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 Welcome
to issue twenty-two of
Fiction Weekly. This
Sunday, we're excited to
showcase “Damaged Goods ” by
Ryan Crider.
Fiction Weekly
offers readers the best
in new fiction 52 times
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Damaged Goods
by
Ryan Crider
Kale took the Department of
Corrections up on its offer
of one month’s stay in a St.
Louis treatment center, an
alternative to sixty days in
jail for violating his
probation. And then after
he’d survived that month and
was as cured as they could
get him, he came back into
Clofton and found his
apartment as dirty and
under-furnished as he’d left
it. The electricity was
still off, as it had been
most of the summer, and now
the phone was dead, too.
Devon wasn’t there waiting
for him. She’d lost her
game of chicken with a
Burlington Northern train at
the downtown crossing one
bright July morning and now
was tucked safely away in a
shady plot at the back of
the Odd Fellows Cemetery.
She wouldn’t have been
waiting for him, anyway, not
only because she wasn’t the
waiting type, but also
because she’d turned her
attention towards first one
of their old friends and
then another. And so far as
Kale knew she’d never even
heard he was gone or where
he’d gone to. Everything
else was the same, though –
spiders on the walls, no
power, nothing in the
cupboards.
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One Tough Cookie
by
Emily Spreng Lowery
“This is your final
warning,” Aunt Bethany told
my mother. “Next time I find
a stranger passed out on
your bed, naked as a
jaybird, Cory’s moving in
with me. And that’s that.”
Mom and I were silent. My
stomach lurched.
Aunt Bethany had been
telling my mother for months
to shape up: that when you
had a fifth-grade boy at
home, a weekly schedule that
consisted of one night of
heavy drinking, two days of
recovery, and four overnight
shifts as a mini-mart
manager was not acceptable.
I argued that mom usually
called to make sure I
brushed my teeth and did my
homework – and she always
kept us well stocked with
Twix bars – but Aunt Bethany
dismissed my protests with a
frustrated sigh....
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Things of All Sizes
by
Max Fisher-Cohen
I live with my mother. My
older brother is here too,
but only since Thanksgiving,
which was about three weeks
ago. He was supposed to head
back to D.C. a few days
after the funeral. Mom won’t
stop talking about how he
should have gone back, he’s
going to lose his job, on
and on. Me, I only work
part-time, and I spend some
time with my girlfriend,
Ellen, but I also spend a
lot of time at home watching
TV, or with my mom....
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The Hardest Science
by
Michelle Reed
I met Drew at an art show I
catered for the students he
taught at the university.
He asked me out, and I said
yes because he seemed
grounded, which I assumed
made him a terrible artist,
and because it had been a
long time between offers. I
said yes because I was over
thirty in a town that
recycled 19-year-olds. I
was single with a café and
no children, and so I said
yes to breakfast in the
afternoon. We met at my
café, and he drank black
coffee and didn’t salt his
eggs....
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 Gavin
& Gwen
by
Theo Patterson
If the baby's a boy, I think
I'll name him Gavin. It's
kind of lame since I never
heard that name before I
listened to Bush.
They’re a band. The lead
singer's name is Gavin,
Gavin Rossdale. He's a great
singer, and he's really
cute. He's married to Gwen
Stefani. She’s a singer,
too. They're both beautiful
and rich, and they write
great songs. I listened to
this one song, "Glycerine,"
like ten thousand times. I
used to listen to it every
night. I'd put it on repeat
and go to bed with my
headphones on so I wouldn’t
bother my mom. And don't get
me started about "I'm just a
girl." That's a Gwen Stefani
song, a No Doubt
song. It's like my anthem. I
guess I’m just really into
music. So, who knows? Maye
my baby will be a rock star.
If it’s a girl, maybe I’ll
name her Gwen, but I don’t
really like that name. I
think I might buy one of
those baby naming books,
just to see what other names
there are.
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 Memorial
Day
by
Michael Bible
A girl in a yellow dress
twirled a small baton then
blew her whistle and the
parade began. Two black fire
trucks followed the girl,
sirens moaning. Next, on
horseback rode twelve men
with curling waxed mustaches
dressed in stiff crimson
robes and blue powdered
wigs. Arabian satin with
silver tassels draped the
men’s calico horses. Behind
them a drill team in wedding
dresses started a maneuver,
spinning rifles with fixed
bayonets high into the sun,
moving their veils aside to
catch them. Behind the drill
team nude chamber musicians
played the 1812 overture.
