Cafe Aphra: An Online Community for Writers

"Be ridiculous," the invitation had read. In fact, looking at the outlandish figures rattling and tattling around the rooftop, Naomi had to agree they had done a good job. The simple terrace, which was closed off by the brick walls of the higher neighboring buildings, seemed overloaded with people. Elina, one of Naomi's housemates, was entertaining a mainly male group near a round table full of oddly colorful drinks. She didn't like dressing up, but she had painted her lips in dashing pink to match the polish on her long, pointy nails. She looked a little ridiculous. Amber, Naomi's other housemate, had tried her best to compensate for Elina's lack of creativity. The bright red rouge on her cheeks flashed like stoplights at dusk, outshined only by her screamingly purple feather boa. In addition, she wore a glittery dark blue shirt resembling the starry sky, tight fitting washed-out jeans and her "fuck-me-pumps".  Amber was a real gem....

Price eyed a derelict sitting outside the hotel, stopped walking, and tipped his hat.   “I’m a man of no consequence,” the vagrant brayed, his despair palpable.   Price tugged on the rope tied to his rickety wagon and stepped toward him, but the man bowed his head and waved him on – red eyes, droopy as a bloodhound’s.   Beside him, there was a cracked styrofoam cup – “ homeless and hungry ” in black, curlicue letters.   “I ain’t gonna bother you none, just wanna rest these ol’ bones.”   As the final few stragglers hastened home from their empty days, the two strangers sat in silence, unnoticed, while the purple-blue gloaming shifted about them.   “Think I might put my arm around you a bit,” Price said, rubbing his grassy gray beard, “then I’m gonna walk on out of here.”   The broken man downed the last of his gin and stared straight ahead.   Under the comfort of a steady arm, he brought his head to his hands and wept. Later, as Price ...

The shape of a fisherman's face, a blasted red mask of ancient hope, stonecold to his wife and child, but cradling a fish in his hands and praying, like an Indian, to the spirit he has just taken. Prehistoric bluffs cut into the land by the mighty clash — a high buffer against the wash of lashing waves and on the other side the half-moon shape of the softsand curving beach becomes the pink cup that holds the sparkling sea. And you know a kind hello always hides a blistering whisper. I fall asleep at night gently rising and gently falling with the moontide that guides the thin strands of my blood, and I think of the uncountable spinning islands floating through a universe long since hardened and splendidly ordered from its loose bubbled beginnings. I am awakened by a slice of noise, a sparkly crack in the dark air. I find that a gull, sneering, the most playful of all birds, has dropped a cold hardclosed shell onto the wa...

  The mob hushes to a chill silence. A lit match is thrown, the whoosh- bang of boiler pilot light, then the roar of flame that engulfs him. He doesn’t scream? Her legs shake and she loses her footing on the   car roof, spins around, but too late; the image is already branded into her soul. She falls to the dirt track, covering her mouth and nose; the urge to help -do something - and the need to escape, pound, pulling her nowhere except down, down into a crouching ball. In her head moments unravel.   Someone saying    ‘They caught him lying with another man - like with a woman. God’s punishment!’ She scrambles to get a view. Tall, bloodied youth, trussed in a rubber tire, being bumped between three men like he’s inside a pinball machine. Can of gasoline held aloft.   She runs as fast as she’s ever run, faster even than when she won the university relay, away from that place by the river where women did their washing and sang togeth...

You give it everything you’ve got. And then the day comes when you’ve got nothing more to give. Nothing. He’s had it all. So you decide to leave. Just like that. If you thought about it, you’d find reasons to stay. Your sister found reasons to stay. She said she’d be happy with what she had and develop a thicker skin. Your sister’s always had a thick skin. You go. With your old suitcase. You don’t take the one he gave you to take on honeymoon, the red leather one with your initials on it, your married initials, for when you became his possession, Mrs Him. You take your old suitcase which was your brother’s when he went to college and which was handed down to him by Uncle Bert because your brother was going to be a lawyer, like Uncle Bert and not a farmer like your father who wouldn’t even give your brother a wallet when he left, never mind a suitcase. You go. But what do you take when you leave your husband? Some women would take his best things, or ruin them. You could wreck hi...

The boy sits alone while the carriage fills around him. It's a V-line, a long haul, thundering into morning. Barely legible, a chipped sign fades and Violet Town falls away. He retreats to a paperback kingdom, while oblivious wheels devour miles. Sometimes his eyes rise to watch the landscape grind from here to there. Terminus halogen holds the night at bay as a voiceover calls passengers awake. At journey's end, crisp air whispers possibility. Behind him, doors hiss shut. Ahead, a turnstile beckons. by Ryan Stone First published in Writers’ Forum Magazine issue 159, December 2014 Image courtesy of tongdang at FreeDigitalPhotos.net 

Another grey dawn marked the end of another dark night, marked the start of another dark day. He shuffled awkwardly on the hard cot , his uniform stiff and cold. The meagre woollen blanket felt damp and offered no warmth. The kettle hissed as boiled water splashed into a pot. “Tea, Sir.” He wrapped his hands around the heat of the tin mug. His head was pounding in time to the pounding of the guns. Don’t think. Thinking was a luxury for the living. Existence was his goal. How long? The question pushed back into the recesses of his mind. Sanity was his goal.  Gun in hand , he forced one leg then the other to climb the ladder. His body jolted like a marionette as red clouded his eyes and brain. He fell back in the mud grimacing a smile. Wounded, he would survive. He would go home to live. Remember. He would not forget that life chose him.  by Philippa Shingleton