The Redhead by Greg Blake Miller
Clyde had been watching the redheaded customer talk to herself for a good 10 minutes. He thought about her unpleasant childhood, her ostracized adolescence, her alienated adulthood. She came to the cash register, a copy of Self magazine in hand, still chatting with her imaginary friend. "It's a darling store," she said. "You should come down here sometime."
Clyde decided he should answer and relieve her isolation.
"I come here every day," he said with a smile.
The redhead pulled back her hair, pointed at the ear bud, and mouthed, "I'm on the phone."
She went home to an empty apartment and threw off the ear bud.
"We sure fooled him," she told her imaginary friend.
Idle Thoughts by Geoff Schumacher
The mayor called his weekly press conference to order. "As you know, I'm the happiest mayor in the world," he began.
He outlined several redevelopment projects in various stages of completion. A reporter raised his hand. The mayor's showbiz grin disappeared.
"Mayor, what about the ethics charges?"
"Steve, I don't see any merit to them."
As the reporter pressed the issue, the mayor imagined having the reporter taken out to the desert and executed. The image of Steve buried to his neck in the desert pavement, sweating profusely and pleading for his life, brought a smile back to his face.
"But mayor, what do you say—"
"Thank you, everyone. See you next week."
The Other Plot Against America by Scott Dickensheets
Steve Wynn skidded into the vault—now obscenely open—on pajama'd feet, knocking over Munch's "The Scream." Awake now, he frantically scanned his treasure room. What'd they take? The art: all there. He darted to the "Vegas" shelves. The "real Roy" files? Intact. The original manuscript of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, which located the American dream at a leather bar? Untouched. Then he saw the terrible absence: in the light dust, a clean spot in the perfect circumference of a mason jar. He gaped.
Outside, the Raelian ninja squad slipped into a minivan, gently tucked the last remaining jar of Howard Hughes' urine into a padded box and headed for the lab.
Starbucks Girl by Sito Negron
When I woke up I knew it would be the best day of my life. I drove down the corner Starbucks and ordered a small coffee. They call it "tall." I smiled at the waitress. She smiled back, and licked her lips. I waited for her break. We left together, music blaring, windows down. Her skirt crept up above her knee. I touched her skin. We trembled. My eyes filled with tears. Joy? Sorrow? Guilt? I hit the gas and we drove to the desert. Nobody could see us. Rain came down and we rolled up the windows. The car filled with steam.
It was a fantasy. I think I'll call it, "Las Vegas."
The Loop by Ken Miller
He grabbed the mop handle tighter and tighter, feeling the skin begin to tear.
It was the only way he could manifest his rage and get away with it.
"It's the last time I'll tell you."
Words he heard before. Words that made him look blankly ahead and miss the rest of the one-sided conversation.
Didn't matter. His boss' dirt-encrusted shoes on the wet hallway told him all he needed to know.
Start over.
The story of his life from now on. But he wasn't a fresh slate. A few tattoos while inside, but otherwise nothing had changed.
Every day a new beginning. Every day a "last time."
Grab the handle tighter. Pain's real.
Don't Know Why by Steve Bornfeld
Why have the eyes rolled open so wide? So suddenly. On fire. With fright.
Don't know why.
Rolling thunder wracks the body. Back arches, chest heaves, screams for breath, head tucked, a suffering, quivering question mark. Mouth opens, only gasps. Pool of yellow liquid. Control is lost.
Reflexively, I reach out to comfort, my arm batted away. Violently. Someone crumbling before me.
Don't know why.
Don't know the heart—ethereal, poetic, unknowable—finally speaks, throwing off poets, songwriters and dreamers, staring down doctors in volcanic defiance, declaring that the ending is beginning.
Now I know.
One heart is dying.
One is breaking.
Still, I don't know why.
I ask.
Silence.
Why?
Don't know why.
Prey by Josh Bell
She could smell him a mile away. On the top, it was a mix of cheap cologne, cigarette smoke and alcohol, but underneath it was just the tangy, coppery smell of blood, always blood. She followed him from the bar, sticking close but not too close. This was easy prey, she knew, but the thrill of the hunt was still there. It was always there.
