Farewell to Storyville

by Mina Seymore

Storyville, New Orleans -- June 1904

The air is sticky hot against my cheeks, but at least it smells of rain clouds and not cigar smoke. Next door in the saloon, the Professor is really going to town on the keyboard. I can hear the sound of the piano floating up to my second-floor window. Read more.

Dad's Got a Girlfriend

by Sarah Casey

"She won't ever be my mother, but maybe, if I let her, she'll be my friend." Read more.

Shorts from NYC

by Adam Jeffries Schwartz

An Armani Mistake

Your father wrapped his loneliness in Armani couture: in suits, in seafoam green suits, in shirts, in shoes, in overcoats with just a whisper of herringbone and the shoulder pads of a linebacker.

He'd have worn Armani hats if they had made them, if he'd looked good in hats. But they didn't and he didn't, so his head was bare. Read more.

Stall

by Simon Maslin

She stalled out, more dramatically this time--engine spluttering into a grim silence born of inexperience, stumbling across the line and halting without hope of further progress. She stalled and the tears began to flow, drifting down her flushed cheeks like lazy summer rain, framing blue eyes with a wet halo of nervous terror. Read more.

Just a Little Old Cat Lady

by Jolene Dawe

The old woman watched the men approach her with an expression of serenity upon her face. This did not suit the men--boys, really--well at all. Rather, it incited them. The leader, a child not yet out of his teen years, snarled at her as they reached her. "It's dangerous, Granny, to walk alone at night down dark alleys. Unless you enjoy this sort of thing." Read more.