What Happened at Alamein

It's now three days since the other brought me my last meal. I know it's three days because I've checked through the door flap six times, once each morning and evening, but the tray I pushed out on Sunday night is still there. Or rather it isn't any more, I pulled it back in this morning. There were a few grains of rice still stuck to the plate, plastered to the unhealthy-looking gravy stain. I picked them off and chewed them slowly one by one, washing them down with water. At least I have an unlimited supply of tap water. One can survive for a long time on water.

December 2014's edition of Long Story, Short Journal is a Kafkaesque psychological puzzler: 'What Happened at Alamein', with a photo courtesy Curtis Poe. Readers are brought inside the attic hideaway of a recluse who has seemingly been abandoned by his minder, who is also his twin brother. Author Robert Grossmith has published one print novel 'The Empire of Lights' with Hamish Hamilton, as well as two e-novels. CLICK HERE TO READ 'WHAT HAPPENED AT ALAMEIN.'

Fliers

 She wakes up the way she always does, quickly and slowly. Her pulse, quick quick slow, quick quick slow. Quick, the adrenalin that flashes in her and it feels like she’s ready to run, to fly, the fooled, frail, exhausted body. Slow, being the fog. The numb-skulling pea-souper that doesn’t lift till two in the afternoon. All because of the goddamn pills; the pills she took first for performance anxiety, then when Frank died, and now she is enslaved to their little white wiles.

The August 2014 edition of Long Story, Short Journal is 'Fliers' by UK writer Nichola Bendall, with artwork by Zoë J. Murdoch. The story brings us intertwining narratives of three individuals struggling against lives of confinement, when flight is what they desire. Against the backdrop of political elections, 'Fliers' employs a subtle use of satire, encouraging readers to consider the consequences of both action and inaction. CLICK HERE TO READ 'FLIERS'.

Blame it on the Rain

View fullsize

Photo © Pierre Melloul

It is always raining when I do these things. Any port in a storm, gimme shelter from the storm, stormy weather, raindrops keep falling on my head. My eyes will be turning red soon. Oh. Pathetic fallacy...

'Blame it on the Rain' is a psychologically complex portrait of a woman whose mind is swinging between grasping need and gravid interiority. Michelle Auerbach, author of The Third Kind of Horse, brings us the stylistically unique May 2014 edition of Long Story, Short Journal. Photo by Pierre Melloul. CLICK HERE TO READ 'BLAME IT ON THE RAIN'.