Soft Earth

by Rod Drake

I thought I had ended my relationship very clearly and very definitely with Lucy. Things had gone well between us for the first couple of months, and Lucy had her charms, don’t misunderstand me. No one is all bad, except perhaps me, and I am working on my own problems, but I think I can deal with difficult situations and personalities pretty effectively, Lucy being just another case in point. Lucy fought, of course, but she wasn’t the first girl that I had to end it with; that’s how breakups go usually, at least mine do. Then came that drizzly, rainy Tuesday, shrouding everything in a soggy haze. I believed Lucy was out of my life forever, so imagine my surprise when she appeared at my door, disheveled, dirty and bloody, when I was sure that I had killed and buried her a week ago.

6S

Rod Drake is the Official 6S Author for Friday the 13th and Halloween. Boo!

La Llorona

by Joseph Grant

Eighty years ago, there lived a young factory worker named Pablo who fell in love from afar with the most beautiful Lucinda, youngest daughter of one of the wealthiest land owners in all of Sonora. Each day, Pablo would see her in the dusty and crowded marketplace on his way home for siesta and after a few weeks, he finally worked up the courage to speak to this raven-haired beauty with lovely and mysterious brown eyes that seemed to beckon him from a distance and then look right through him. At first, they met in secret by the lake, their rendezvous unbeknownst to her strict and steely father who upon learning of the young couple's trysts, forbade his daughter to see the young man ever again, so when Lucinda became pregnant by this nearly-indigent journeyman, her enraged father disowned her for bringing shame onto their house and as a result, threw her and his unborn bastard grandchild out on the street. Pablo and Lucinda lived on love and barely anything else and for a long time were very happy in the knowledge of two so in love, but when a second child was born, the two struggled to make ends meet with longer hours for him at the factory and her taking care of two young children and it left little in the way of time for the couple to be in the same room, let alone the same conversation, unless it was to exchange heated words of a couple growing quickly and coldly apart. With Pablo's new hours came many welcome diversions and one of them was a shapely 19 year-old named Marquetta who turned her womanly attentions towards the much-older 23 year-old and made him feel wanted again and when he started to work sometimes until the morning hours, Lucinda wasn't as naive as Pablo had hoped for and figured it out and as a tempestuous result, Pablo left her for a slightly younger woman, if only by a few months. The newspapers of the day would label it a 'crime of passion' when La Llarona, as they now called her, drowned her children and herself in the lake where she and Pablo once used to meet but for those who knew the couple, it was anything but, as the passion between the two had been worked to the bone for a long time and it was more of a crime of revenge they would say; so if sometime you're walking by the lake at midnight in Sonora and you think you see and hear the ghostly visage of beautiful young woman weeping, doomed to wander eternity in search of her lost children, maybe it's just the moonlight playing tricks on you and only the wind howling as the locals like to say so as not to disrupt tourism, but then again maybe, just maybe...it is what it is.

6S

Joseph Grant is one of 6S's favorite sons, and the hits just keep on coming.

Can I Take Your Order?

by Tia Napolitano

No, Ma'am, it's not at all an odd request that I cut your obese eight year old son's $25 steak up into bite-sized pieces before serving it to him. Sure, Sir, I'll take a picture of you pretending to take a bite of your underage girlfriend's crotch with a fork and knife, and by the way, that's very creative and funny. Nope, I don't mind at all that you place your hands on my waist and push me to the side, ever so subtly grazing your hand over my ass as you pass by. Of course, folks, you can take a picture of me to show all your friends back in Texas "the tiniest waitress you've ever seen." Yes, I do this to pay my bills. No, this wasn't quite what I was planning on doing with my degree.

6S

Tia Napolitano wishes she could burn her apron in protest. She's currently open to suggestions - any suggestions at all - as to what else she could do to supplement her income.

All About Perspective

by Janet Yung

The old lady was dying and her family could only watch and wait. They hovered around her hospital bed, hoping for any wisdom she’d impart to them as she drifted between this life and the next. Her eyes would occasionally flutter open, but close as suddenly, tight against the light and the foreign surroundings filled with tubes and machines monitoring the vital statistics of her progress. “What does it all mean?“ her son asked when she appeared for a moment to be conscious, having regained her cognitive skills, her lips moving. “It’s all about perspective,” she said. Then she was gone before she could elaborate.

