la novia

valerie valdes

"Mara wanted to cry but she didn't dare. She wasn't even allowed to wear her shoes until she was seated in the back of her uncle's old Dodge. Her mother had never let her outside barefoot before. Clutching her suitcase, she sat between her silent older brothers as the car roared to life and took off down the dark street. The headlights cast everything around them into shadow, leaving only the path ahead illuminated. Homes she'd often ridden past on her bicycle were indistinguishable, featureless shapes like toys piled in a corner in the dark. Toys...

'Mami!' she cried. 'I left Victoria!'

Her mother turned to look back at her, smiling sadly. 'I'm sorry, hija,' she said. 'We'll get you another doll as soon as we can.'"

story

picture window

len kuntz

"I expect the glass to be cracked but it only wobbles. I go outside and see the culprit: this hairball cluster of what used to be a robin, one wing torqued stiff like a bent toilet brush, its tiny bird feet gone or sucked so far into its gut as to be invisible. I think about picking it up and wrapping it in newsprint and burying it back where we keep the garbage and recycle cans but I don’t do any of that. Instead I go inside and pour more coffee and then the next bird crashes into the window, only I’m watching clear-eyed as this one kisses it hard. That’s the problem with having windows that are too clean: it’s as if nothing’s there, no barrier or separation, while in the end it’s the very thing which does you in."

story

black rain

christopher hayes-kossmann

"'It’s been heavier,' she said.

'When?'

'In winter. Once.'

'Not this heavy,' I said. Out in the street the drains had filled and were vomiting filthy water up and over the gutters. The front yard was nothing but mud and leaves.

'Last time it was this bad it flooded the river,' she said. 'I saw a tram floating in the street.'

'I wasn’t there,' I said.

Rain ran down the glass, leaving dirty black trails. It was growing heavier. It was one forty-three, and there was no sign of the sun."

story

on losing my voice for a fortnight

kirsty logan

"Sounds take on a different texture. They seem richer and more varied. The wail of a police siren was deafening when it cut across a conversation; now it interrupts my thoughts pleasantly, as a logical punctuation to my train of thought. I listen to the siren pass, then carefully step back into my thoughts. The bark of a dog, the rustle of the trees, the squick of my wet trainers on the pavement: all these things are the soundtrack to the world, which human conversation does nothing but drown out. Words do not add anything useful."

story

the colouring-in book

editorial