She overtook him as he passed an alley and pulled him roughly into the dark. There was no need for subtlety here. He didn't even make a sound before she sunk her teeth into him, tasting the tangy, coppery taste. Life was sweet, she thought, but death was sweeter.
The Battle Rap by Damon Hodge
Yo, yo, you're a carbohydrate and I'm just off Atkins.
I'll eat you, your crew and use ya'll shirts as napkins.
I wanted to battle, but wisely you took a pass.
Cuz you know I finish first, never last, stay high as a giraffe's ass.
Now I got yo lame ass cornered, witness my sinister smile,
Bitch, you ain't Eminem and this ain't '8 Mile.'
I'm hot, you're not, but claim you're hot to death.
I polled your old girlfriends—the hottest thing's your breath.
To Buddhists, my rhymes are lyrical Nirvana. To Catholics, I'm revered like the Pope.
To Muslims, I'm honorable like the prophet Muhammad, and even Rastafarians say that I'm dope.
Just Say No by Joe Schoenmann
Pusher Man shows up as we were informed, under the 9th Street bridge, waiting for his hookup. We show up instead. "All your drugs, and no one gets hurt." Our HK 9mm's are pointed at his head. Surprise, then a smile. "Yeah, sure." He pauses. "I gotta take off my shirt first." Gun to his temple, he does it slowly. A string's wrapped several times around his waist. Like a pack of gum, he unwinds it. When there's no more string on his waist, it hangs from his pants. He pulls them down, then yanks hard and groans as a plastic bag of pills falls from his ass.
"All yours," he says.
Getaway Car by John Katsilometes
John climbed out of the new white Uphoria ZX and poked his head into the blemished 1989 Polecat 6000.
"Can you come with me?" John asked his brother, Bill, driver of the Polecat. "I've never returned a car before. It could get dicey."
Into the showroom they strode.
"I'm returning a Uphoria ZX," John said, offering a set of keys.
"What's the matter?" the man behind the counter asked.
"I don't want it," John said.
"What! Didn't you sign the deal?" the man said.
"No," John said.
"Amen!" Bill said. "Let's go!"
They settled back into the Polecat.
"God bless the Polecat," Bill said.
"You got that right," John said, "and it's paid for."
Consumption by Stacy J. Willis
Should we do something about Oprah? Should someone tell her it's getting weird? Gotten weird? That devoting an entire hour to My Favorite Things, accepting worship from audience members, explaining "why I smell so good" is grotesque?
I slide my knife through warm chocolate cake. Fall's here. Outside my window, a bird lays dead on a red leaf. The neighbor's cat killed it—boredom, not hunger. I watched. I watch everything.
My caretaker enters. "Do you want to sit up? Roll over?" She motions to pulleys above my 600-pound body.
"No."
Why I smell so good is: I devour cake. My favorite things are birds. Boredom demands that you eat or be eaten.
1325 N. Main St., Las Vegas, NV by Joshua Longobardy
When Victoria woke up, she was inside a coffin, beneath six feet of moist earth.
But, of course, she wasn't aware of this. (She knew only that it was dark, and that the air she labored to breathe was warm and impenetrable, with an overpowering scent of limes, which—sticking to her tonsils, thickening her saliva—she could taste.)
Nor was she aware that it was her 13th birthday. Nor that a quarter-mile away her parents were again elegizing their only daughter—for whom, three days earlier, they had buried all hope for a miracle.
She was unaware of it all.
For Victoria had just risen from the imperturbable dreams of a two-year coma.
That Summer by Kristen Peterson
"That's funny," she said, stoned and smiling. "Did they ever tell you that you were in the wrong house? Did they even ask who you were?"
"No," Anna said.
"So you missed the party?"
Shooing a mosquito, Anna nodded yes, then looked at her new friend, rocking on a wobbly deck chair.
"Yeah, I watched TV with them, then left."
They sat in silence, one imagining the event, another recalling it.
Anna said little more that evening. Everyone realized, while in her company, that people talk too much.
When Anna died, the chatter returned. Nobody would have guessed—not even the two of them—on this, the first night of their friendship, how loud life could be.