6S

Janet Yung lives and writes in St. Louis. Her work has appeared in The Green Silk Journal, Muscadine Lines, Keep Going and qarrtsiluni.

Pearl and Vinegar

by Steven Wolfe

If only. He ran his thumb over the lip of the crystal wineglass. It vibrated, sang to his touch just like, and was the exact same shape as, the hips of his first lover. He glanced at his wife. “What’s that look, then?” she said. He twisted his ring out of the groove in his skin and dropped it into the glass.

6S

Steven Wolfe lives in Houston, Texas. His work has appeared recently in Exquisite Corpse, Southeast Review, Opium, NANOfiction, the Chattahoochee Review, and elsewhere.

A Bus Trip

by Samantha Sigler

He was the only on the bus for a week before she came. It was her smile that he hated the most; a toothy grin that didn’t conceal the yellowing teeth or the elongated tongue that incessantly licked the outermost corners of her lips. The joker grin came with a screeching squawk that made his muscles tense and his teeth clench. He closed his eyes to hide but the grin was scratched behind his eyelids and the voice boiled within his ears like hot wax. Feeling the eyes of others as they looked in on his situation, he did the only thing he could do. He threw the first punch.

6S

Samantha Sigler is a native of Colorado, currently residing in Kansas City. She has recently been published in All Things Girl.

Missing from the Cape

by Caitlin Galway

The girl who ran away was the mystery of Martha’s Vineyard, a tangible creation drifting in soft metaphysics. Like the books you yearn to read, can’t believe are in the library. My mother once grounded me for hiding Rimbaud under the bed, his uncensored vileness, his beauty; but he was honest, and if anything is honest it is, in its own way, profane - lasting. It is the sea mixed with the sun. And that was how it was - her mouth, her touch, her words, inexorably true between the covers of ambiguity. A mystery to be solved by simply being, a story just out of reach.

6S

Caitlin Galway is an emerging writer, and student of English literature at Queen’s University. She writes and edits for The Toronto Quarterly, and is an editor for the online literary journal Metazen. She survives almost exclusively on books, tea, and white wine. She hasn’t slept in seven years.

The Fog

by Doug McIntire

The fog hasn't lifted. Hell, it hasn't even lessened. But things feel different; less oppressive somehow. Perhaps tomorrow will get better. Perhaps the weather will clear. Or perhaps there will just be the tiniest bit of light poking through the mist, promising hope and pointing toward a brighter future.

6S

Doug McIntire might be metaphorically in the fog, but looking up seems a little brighter these days. He lives online here.

New Things

by Lannhi Nguyen

Some people like the gleaming, pristine veneer of new things. That smooth, untouched perfection only achievable through protective display and disuse. But me, I like things that are battered and bruised. I like things which have lived and been loved and bear all the scars and marks of both. I want to be able to trace my finger along edges and surfaces and wonder when that scratch happened, or how that mark got there or why there are bits that are broken or missing. Why would I ever want anything shiny and new, when I could have something with history, and stories?

6S

Lannhi Nguyen is an English teacher and a sometime writer. She is trying to upgrade the "sometime" to a "regular." She enjoys drinking tea, dancing, giving compliments and hopes to one day invent a must-have household product.

Book Club at the Home

a monosyllabic six by M.J. Iuppa

They are old and walk with canes to find their chairs in the room. They know they have been here before. No one knows who picks the books they read. They say it’s not up to them. They read all the time, but can’t think of the plot, or who did what to whom. They say that’s life, then put it out of their minds.

6S

M.J. Iuppa is the Writer-in-Residence and Director of the Arts Minor program at St. John Fisher College.

The Necessary Ingredient

by Kyle Musial

We were celebrating something, I forget what, out at a restaurant with candles on the tables, and I made a joke and laughed, and the breath from my laugh blew out the candle, and I said, "Look, I just laughed out the candle," and everyone fell into hysterics. Me too. But it wasn't that funny. Which made me think everyone was phony, including me. But so what? Seriously - how can anyone get through the day without being phony?

6S

Kyle Musial is all mixed up.

