Driven

fiction by Mary-Kate Sims

I don’t really know what my wife wants me to do with these ridiculous coupons. Half off a colossal size toilet paper pack? Fuck, I didn’t think we went through that much toilet paper. It’s just the two of us. My uncle warned me about this. He warned me that wives make husbands do stupid shit for no reason. He didn’t tell me the stupid shit would be driving in the middle of nowhere, Kentucky for a colossal toilet paper pack because she has a coupon. No one lives here in Murrant, but there are always masses of people whenever the weekend starts. It was my wife’s hometown, where she grew up and all that crap. She was thrilled to move back home to Murrant. She must have been brainwashed as kid to love this desert of a town. I haven’t been able to make up a good enough excuses to go back to Ohio. Once she started reminiscing, about stupid shit like the small grocery store where she used to buy all of her gum when she was a kid—all of my arguments and excuses were null and void.

Scrape

a memoir by William Hoffacker

 On a clear night, at the end of a long car ride alone, I’m pulling headfirst into the space in front of my parents’ small suburban house when this jolt shakes my sleek new Honda, coupled with a slam-and-scrape that awakens my senses, dulled by the winding miles of I-80, with a rush of adrenaline. I panic at the thought of what’s been hit, what have I done, as my hands tighten around the steering wheel, ten o’clock two o’clock, and jerk it into a sharp left. The metallic crunch dies away, and I slam on the brakes before I can damage God knows what else.

Airplanes

fiction by Dana P. Diehl

He stood in the mouth of the hanger, his back to the girl in the green rain jacket.

“Any minute now, Deb. You’ll hear it first. Then right there, over the mountain, it’ll come.” His voice was low and tense. “It’ll just be a silver speck at first. You’ll have to look for the sun glinting against it. Now hurry, come out by me. You won’t see anything from in there.”