It started out like any other Sunday, a breakfast of ham and eggs in the big orange booth at the back of Dupar’s coffee shop. A nonthreatening kind of place; you can sit and read the Times, the coffee keeps coming, nobody cares. After 4 cups and the funnies finished, Bill looked over at Nan and said: “ I don’t want to see your parents today”.

Nan slowly put down her paper, looked up over glasses balanced on the tip of her nose and said defensively to the wide eyed blonde haired man, “How come. You have to work?”

“Nah, let’s do something different today. We always do the same thing”.

“Yeah, but honey, this is Sunday, the day we see mom and dad.”

Bill was bored and didn’t know how to fix it. He had one of those deadly nine to five jobs. Not much incentive to get out of bed other than having to put food on the table and pay the rent.

Bill and Nan had been together for 20 some years having been childhood sweethearts; never knowing any one other than each other in or out of bed. Bill usually let Nan run their social life and anything else that needed running. Nan, the competent one. He didn’t ask much of himself, Bill didn’t.

Dark haired, not exactly pretty but nice looking enough, Nan discovered writing and painting and along with two teen aged sons, lots of friends, had plenty pulling at her. Nan liked things in their place, a predictable life. Bill had deep -seated aspirations but poor self- direction and was starting to look around for someone else to hold the reins. He started looking for problems that love overlooks. Flaws. Two kids later, Nan had grown a little hippy and soft unlike their idyllic hard bodied school days. Her sweaters never set quite right on her shoulders, one side or the other continually slipping down showing a slip or bra strap, hair on the frizzy side.

A good place to start.

Unmarried Bertha, the new accountant, 2 cubicles down from Bill, sweet as pie. A snappy dresser, very trim and neat and blonde to boot. She kept up on current events and had a good sense of humor. So nice, in fact, he already had coffee with her at Dupar’s the other night when he told Nan he had to work late. Bill and Bertha needed to talk over a couple of work related issues they eventually got around to. They found they enjoyed each other immensely and had lots of dreams in common. They talked about places both wanted to visit and hopes. Things unmotivated people talked about but don’t do.

“I’m going to do something different, Nan, you go see your parents” Bill said.

“Okay, have it your way. You going to see your girlfriend or something?” a prophetic attempt at humor.

A long pause, “Yes, as a matter of fact, I think I am, “ he said, his heart pounding in his chest. Nan sat back hard against the orange plastic seat.

“Oh, really, huh? That supposed to be funny?” said paling Nan. Bill nervously played with his fork and spoon pushing the napkin this way and that. His confidence grew as he heard himself speak the truth. Frustrations spewed forth, waking from a dream. He knew he wanted out.

“Let’s go talk to someone, “ Nan said.

“No”.

Quiet Bill and his made up mind that orange Sunday at Dupar’s over breakfast and the Sunday funnies.


Dancer/choreographer turned painter/writer, Neila Mezynsk has fiction and poetry published and forthcoming on Snow Monkey, Word Riot, Kill Author, Dogzplot, Scrambler, Mud luscious among several others.  Mezynski also writes art and music reviews for online and in print magazines.

    Train whistles in the wintertime make him feel lonely. The sounds slip through emaciated air too weak to hold them, leaving cylinders of hollow noise to fly through the sky. He pulls a hand from deep pocket to fist up his suitcase.
    He feels important on trains, and takes them when he can. He does not speak because he knows important people do not say much, so he keeps quiet among the quiet and wonders why train whistles make him feel lonely.
    He lives in a house that sits clustered amongst similar houses, each painted a different color, but their shapes are all more or less the same. They remind him of people - more or less the same, but with different colors. He drives a foreign car because it makes him feel like he lives somewhere else.
    One time he vacationed atop a mountain. There were no trains up there, but he found trees, blanketed with snow. Another time, he went to the ocean. There were no clustered houses, but he saw waves, foamy at the top just before they broke. Both reminded him of white smoke punching from a train, which made him think of train whistles in the wintertime, which made him feel lonely.
    When his train pulled into the station, he walked onto a platform teeming with faces that seemed more or less the same. They reminded him of the houses in his neighborhood. He made his way through the moving mass until he caught sight of his reflection in a glass door. In the reflection, he saw a smock of white hair, and he thought of the waves, foamy at the top just before they broke. He wondered if he was about to break, too. Then he remembered that he forgot his suitcase on the train, and watched as they both pulled away with a whistle, but this time, it was different. This time, the train whistle did not make him feel lonely. He looked back at his reflection, and smiled.


Foster Trecost began writing while living in Italy and continues today from Philadelphia. Paying jobs had him working within various aspects of corporate tax, but he left that life last year to spend the summer back in Italy. His work has appeared or will appear in Elimae, Pequin, decomP, and The Linnet's Wings, among other places.

Easy adj. Capable of being accomplished or acquired with ease; posing no
difficulty.

Cara was the easiest girl in school. Or so everyone said. What little I
knew of her did little to convince me otherwise. She wore her skirt two
inches above regulation, and Mark Hallet said he'd given her a seeing to
behind the bike sheds whilst they'd both been skiving double maths.