Always an Excuse

by Debbie Mason

He is moody and aloof only because he’s a loner and prefers to be by himself. He grunts and scowls at the paperboy and mutters obscenities under his breath at the postman, but he means well. His verbal belittling and chastisement of neighbors are an indication only that he’s simply misunderstood. His sudden, angry outbursts frighten and intimidate the patrons at Willie’s Bar, but he’s never actually hurt anybody. The folks in the small town make excuses for his intimidating behavior and lack of civility, but they never mention the war. He’s not a bad guy, they say, just misguided.

6S

Debbie Mason works and writes in southwest Ohio, but dreams further away. She enjoys high mountains, stony creeks, and bluegrass music. She does not enjoy idiots who take more than 15 items into the 15 items or less lane. She blogs here, and her poetry will appear soon in Illuminati and fragments.

Escaping the Valley

by Jules Carey

Row upon row of grape vines were flaming behind their house in the valley. It was twilight on a dry, summer night, no rain for weeks. She swore this was the last time she’d pretend everything was fine when he returned from the other woman’s bed. His empty promises rang in her head as she poured the remaining lighter fluid and dropped the match. When he pulled in the drive, he’d find his fortune burning in the California night. She and the boy would be long gone by then.

6S

Jules Carey, who blogs here, has never been to Napa Valley.

To-Do List

by Kip Hanson

Clean out desk at work, hand in resignation letter, bring good suit to dry cleaner. Wash dog and bring to kennel, drop cat at Mrs. Johnson’s, water plants, feed fish. Balance checkbook, make house payment, suspend utilities. Bring flowers to Dad’s grave, stop on way home to fill gas tank, buy new garden hose and roll of duct tape at hardware store. Write letter to Mom, change insurance beneficiary from ex-wife to sister, update will and mail to Frank. Unplug garage door opener, block service door with toolbox, insert hose in exhaust pipe, place other end in rear window, seal with duct tape, start the car and get in - half an hour should do it.

6S

Kip Hanson occasionally spends time on The 6S Social Network.

Riding a Reverie

by Anthony Kirchner

I had a dream the other night that every truck stop in Cincinnati doubled as a library. I gathered this by reading the palm leaves that passed over top of the open roofed bus my girlfriend and I were traveling in. All my favorite songs came through the bus's stereo, except, "Hey, Soul Sister" played every forth song or so. The bus rolled on for hours and in spite of the occasional twang of "Hey, Soul Sister" and having no clue of our destination, I had a remarkable fondness for the trip. I woke, convinced I had witnessed a vague allegory for my life. I hope the bus passes through Cincinnati.

6S

Anthony Kirchner designs and sculpts lavish clay pigeons for a living; or so he wishes, as that would be more fulfilling than his current occupation of "Deli Clerk." He writes in his free time to amuse himself and hopefully others. A self published body of his works can be read here.

Better

by Amanda Evans

My dad sexually abused me and my mom pretty much sold me into prostitution when I was 9. I had my first kid at 12 and now I’m 18 with 3 more, not to mention the 2 miscarriages. I used to have dreams of a happy future with a college education, a rich, loving husband, 2 well-behaved kids, a house in the suburbs and a vacation home on the beach. Now, I only dream of my next payday, my next fix, and hopefully an early death because life on the streets is hard without money, a decent high and a little bit of hope. When I found out a year ago that I had full-blown AIDS, I could only smile with relief, knowing the doctor at the free clinic must have thought I was crazy. For some, life is good, but for me death is better.

6S

Amanda Evans lives in Dallas, Texas. She's an accountant by day and an aspiring creative genius by night.

Crossed Wires

by Paul McQuade

He won't tell me he loves me on the phone. Something about the way the wires tangle, the way they vibrate too audibly. Every night I say the words into the receiver and after a while the dial tone screams. I listen to it so long that I think I can hear him speaking in the static. I am always just about to understand what he is saying when I fall asleep. When I dream about his girlfriend lying next to him I feel like I am suffocating.

6S

Paul McQuade is a Scottish-born writer living in Tokyo. His work is forthcoming on the National Gallery of Scotland Anthology and Fractured West. He has a tattoo of a teacup on his left arm and a penchant for Hendrick's gin.

