Help Me by Paul Silverman

“Help Me” by Paul Silverman from Wrong Tree Review is plain spoken, humorous tale set in a tourist town. The story is told in third person, from on omniscient point of view. Early on Rhonda, the cleaning woman, scrubs the life back into Russell. He makes a strong recovery from the lowest point in his life to save the town from a unyielding crowd of crows infesting the town and wins the support of the town. Russell leaves for a weekend to help his mother with some chores, and upon returning Rhonda accepts a date with him to the church. Russell asks for her hand and she flips out, stealing his truck and fleeing. After a day of inhibitions, she returns to work and confronts Russell. He asks if he can draw her a bath.

I liked this story a lot. The tempo kept the words flowing and the story moving. The descriptions pull in the reader, “... attacked the wine and sweat and dope-funk with a bathbrush like she was buffing a jeep that had been dredged from a swamp.” I thought the story was going to be about Russell, but in the end it was about Rhonda. We learned so much about her through Russell’s action, which was a very strong way to get the story through. The circle returning to the bath was a very nice touch for the end. “[Russell] lowered [his eyes] and asked if he could draw her a bath.”

Read it here: http://www.wrongtreereview.com/manuscripts/Help_Me.pdf

Jude's Head in the Clouds by Douglas Bruton

“Jude’s Head in the Clouds” by Douglas Bruton from 322 Review is a plain spoken, literary story set in a brief moment of time. The story is told in third person from a close perspective. Jude is intimately telling the girl beside him about the clouds (presumably) and later sounds he hears. She likes to listen to the little tales he tells. They make her feel like a child again, when life was simple and easy. In the end, she expresses her love for him.

A very nice quick story. The shorter the story, the harder it is to write. This tale manages to convey the scene with strong details, mostly told through dialogue. “I see the feather of an angel. No wings or halo or angel, just a feather that she dropped, and it floats, this way and that, on the air, on the breath of everything.” The particular space the characters are in is not important, and the author smartly disregards it. Totally worth the few minutes it took to read.

Read it here: http://www.322review.org/fiction_judeshead.html

The Happiest Place on Earth By Michael McLaughlin

“The Happiest Place on Earth” by Michael McLaughlin from Neonbeam is a plain spoken, sarcastic, humor story set in the present Los Angeles area. The story is told in first person through the eyes of Joan, a news reporter near Disneyland. She is sent to do a story on two people murdered at the amusement park. Of course, she is ushered away from the scene, but the PR-man owes her from a past goodwill news story. He reluctantly leads her a spot with a grand view. Here we see two employees have been gunned down, one still clinging to a piece of trash. Another worker emerges from off scene and races against a flurry of bullets to rescue the trash and deposit it in a receptacle. A free plastic wrapper flutters nearby on the wind. Another employee attempts to deliver this one, but is killed. The sniper seeks to even out the balance of happiness and sadness by reducing Disneyland, but is killed by the SWAT team.

I was expecting a wonderful story and got a pretty darn good one. As is the norm of today, the story’s end is anti-climatic: it prattles on about the Christmas party. The humor was excellent: “He [PR-man] took out another stick of sweet gum and pushed it in his mouth. Chain gum chewing now.” The idea behind the story is fun but deep. Good and evil even out, so reduce good and you’ll reduce evil. I can’t resist pointing out that the author and the editor missed many spelling and grammatical mistakes (not that we don’t over here). But it does reduce the pleasure of the story because the reader gets confused.

Read it here: http://neonbeam.webhosting-for-free.com/NB8.pdf

Prepare to Believe by Dane Cervine

“Prepare to Believe” by Dane Cervine from Contrary is a plain spoken, realistic story set in the Cincinnati area. Told in the first person, this story treks through the chronology of the narrator’s history with religion. He remembers this detailed past because his wife forces him to visit the Creation Museum. The family is late to the museum, due to traffic, but gets ushered in by a generous security guard. His daughter can’t believe that such a place would exist and refuse scientific truth in such a blasphemous way. In the end, the narrator is surprised at his daughter’s reaction. He blissfully remembers how he used to believe in god, and how that believe protected him from the real world.

