Six Sentences

Role Play Isn't Just for Lovers

sixsentences@yahoo.com (Robert McEvily) — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 05:11:55 PST

by Tom Forrister

"I have to take a leak," my buddy whined five minutes after we passed the last rest stop for sixty miles. "Can't you hold it?" I sighed, and he shook his head, so I pulled over into a field where we ventured out into the darkest storm, just the two of us, all alone. Lightning flashes illuminated a gun in his grip that was pointed directly at me. I dropped my car keys and raised my hands in the air, Caesar's last words (Et tu, Brute?) repeatedly stabbing like a knife in my head. "Hold it, HOLD IT!" my betrayer screamed when he thought I would run, his sweaty fingers click-clacking against the trigger so tremulously I couldn't hold it anymore. It was in this moment that the clouds emptied, buckets of rain washing away my shame, and I started to cry when my friend threw his unloaded weapon at my feet and held me tight, wrestling my ever elusive vulnerability.

6S

Tom Forrister is an aspiring writer living in Salem, MA with his wife and 2.5 ball pythons. White picket fence to be added later.

Struggling

sixsentences@yahoo.com (Robert McEvily) — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 01:00:02 PST

by Nathan Good

Today feels a little like the day I saw the dog with its head stuck in railings. Sometimes I think back to the way I stood there and watched it struggle. Its hind legs scrambled for grip, its back arched and straightened, its neck muscles spasmed and saliva dripped from its gaping mouth, passing panicked breaths. Now as you raise your head I see that same look in your eyes. "Please," you say, and hold out your hand hoping that I will cover it with mine and tell you it's all going to be ok. "Please," you say again, but I'm still thinking of the dog and how I should have helped him.

6S

Nathan Good lives in Derby. His friends do not call him "The Enigma," and he resents them for that.

Blood Bath in Strings

sixsentences@yahoo.com (Robert McEvily) — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 05:14:35 PST

by Anne Earney

Elizabeth had time to play the harp these days, for one could only spend so many hours roaming the castle alone. She experimented with finger placement and rhythm. It was difficult to coax the sounds she wanted from the harp, sounds she might have heard before, in the days of the servants, in the days before… She tried not to think about it, but the harp made ugly sounds, which were pretty sounds, but ugly to Elizabeth, for what she wanted to hear, what she yearned to recreate, was the fearful skittering of thin shoes across the tiles, the screech of bitten nails on the stone walls, the wails women make when… Elizabeth could almost hear those sounds, almost, as she tore her fingers across the strings. She thought it too bad there was no one left to enjoy her artistry.

6S

Anne Earney lives in St. Louis, Missouri. She works in a grocery store, making good use of the MFA she earned from the University of Missouri-St. Louis. Her fiction has been published in places such as Dossier Journal, Night Train, Versal and Big Ugly Review.

Six Small Meals

sixsentences@yahoo.com (Robert McEvily) — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 06:01:30 PST

Six Sixes by Peggy McFarland

6S

Peggy McFarland, a longtime friend and supporter of this site and community, is celebrating a birthday today.

Word

sixsentences@yahoo.com (Robert McEvily) — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 04:58:54 PST

by Felicia Gregory

Can you tell how intelligent someone is by how they write? If someone uses big and difficult words are they smart? If I call myself a writer am I gifted, insightful and cultured? No. What we read is not a test to be graded. The words we read, whether from a shopping list or a great novel are nothing more than a hand shake or a smile; they are merely another brush with humanity.

6S

Felicia Gregory completed 3 1/2 years of college. She works at a grocery store as a cashier with better people than she ever met at school.

Toward Landings

sixsentences@yahoo.com (Robert McEvily) — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 03:33:14 PST

by Jonna Beck

He never asks twice, but he always asks. I lie in this translucent state between awake and asleep wondering if he can tell that I want to fall asleep but can't and try to talk about the day before but instead I say, "The sheet is broken and all I could do was wrap it around my head." He rubs cream into my wounds, trying to heal the past, but the future rapidly infiltrates the interstitial space between here and there as Godamer the Cat climbs the curtains. Tomorrow, he'll take the car, and I'll walk, but today he walked. When I picked him up, the kitchen grease dripped from his shirt and all he said was, "You're late." We drove the five, long miles home in silence.

6S

Jonna Beck attends Texas State University.

The Stool

sixsentences@yahoo.com (Robert McEvily) — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 03:29:49 PST

by Luke Wilson

I buy a stool from a car boot sale; it has three legs, is upholstered in sweaty faux leather, and has a button in the middle of the seat. I get the seat home, sit on it, and yelp with pain as a sharp object breaks the skin of my behind. I run my fingers over the red seat of the stool, and I find that to one side of the button, a pin like object is embedded in the stuffing in such a way that it doesn't protrude through the leather unless pressure is applied. Gingerly, I investigate further, and find it to be a syringe which is half full of an unknown brown liquid. I take the syringe to the police, and they send off its contents to be analysed as a matter of urgency. When the results come back, they tell me that the syringe was contaminated with the HIV virus.