The Knickknack Boy

by Ray Succre

The knickknack boy tumbled his tongue for a spurious treat: coconut fluff on a health bar. The mothers had keeled into bloodline talk. The air ran for hill-stops. The floor rode his eye to the reaches and the sky ran over into cloudy brambles. So he ran hard to play, horsing and beating the play into others, and the play was vigorous, the day was flush. "Hello, you are where?" the twilight mothers crooned, but he had for them no report, and hid, little tongue beneath his breaths like a crushed snail.

6S

Ray Succre currently lives on the southern Oregon coast with his wife and baby son. He has been published in Aesthetica, Small Spiral Notebook, and Coconut, as well as in numerous others across as many countries. He tries hard.

The Silent Vacuum of Space

by JY Saville

You don't notice the silence at first. It creeps up on you like some noxious gas leaking in through the cracks in your life. No ringing phone, no chattering kids, no murmured confidences in the dead of night. The click of the kettle sounds like a gunshot. One fatal wound to the heart. When you said you needed space, you forgot space is a vacuum.

6S

JY Saville writes mainly short fiction, mainly in the genre loosely termed speculative, but more mainstream work has appeared at PicFic, Short, Fast and Deadly and Every Day Fiction. She blogs here.

Maybe Brilliant

by Cate Florenz

He said I was “maybe brilliant.” “Very bright, maybe brilliant,” he said. Why does his opinion matter, why is it he came into my life just to tease me with half compliments and leave? I can be smarter, I think, I can be better, I can be more. But I know I am enough, I am brilliant. Maybe.

6S

Cate Florenz lives in Arlington, VA. She writes two blogs, this one and this one.

Payday

by William Bogert

Finally something good was to come out of this damn hole in the ground. Six weeks of hauling ore out, busting rock and crawling around on his belly would finally be rewarded. With a spring in his step at the thought of going home to his wife and baby son, Toy, like all the other Chinese goldmine laborers, walked towards the back of the main shaft of the Granite Hill mine, where the owner told them their wages would be weighed out in gold. The long wire fuses had been rolled out the night before down to the end of the tunnel. As soon as the last of them disappeared into the mine, the foreman hammered down the plunger. Nobody ever gets out on payday.

6S

William Bogert lives and works in the Pacific Northwest. He loves loud motorcycles and reluctantly indulges in the occasional poem here.

Becoming a Snake

by Georgina Bruce

This man speaks with forked tongue. Becoming a snake, I slide around his body; skin slithering on skin and his mouth hissing into mine, his tongue flickering over mine. Some words are spoken with his hands and fingers, the sounds of vowels riding on our breath and the rasping of our bodies together. We are writing something, an old story, and we know the ending already. Tomorrow we will break open like the morning, cold and brave, smiling kindly. It is not love.

6S

Georgina Bruce is the bearded lady.

The Floods

by Jared Booth

Last night I watched the floods on the news. I watched them wash down the streets of towns and villages I had never been to, while news reporters stood in front of them and told me where they had come from and where they were going and what kind of damage they had caused on their way. Televisions and radios and fridges and plastic things floated on the floods like tiny boats for midgets. Then, while the reporter was looking the other way, I watched as you floated by behind him, sailing on your back, smiling and waving as you were carried on your way. I waved back at you, but I don't think you noticed. You looked like you were having a whale of a time.

6S

Jared Booth, 25, lives in England.

Trail Run

by Maryanne Petkac

The mud sucked the bottoms of her shoes as she ran along the forested trail, side-stepping partially-hidden stones and tree roots. Falling wet leaves stuck to her head and shoulders, and she was certain there were squirrels aiming acorns at her as she zig-zagged underneath the trees. She skipped down nature-made stairs of slate and dashed across the man-made wooden bridge that spanned Brandywine gorge. She breathed the cool, humid air and pumped her arms in an effort to run faster up the steep hill that loomed before her. She heard the roar of Brandywine Falls and knew her half-way point was near. Barely glancing at the wondrous waterfall, she rushed past, making her way toward the downhill trail that was awaiting her footprints.

6S

Maryanne Petkac is an office manager at Baldwin-Wallace College.

A Morning in Bed

by Phil Beloin Jr.