You see, where I come from you're guilty until proven innocent when it
comes to proper comportment. You either shag any girl who'll have you, or
you're a raving bender. My Uncle Arthur says the latter ought to be strung
up by their unmentionables. That's the way he speaks, my Uncle Arthur.

Arthur is not my real uncle; he's my mum's new husband. She is a monophobe.
So afraid of being alone that she lets Arthur press bruises onto her milky
white forearms and keep the bank cards to their joint account in his own
overstuffed wallet. Some other phobias you might like to know about
include:

- Phalacrophobia. Fear of becoming bald.
- Ranidaphobia. Fear of frogs.
- Primeisodophobia. Fear of losing one's virginity.

"I don't 'ave all day," is what Cara says when we get back to her house. A
tea party of dolls stare up at me with sinister intent, she tells me she
shares a room with her sister. I fumble with the buttons of her blouse and
she watches me disinterestedly as I transform from a boy into a man.

It doesn't feel any different and, when I tell Cara I'm leaving, she
doesn't bother to show me out. Uncle Arthur claps me on the back when he
finds out, and Mark Hallet makes up dirty jokes all through combined
physics. Cara never says a word to me again, and my mum leaves a belated
box of little foil wrappers on my bedside table.

Putting out is easy I will later tell my own son, it's the bringing up
that's the hard part.

Jessica Powell is a third year history undergrad at the U of
Cambridge, UK. She likes to write about anything and everything. With the
notable exception of material intended to help her obtain a degree.
Contact: jcp51@cam.ac.uk

Did I ever tell you I played the flute? Not too important; I quit when I left high school. Pretty weird for a guy to play flute. That’s an instrument for girls and women.

Today wasn’t too bad. Jim and I ate up at that bar and grill for lunch. That’s why you smell smoke on me. No, I didn’t smoke.

You played the clarinet? Did you like it? Why don’t you play anymore? Oh. Yeah, once there’s no band to play with, it is kind of dull to twiddle around by yourself. Quit making fun of me for playing the flute! “Married five years and I never knew!” you say. Yes, I think I’ve got it somewhere still. Probably at my parent's house. Probably in the attic or something. Yeah, I think I knew you played clarinet. Remember the first visit to your folk's house? We looked in your yearbook. Hon, this steak is awesome.

That first visit was great. 24 years old and we snuck off into the woods behind your house…

What else don’t you know about me? I’m not going to say it out loud, but I’m remembering this girl who played flute, too. We rode around in her car one night listening to some old music. The windows were down and the new spring air was just beginning to breathe. She told me she thought it was cool that I played flute and something like there should be less lines between the sexes, and all I could think about then was that her nipples poked through her shirt in the breeze and I’d catch a glimpse of them when the moon came through just right. We never did kiss. But it was a great night.

What I’ll say outloud is that I had a puppy who died when I was ten. You say you know that already. I think in your eyes you want to know about that springtime ride, but I don’t want to tell you.

What about you? Tell me something I don’t know about you? You’re quiet and squinting, trying to think of something. Ok, you say. “I always wanted to play in a rock band. I had a crush on a boy in college who played bass.” You pause with a piece of green bean in your fork - you always eat them one at a time - “But now I think it was an envy crush.”

What’s that! I laugh.

You laugh too. “I wanted to be playing that bass in front of all those people.”

Why didn’t you ever do it?

“I don’t know. The sorority would have teased me, I guess. We’re so sensitive at that age. About what people think of us, you know?”

Who was more important to impress? The crowds or the girls?

“Well, that answer’s obvious.” You’re smiling like it’s a dirty joke.

I played the flute because mom and dad asked me at 5 what sound I liked best and they’d let me have the instrument. I said piano, but that was too expensive. Then I said I liked the high, fun sound in that Disney cartoon and I got a flute and lessons the next week. They never said anything when I went to college and left that instrument behind. But when I hear it, hear that sweet trill or thoughtful ponder in C# in a song on the radio, my fingers still press on the steering wheel and my lips pucker just a bit. I wonder if you’ll notice that now.


Lisa Rusczyk is the author of The Blue Pen, Sam the Night Person, and Full Moon in December, published by Club Lighthouse Publishing. She lives in North Alabama with her four cats.

They built the new dealership four years ago. I guess that means it's not new anymore, but nothing in the showroom or the service areas is broken. The coffee machine is one of those new sons of bitches, where the part that flips down has a spike that stabs deep into the heart of a tiny plastic cup. The coffee eventually comes out the bottom.

When Eddie brought us together in the morning to say it was all over, Anthony was the one who cried. That douchebag never made goal. What was there for him to cry about? Sam went and sat in her car. Mike walked back to Service with those guys and I'm sure he busted out his flask. Mike knew things in mysterious ways. He probably had it full the night before. The news, and the flask.

Me, I went to that coffee machine. That great big German fucker that I had to plug kiddie arcade tokens into, to get my customers a cup. Maybe it tastes better. But you never hand anyone effort, a tiny piece of yourself. There's nothing to apologize for when the coffee is perfect every time. Nothing but the cars. Who wants to apologize for those and then close a sale? Not me. Not like we were closing sales this year, anyway.

So I made a magical awful cup of coffee appear by pushing a button, and I took it outside. It was beautiful, the parking lot. Our giant American flag rattled the pole, and it snapped against the fat fall clouds.