Then a long flatbed truck
passed with schoolgirls
reenacting Normandy. The
front hatch of their duck
boat squeaked up and down as
the schoolgirls fell limp
onto the sand, fake guns
rattling, their pigtails
flapping out beneath their
helmets. Then came the
animals. A small heard of
buffalo painted white, lions
and tigers pulling empty
Amish buggies, black
children riding drugged
elephants, a dozen peacocks
in full plumage roaming
free.
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The
Long Answer by
Josh Canipe
I pulled that trigger
on principle. And that’s
what I’ve been trying to
tell everybody, but they
don’t want to hear it. Even
Alyssa and Cynthia look at
me with their eyebrows all
arched, that heart-breaking
look in their eyes, when I
try to explain this. Still,
it’s true: sometimes a man
has to fight to keep things
from creeping into his life,
from pecking at it until
it’s nothing, even if those
things are his neighbor’s
chickens, which were
trespassing on his property,
and even if the cops show up
twenty minutes later, guns
drawn and bodies safely
behind the doors of their
cars, to confiscate his
rifle. That’s the image
everyone in the world seems
to have of me right now,
thanks to Channel 6, Tabitha
Adams reporting. They see
me as a man with a rifle,
picking off chickens one by
one out of fear....
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Where There is Rain
by
Anne
Valente
A light rain pelts the
bar-room windows, the glassy
panes reflecting pairs of
headlights as they cut
through the evening fog
outside. The bar is dank,
near-deserted save for two
guys shooting pool in the
corner, their FedEx uniforms
still on after a long day of
work. Adrian and Nick sit
at the bar, the only other
two patrons in the entire
place, and the 9 o’clock
news hums on a television
screen above their heads.
Adrian can hear the hollow
clinking of billiard balls
as Nick rambles on, waving a
Miller Lite in one hand and
an unfiltered Pall Mall in
the other. Adrian hates the
smell of smoke, but he nods
and listens anyway as Nick’s
cigarette carves trails of
white in the air, the
tendrils escaping toward the
ceiling....
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 The
Cigarette by
Ajani Burrell
A cloud blotted out the full
moon. Across the courtyard
the neighbor’s apartment one
floor lower glowed like the
crimson eye of a hearth
oven. The pervasive
damp-earth scent of
Frankfurt in spring had
disappeared. I was sure I
could smell violets from the
adjacent garden, vaguely
resembling her perfume. She
moved from room to room,
long ebony hair dancing in
her wake. I took a deep
breath.
“So,” my wife
said. “How was the
cigarette?”
“What?”
Her fingertip
caught a page’s edge in her
book. “Real smooth,
Charles.”
“Oh,” I said. “It
was fine.”
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The Bad Thing That Happens
to Good People
by
Ellen Herbert
It was the summer of the red
eye pulsing from my
dashboard. Whenever it
appeared I had two minutes
to pick up the long tube
attached to the ignition,
put its end in my mouth, and
blow. Hard. Or else
Arlington County would cause
my Honda Civic to come to a
stop and a probation officer
named Chuck Corleone- yes,
like the godfather- would
give me a not so godly or
fatherly summons to appear
at the courthouse, the
courthouse attached to the
jailhouse.
“Bing,” the eye
announced itself one rainy
afternoon just after we
merged onto the beltway. We
were coming from the sports
camp on Braddock Road where
we’d picked up seven year
old Penny, who was riding
shotgun....
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text
The Evolution of Tulips
by
Lauren
Yaffe
I start walking and my mind
is blank, calm. Suddenly
I'm furious. I remember an
incident: a woman holding
the door as I entered a
museum. As I passed through
and thanked her, she hissed,
"I wasn't holding the door
for you!" I saw,
then, another woman behind
me, the person for whom the
door was being held. I
continued in to the
exhibit--oversized canvasses
of complex flowers--but for
me they were all a blur.
Minutes later, the woman who
had hissed tapped me. "Your
rudeness is beyond belief,"
she said, and walked off.
