly off-gassing the morning’s garbage, and headed for the shower, scooping up the diamond ring from the table.

In the bathroom she shucked off her clothes and rummaged in a drawer, coming up with a thin silver chain. She slid off the cheap charm that had swung from it and replaced it with the ring. Squinting down at herself, she attached the chain around her neck, and looked up at the mirror, at the person standing amid the rising steam, bare but for a glint of light resting just above her heart.

One woman’s trash… Marg thought, fingering the ring. Maybe the saying would prove true for one man’s trash, too.

*

Bethany Swett works for a tech company by day and writes fiction the rest of the time. She has published short stories in Lilith, Quick Fiction, Bayou Magazine, 365 Tomorrows, and elsewhere. She lives in Denver, Colorado, with her dog Sushi.