6S

Luke Wilson works as a software developer for a semantic web company, holds a degree in theoretical physics which he doesn't use, and spends some of his spare time trying to write.

Dear You, First Love

sixsentences@yahoo.com (Robert McEvily) — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 04:23:42 PST

by Carter Maddox

I'm writing this to tell you that last night K asked, "Where'd you get this, babe," about that picture thing you gave me when we were still seeing each other. I looked at it--the frame's a little out of date now--and bumbled on what to say. You know what I'm talking about: the picture thing with the stamps, the great films and great directors theme (mostly Jewish directors, might I add--did you know I have a Hebrew tattoo and every day I wear a ring with Hebrew on it, did you?); those were really your interests then films plays scripts writing being Jewish (?). And now I'm the--oh, god! (do you know how profoundly you've put your foot in my path, my life I love you)--I'm the writer...and so is K. And I think I could love him, and it's more than I loved you, and he scares me every day but I don't want to quit him not yet at all at all, and I understood that he understands me, that he asked about the picture thing because it's so me, that it's my kind of kitsch, that it looks like something I would have picked out for myself at Target on a whim some Saturday a few years ago when that type of picture frame was in style. And so to tell you both I loved you without saying it in those words in particular, I told him, my hand on his hipbones, that the picture thing was a gift.

6S

Carter Maddox's first play, Take!, is premiering in December at Texas State University - San Marcos. He's managing editor for his school's literacy journal Words Work, and his scriptwork has been published in GuyWriters magazine.

Awakening

sixsentences@yahoo.com (Robert McEvily) — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 04:26:38 PST

by caccy46

Her eyes opened slowly as she stretched the stiffness out of her lower back and legs. Such a simple gesture that felt so satisfying. As she slowly swung her legs over, sat up and slid out of bed to head for the shower, the woman never registered it had been many months (or had it been many years?) that her days began in a vastly different way; that the initial moments of consciousness were filled with a dread that began in her chest and slithered through her entire body leaving her laden on the mattress burdened with the weight of a beached whale. The first feelings after awakening felt instinctual and sickening, forcing her to roll herself onto her stomach and bury all she was into her pillow, afraid to face the light lurking outside her darkened room or the unwanted glimpse of the illuminated hour on the clock instilling more guilt because she knew it was not possible yet to force herself up. She would silently plead for sleep to take over again, wiping away time, light and the sinking weight that left her powerless. How was it possible for her not to notice the drastic change as she went through her morning, performing rituals that usually took place in the gloaming, if at all?

6S

caccy46's full 6S catalog is here.

The Predictor

sixsentences@yahoo.com (Robert McEvily) — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 04:40:16 PST

by Cat Hughes

He's there everyday, this gap-toothed, grizzled old man standing outside the corner store. Sipping from a can of cider at all times, he wears a stained, mangy trench coat, whatever the weather. Sometimes he's arguing with bearded, long-haired, old drinking buddies; but mostly he's alone. I see him on my walk to work every morning and my heart takes a pause as I approach. Everyone who passes is greeted with either an enthusiastic thumbs up, or a high-pitched, possessed: "Fuck off, ye bastard!" He's become a very reliable predictor of how my day will turn out.

6S

Cat Hughes writes apologetically on a regular basis. She then deletes it.

A Teutonic Conversation

sixsentences@yahoo.com (Robert McEvily) — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 04:48:02 PST

by John Price

“I had a dream about you last night.” “That’s really fascinating.” “Yeah, it was about your birthday party that I wasn’t invited to, except instead of birthday hats, everyone was wearing those pointy German helmets from World War I. Yours was kind of sparkly and pretty, which suits you.” “You should stop speaking now.” “Jawohl.”

6S

John Price grows things in upstate New York.

I Love L.A.

sixsentences@yahoo.com (Robert McEvily) — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 03:00:05 PDT

by Rod Drake

Shabby, filthy, blank-eyed, brain-dead zombies are pounding on my front door, looking for a free meal, and that meal is me. I don’t turn on any lights or the radio or television but stand behind the door and say very clearly, ”no one is here, look somewhere else,” so they stop, now believing no one is home and start shuffling off, moaning unhappily. When they are about 20 feet away, I open the door, step out holding twin sawed-off shotguns with pistol grips and holler at them. They turn around, confused and hungry, as I blast all four barrels into them, ripping several of them to bloody shreds, so that the remaining zombies, most now lacking fingers, hands, or ears, begin consuming their fallen comrades, much like a slow-motion shark feeding frenzy, forgetting all about me. I reload the shotguns, lock the door and set out to get some groceries and more ammunition. It’s just another perfect day, I love L.A.