This all happened a while
ago, several years....
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 Not
Sally by
Jen Gann
Before we could begin the
drive south to Dan’s
mother’s funeral, before I
mixed three homemade gin and
tonics for myself, before I
jutted my hips alone, in my
dorm room, and packed,
red-faced and frenzied, for
a week of mourning with a
family that wasn’t mine, Dan
took his Greek exam. He was
studying Greek to translate
the Bible. He wanted to go
to Divinity School after
college. He was, he said,
interested in religion in an
academic manner, one that
made him talk about
Christianity in a looming,
abstract way—as though it
was something distant and
unfelt. In his practicing
life, he drank as much as
any of us, lied when he had
to, and did what he wanted.
We went to the same small,
liberal arts college and we
were friends, unexplainably,
from nearly the start. When
his mother died, he didn’t
mention God at all....
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Present
Imperfect by
Suzanne Samples
Even though I knew how badly she had wanted to go, contacting the
universities is not the most difficult of my duties. Using the past
perfect tense is more difficult, especially because our past was far
from perfect.
Each story I make
different, each excuse a bit more creative; present perfect makes more
sense to me, even if it’s a lie. I bet that she would have never
expected this level of creativity from me, her scientific-minded
roommate who had never written anything other than lab reports....
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MONSTERS & VIRGINS
by
Chris Kammerud
Bobby felt sure if Cindy
caught him staring again
that there’d be no going
back, that she’d forever see
him as a kind of mutant. A
giant, mucus-covered eyeball
stuffed into a jacket and
jeans, absurdly trying to
pass himself off as a
thirteen year-old boy.
It was hard for Bobby to
avoid her though, and
therefore hard to avoid what
he considered a shameful
amount of staring. They
lived on the same street,
rode the same bus, and
shared three of the same
classes: science, history,
and gym. Cindy was in the
habit of wearing small,
bright pieces of clothing –
peach camisoles on top of
sparkling cut-off khakis -
and at school year’s start
Bobby had made the mistake
of watching her too closely,
becoming mesmerized by some
glitter on her thigh or
shadow between her breasts.
Inevitably there were times
she caught him, days in
science when he stared too
long at her bouncing foot
and bared calf, days when
she would roll her eyes and
turn away with a frustrated,
almost musical, sigh that
brought Bobby a terrible
delight all its own. He
suffered through a month of
Cindy’s bittersweet
reactions before adopting
the art of teenage
espionage, reducing himself
to sideways glances over his
shoulder or quick peeks from
behind his locker door....
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here for full text
 Skin
Fold by
Alex Myers
They never rested during
rest hour. Naps were for
the junior campers, the
little girls who cried with
homesickness, who wore
frilly pink suits to swim
lessons, who adorned their
arms with the lumpy macramé
bracelets they made in arts
and crafts.
But they were the senior
campers, fourteen years old,
and they never rested.
Their counselor, Beth,
herded them back to the bunk
after lunch – the heat of
the day – waited until all
twelve of them had lain down
on their beds, grown quiet,
before she left them, easing
the screen door shut behind
her. A moment of stillness,
heat, in which one of the
girls, genuinely tired,
might drift asleep, slipping
instantly into a dream of
home or flying, the brief
twitch of eyelids before
Michelle’s footsteps woke
her....
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here for full text
When I Saw
Jimmy Coulston by
Joseph Scott Celizic
Before Anne and I broke
up, before we took a thirty day break to pray about our future, and
before I dreaded her phone calls that flowed like rain runoff into a
gutter, her father got us tickets to a boxing match. It was our first,
and neither of us knew what to expect. I had pictured a mob of
Indianapolis’s upper class in a big arena, something similar to the
Philadelphia ring in Rocky, but when we pulled up to the
one-story Farm Bureau Building at the State Fairgrounds, I knew it would
be something completely different....
Click Here for Full Text
 In the beginning all I
wanted was a normal life.
Not that I had any
experience in this matter.