A dull colored bird flaps onto the windowsill, trilling in the early dawn. A slight breeze shakes the backyard oaks and maples, autumn leaves drifting wayward from my sight. The ceiling fan is on low, barely spinning, yet the motor hums and squeaks, and I’m thinking we’ll need a new fan soon. My wife is on her side, facing away from me, her usual position, her breathing a rhythm suggesting harmony. Now our Puggle that stretches between us, forming a sloppy vertical line of an H, is wheezing with each breathe, her back legs twitching gently into my side. And a few short moments later, the alarm clock pops on.

6S

Phil Beloin Jr.'s first novel, The Big Bad, has been published by Hilliard and Harris and is available on Amazon.com. He lives in Connecticut with the aforementioned bed mates.

Untitled

by Krammer Abrahams

I fold towels. That is my job. I sit at a desk and fold towels. All day long bins and bins of towels are wheeled in and placed in front of me. I take these bins of unfolded towels and make them into bins of folded towels. Sometimes the phone rings and I pick it up and I say hello, who are you, why are you calling here and they say, "Hello, I am calling to ask about your towel situation," and I say the towel situation is grand.

6S

Krammer Abrahams watches baseball and chess championships on television.

My Promise

by Samantha Carpio

I am a beautiful, intelligent and thoughtful person and this is why I am leaving him. I have been living a lie for two straight years, I will never trust a guy ever again. He constantly said he loved me but he didn't because he broke my heart. His best friend told me he's been cheating on me since the very beginning but now he wants to change his ways. He can change all he wants but I'm still leaving his sorry ass. No guy will ever be that special to break my heart and get another chance, that's a promise.

6S

Samantha Carpio is 17 years old and attends Manhattan Hunter Science high school.

Look at Me

by Katie Cawood

There went my niece, wearing my bra over her t-shirt and prancing around the yard in front of my father, brother-in-law, and husband while we spoke about my new washing machine. “Look, I’m Aunt Katie!” she shouted, sticking her chest out far and feeling the lace with her little fingers. Embarrassed, I spoke as animatedly as a person can about an appliance, in hopes of distracting them. But in the end it was the five-year-old who won their attention. “Look at me, I've got big boobs!” That was the last time I hung a bra on a doorknob to dry.

6S

Katie Cawood works with preschoolers, answering the question "Why?" for eight hours straight. She is writing her first novel.

The Imploding Empress

by Kirsty Logan

A million pounds will buy a lot of things, and the empress had most of those things. Trust me said the salesmen, and she did. She believed that objects were the opposite of emptiness. But objects have their own gravity, and greater objects mean more gravity. At the moment the empress added the final jewel to her pinky finger, she flickered out. The rings fell with a clatter to the white marble tiles.

6S

Kirsty Logan lives in Scotland with her girlfriend and the rain.

Kissed a Fool

by G. Kenneth Weir

Fool, fool, I kissed a fool, and God help me I don’t know what to do. The orbs I made love to over sushi are now as windows to a desert. Even the lashes I studied as I tongued and sucked fill me now with a desire to mutilate. I don’t care a whisker for what this hollow shell before me is saying. Its dreams are absurd, its expressions of joy and amusement grotesque. There is but one thing left for me — I must wipe the little mirror clean and try again.

6S

G. Kenneth Weir has been writing fiction for some years now. His most recent work will be appearing in issue #23 (December 2010) of Yellow Mama. He currently day-slaves as a copywriter in grim downtown Toronto, although he's not sure why. (He once said hello to Yoko Ono - she looked right through him.)

Long Forgotten

by Vaiju Joshi

Its been 6 years, 3 months and 21 days since I last saw you. It is not like I have been counting the days or anything, there are days when I don’t even think of you. It is just that when I made an appointment with the hairdresser this morning for next Tuesday, I remembered it was your birthday that day. I knew then that no matter how hard I tried, I would never be able to forget this date. So I leaned over and told the hairdresser that it was your birthday. And even as she stared at me, I told her that I hadn’t seen you for the past 6 years, 3 months and 21 days.

6S

Vaiju Joshi's short stories have won some prizes in Australia and the UK over the years. There have been plenty of times when she never heard back from a lot of people.