6S

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

You'll Wake the Dead

sixsentences@yahoo.com (Robert McEvily) — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 02:45:00 PDT

by Joseph Grant

It wasn’t my idea to conduct such an experiment; in reality, it was my stupid friend from MIT. Not that he is of a sub-par intelligence; no he is quite the opposite, a brilliant man who doesn’t always have the brightest of ideas, but who somehow dragged me, a man of reasonable astuteness, to accompany him to Calvary Cemetery, overlooking the blinking lights of Midtown Manhattan in the middle of a freezing October night and why I agreed is beyond me, but yet there we were, disturbing the graves of the departed. Apparently, my friend had read in some East European auto journal how the dead were being used in their unique biodegradable state as excellent sources of alternative fuel and the whole procuring process only took a matter of minutes with each volunteer, if you will. It made little sense to me, but much sense to my friend, a cheapskate by birthright of equally skin-flint parents of East Far Rockaway and it was my friend who schemed to take the alternative gas market by storm with its natural, endless supply of the free of charge deceased. Ethics and decency aside, as these were never my friend’s strong points, he had concocted a devious drilling and siphoning device using kind of a reverse livor mortis embalming procedure as maybe the best way to describe it, to draw up the raw natural resources from the lifeless, but typically and absentmindedly, he cut costs from the magazine blueprint and also forgot to probably carry a two somewhere along the line in his calculations and therefore as we were approximately on our seventy-fifth corpse, something wasn’t right. For as we scrambled back to the car amidst the disturbed graves of some of the worst criminals and gangland murderers in history, my wife’s admonition of: “You’ll wake the dead!” became prophetically true.

6S

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

Just a Bad Dream

sixsentences@yahoo.com (Robert McEvily) — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 06:22:00 PDT

A Six-Pack of Horror by Peggy McFarland

6S

Peggy McFarland's stories have been (or will be) published (soon) at FlashShot, Long Story Short, Everyday Weirdness, Absent Willow Review, Sonar 4 E-Zine, hoi polloi III, Harbinger*33, WordSlaw, 6SV1 and 6SV2. Her full 6S catalog is here.

A Pattern of Love

sixsentences@yahoo.com (Robert McEvily) — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 03:00:07 PDT

by Laura Isaacman

I woke up early on Melanie’s thirty-seventh birthday. I hadn’t planned it, but once I was up with nothing else to do, I cut up fresh strawberries and placed them neatly on top of hot pancakes. When I came into the bedroom, balancing a tray, she shuffled slightly. Her body was sprawled across the bed, and her mouth hung open in a way that had never before made me nauseous until this very moment, on her birthday. I placed the tray on its legs over her torso, and said her name softly. She stirred violently, knocking the hot coffee onto the thin sheet that covered her thigh, and screamed, but I hadn’t meant for her to get hurt; I thought this could be one of our nicer days.

6S

Laura Isaacman's work has been featured in Metazen and decomP. She is the editor of fourpaperletters.

Life of a Craftsman

sixsentences@yahoo.com (Robert McEvily) — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 02:45:00 PDT

by Daniel Warskow

I am a smith; I work with myriad tools at my disposal. Each morning, prior to working on the daily orders, I carefully look over my tools, discriminating as I select the ones most appropriate for the day's labors and hone them to a razor's edge. My life is creating finished goods out of raw elements, carefully forging functional items and simultaneously brilliant works of art. Now I hammer away at the amorphous mass, each ferocious strike follows the previous, energetically building on the work already completed. Within mere moments, I have produced a finished work based solely on a vision. I am most pleased with my choice of tools; today, I chose adjectives.

6S

Daniel Warskow is fighting the urge to become a writer and only occasionally blogs about it.

Qwerty

sixsentences@yahoo.com (Robert McEvily) — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 22:16:10 PDT

by Michael D. Brown

Chimpanzee Moko sat at a typewriter three hours a day every day except Sunday, when his trainer took him to church and he rested. After three years, Moko had finally tapped out a coherent short story. It was surreal in a way, what with misspellings and skewed syntax because after all chimps see things a little differently than humans do. His trainer, somewhat exasperated by all the clacking it took to produce such a short piece of work, set Moko to the task on a laptop with a silent keyboard, but the chimp became distracted by all the images flashing on the Internet, in fact, developed an addiction to surfing until the trainer darkened the screen. At first, seeming disheartened, Moko would not play anymore, but he must have liked pressing mushy keys because he soon took up typing again, and went at it for six months straight, tap-tap-tapping away, until one day in December when he stopped; just stopped and would not move a hairy digit. The trainer, in checking the printout that evening, found at the end, the words, “wot s tha meeening of it all....i m don heer.”