This story was a fun short read. It was simple to follow and kept me wondering what would happen at the museum. Of course, most of what happened happened on the inside of the narrator. But that’s the best kind of story. Inside the head of the narrator is a well told place and keeps the reader fully engaged: “I felt safe, moored, at home in a world that had gone bad, but could still be redeemed.” The beginning was the perfect setup for the rest of the story, giving the background the narrator to feel the way he felt at the end. His longing to be back inside that box of faith felt well justified.

Read it here: http://www.contrarymagazine.com/Contrary/Believe.html

Ghost by Tala Bar

“Ghost” by Tala Bar from Tower of Light is a plain spoken, fantasy story set in a world with witches. The story is told in third person. Will Kord goes to see Ofara the Witch to get his wife back. He explains that he liked nothing about his dead wife, except that she was able to keep the baby quiet. Ofara agrees to bring back his wife for him. Will and the witch perform a ritual to bring her back. They go up on the roof to see her when she returns. The sky turns dark and she floats in from nowhere. The wife takes the baby and it immediately stops crying; it starts to croon. She is about to leave with the baby, but Will tries to tackle her, forgetting the height. He plummets to his death.

I was engaged by this story, and enjoyed it. The end was obvious but not in a bad way. I still wanted to get there; it felt earned. From beginning to end, the story has strong details pulling the reader into the world. “Her thin-lipped mouth was pinched with disapproval . . .” right on through to, “. . . his dead wife, who stood before him plump and comfortable as she used to look in her life.” A quick read, worth the few minutes it took to journey through.

Read it here: http://members.cavtel.net/msouth847/ghost.html

Merle Haggard Never Sounded As Lonely As Mermaids In The River by Trey Moore

“Merle Haggard Never Sounded As Lonely As Mermaids In The River” by Trey Moore from SFWP.org is a plain spoken, fantastical story set in a world resembling our own. The story is told in third person with a good mix of dialogue and description. The basic form is that of a fairy tale, but it lacks a moral. Lefty fathers two children, a girl and a boy, with flippers for legs and his wife leaves him. He takes those kids to the Gulf of Mexico so they can swim their lives away. Lefty has great fortune catching fish while his children swim for a while, but his luck runs dry and he only catches things from his past. Eventually, his son dies and Lefty then dies of a broken heart.

There are good things to this story, such as the strong dialogue by the old sailor Abraham: “I see ya know nothin a boats. There’s four sides to a boat. Not just the one in front of ya son. This is port.” The children’s problem is interesting and I want to know what will happen to them. That’s where the problem comes in. Nothing in the end happens. One child dies, causing Lefty to die. But I really don’t care, nor do I know what the point of that ending was. Seems to be that the author couldn’t come up with another ending, so he took the easy way out and killed most of the cast.

Read it here: http://sfwp.org/archives/363#more-363

An Artist by Cory Stevens

“An Artist” by Cory Stevens from Yellow Mama is a fantastically tale set in a forest. It is told in third person with almost no dialogue. A young artist lives in a forest with only a never-inkless pen and never-drying cyan paintbrush. After many years he found a completely white room, filled with unending art supplies of all kinds. His urge to wander ceased. He spent hundreds of years with his art and grew old, until one day a hole appeared in the room; and he saw the world in full carnage. There was no longer an exit to the room and he tore a larger hole in the wall to escape, to further inspect the dangerous, hideous world. A pregnant women emerged from the destroyed world and took him to see the end of the world.

This story started promising and ended with a whimper. That is not to say the story, or rather prose-poem (as it should be categorized), was devoid of goodness. The story was full of strong,engaging details: “Bloody footprints were left everywhere she stepped, and they spread slightly on the black obsidian ground.” In the end the story, simply lacked a memorable plot. The artist’s world ended several times over as he changed through the years; nothing unusual there. And it all seemed to happen without any motivation. He happened into every situation he found himself in. The most promising line, “He tore and ripped and it was the most destructive thing he'd ever done in his entire life,” went as quickly as it came.

Read it here: http://blackpetalsks.tripod.com/yellowmama/id258.html