The only kind of life I knew
how to lead was the twitchy,
angst-ridden life of the
overeducated. I'd had a
revelation of sorts: the
revelation that another year
of sifting through
art-history arcana, prowling
the library archives and
living on vending-machine
food, would vault me
straight past twitchy and
into spasmodic. I wanted a
change. I wanted a regular
old job; I wanted to lay
down my burden at 5:01 and
say, perhaps aloud, “Another
day, another dollar”; I
wanted to move out of the
intellectual ghetto. So that
spring, I took an indefinite
leave of absence from my
doctoral program and moved
into what seemed like a nice
apartment on York Avenue...
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here for full text
The Onion Was Me
by
Paul Michel
Not for the life
of him would Elliott consider beginning a story like this:
A man walked into the tavern
where I was drinking and set
a life-sized bust of John
Wayne on the bar.
It’s not his style.
He’s come to accept that,
for better or worse, he’s a
straight-up domestic fiction
guy; stories of hospital
vigils and turgid summers at
the lake house, coming of
age conundrums and the
jangling triangles of
middle-aged romance. He
learned how to write these
stories in graduate school,
nearly twenty years ago. He
writes them still, late into
the night, deep in his
basement study, while his
wife and two sons sleep in
the house above...
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SNIPPINGS by
Dawn Abeita
When the phone rang
early on Christmas morning,
Calvin knew it would wake Kathryn. He picked up the
phone in the kitchen. “That was Joelle,” he said a
few minutes later when he appeared in the bedroom
doorway. “I thought you were still asleep.”
“Well, she’s up early,” said
Kathryn.
“It’s not early there,” he
said. “Remember?” Their
daughter had moved to New
York nearly a year ago and
Kathryn was not adjusting to
the time difference very
well...
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here for full text
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There is electricity in the city tonight
and we fly through like two bats out of hell, breaking free. We’re
hyenas and vipers. We laugh and snake and throw our weight around, and
now as the Cadillac hits 85 and we’re rounding the turn, I can feel my
balls drop. This is what being a man feels like.
Tony screams, “Fuck yeah,
Mikey, we’re flying.” I
keep my eyes on the road. I
want to see it as it
disappears. Night time, and
the headlights cut two holes
on the pavement and the dark
in front of us. The Caddy
was just sitting there, in
front of the Circle K,
engine running. I
remembered what my older
brother Freddy had said to
me after his birthday before
he left for college. He
said, “Hey Mikey, the one
thing I regret is I didn’t
do enough crazy shit when I
was young. Now that I’m 18,
fuck, I have too much fun,
it goes on my permanent
record.” I didn’t know what
exactly he meant, so he laid
it out to me as he smoked a
cigarette and I watched on
the back porch. He said
he’d never spray painted his
name on any wall. He said
he’d never really gotten
into a fight, or done
something real crazy like
stolen a car...
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 Torch
Song
by
Dan
Webre
It’s coming up on three o’clock and I’m thinking
about who’s got the best price on beer when Irv
walks over to where I’m weeding the water garden. I
look up from my crouched position, one hand holding
a dripping mass of hydrilla.
“Jerry, I need you
to make one more delivery
today,” Irv says in his
thick, Mediterranean accent.
I don’t actually know where
Irv’s from. We’ve never
discussed it. But then, he
never asked me about a
four-year gap in my
employment history when I
was applying for this job,
so I don’t get too personal
with him.
Irv reaches out
with two folded slips of
paper as I dry my hands.
I read the address on the
smaller piece of paper, 513
Clarence Rumpe Ave. I
couldn’t tell you where that
is, but I recognize the name
– the Rumpes were once very
prominent in this area.
I look at Irv for a moment
hoping for more information.
When he doesn’t offer any, I
decide not to push him.
Irv’s got kind of a short
fuse, and besides, I can
check the map of Springdale
I keep hidden in the truck
once I get out of sight of
the nursery – Irv considers
maps a sign of weakness...
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A
PATTERN OF CHAOS
by
Christopher
Lowe
 The
ducks had come to eat his grass again, but this time
Barrow was ready. Squat little things, all
brown, they made loud retching noises when their
brown beaks weren’t filled with tufts of his perfect
Malaysian Summer Grass. Barrow, who sat behind
his row of hedges, hose in hand, could see the
Phillips boy leaving for school, a huge backpack
hoisted up on his narrow shoulders. It seemed to
Barrow to be too much weight for such a young boy...
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