6S

Michael D. Brown writes whenever he can. Some of his work can be found at Outside-In.

Dressed to Impress

sixsentences@yahoo.com (Robert McEvily) — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 22:02:31 PDT

by Paul Phillips

I have made a mess of both my personal and professional lives; my wife and children have recently left me in disgrace, I am on the brink of being fired from my high-paying job and my financial situation is far from impressive. Due to these circumstances, I have the most important meeting of my life this morning. I slipped into my Bespoke shirt and most expensive Giorgio Fiorelli suit. My Florsheim shoes polished immaculately, completed the image of a man on a mission. The Beretta - that had been tucked inside my Hugo Boss leather belt - is now placed firmly against the roof of my mouth. I think it is very important to dress well when meeting your Maker.

6S

Paul Phillips can't believe it's not better!

Your Madness

sixsentences@yahoo.com (Robert McEvily) — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 05:41:42 PDT

by N. God Savage

You were halfway across the parking lot when I caught up with you, swirling dementedly, a hideous dervish to my frustrated anchor. From a distance, you seemed nothing more than an unruly drunk, too much too young, carried home, thrown up, slept off, moved on. I’d have given anything for that to be the case as I caught up with you: anything for a look of recognition to fill the hollow sickness that suffused me. I’d already seen that dead-doll stare a hundred times, but when I grabbed you and spun you round it caught me as deeply and as sharply as the first. I felt it as a clinging vacuum in the pit of my guts. If only you could sleep this off.

6S

N. God Savage is a writer and philosopher from Belfast, Northern Ireland. Links to his blogs can be found here.

King Me

sixsentences@yahoo.com (Robert McEvily) — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 05:37:08 PDT

by Sue Ellis

Larson says we can harvest horseradish in any month spelled with an 'r.' He's the big-shot gardening expert now. After global warming, crop failures and food shortages, he's elevated in stature from neighborhood blight to sought-after advisor. Eats it up, too, in his filthy coveralls, holding court beside a stinking chicken coop. "So, Jurwry and Argust are the months to dig?" I ask him innocently, and he doesn't even condescend to smile at my wit. I palm a couple of eggs when he's not looking.

6S

Sue Ellis is a retired postmaster who lives with her husband in Spokane, Washington. She has been previously published in Flash Me Magazine, Camroc Press Review, Wild Violet, and Dead Mule, all online publications. She is a member of the Internet Writers Workshop.

That Night, We Slept Separately

sixsentences@yahoo.com (Robert McEvily) — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 22:21:05 PDT

by Stephen D. Gibson

The snow was suddenly thick on the ground the next morning, white, heavy with water. She asked if we had two shovels and I thought of them, one light and plastic, the other heavier, a blade of ragged aluminum. We shoveled together, outside, as snow continued down and the cold grew less bitter. Inside our children threw juice at each other and shared cold chicken with the dog I hated. Often my wife and I divide tasks, the two of us, but that grey morning we worked together, side by side, pushing back the cold. Forging warmth.

6S

Stephen D. Gibson teaches at Utah Valley University.

The Apology

sixsentences@yahoo.com (Robert McEvily) — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 22:26:22 PDT

by Samantha Stephens

My heart is somewhere in my throat acting like a champagne cork to stop the sound sliding out. This situation could have had a million different endings, but the one where I have to apologise was always going to be the worst. I watch his lips in anticipation, hoping he is chivalrous enough to let me avoid my struggle, to know that he is making me surrender my last remaining ounces of pride. His lips part and his tongue slithers out, wetting his bottom lip like it always does when he’s really mad. Then his eyebrows rise and it is like they have commanded his tongue to return to its hiding place. I imagine them falling again as I walk away.

6S

Samantha Stephens, who blogs here, is a third year student of Creative Writing and English Literature at Edge Hill University.

Atlantic Time

sixsentences@yahoo.com (Robert McEvily) — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 04:02:00 PDT

by Zeptimius Hedrapor

6S

Zeptimius Hedrapor can be reached here. (Click the image for a closer view.)

The End

sixsentences@yahoo.com (Robert McEvily) — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 03:00:01 PDT

by Danny Eastwood

She demanded an apology for what I'd done. I refused which turned her pale face pink. Apologies do not come into my line of work. She screamed at me, reaching into her bag. She gave me one last chance. With a shake of my head she shot me dead.

6S

Danny Eastwood can be spotted at Edge Hill University in the U.K.

Cross Purposes

sixsentences@yahoo.com (Robert McEvily) — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 21:18:38 PDT

by James Lightfoot

Is that your motorcycle? No. It's nice. [No response.] I said it's nice - can't you just acknowledge me? [No response, hasty exit.]

6S

James Lightfoot lives and writes in Montreal.