Metropolis, the sixth prose fiction novel by Monte Schulz, is a dystopian narrative of love in a time of war and moral disintegration.
Metropolis: A New Novel by Monte Schulz
“The Calico Café Cat,” by Craig Loomis
The Calico Café Cat
“The Guacamole Incident,” by William Torphy
Horace reaches for the party-sized plastic tub, hits it with his thumb and pushes it off the coffee table. The tub falls face-down, sending gobs of guacamole exploding across the new cream-colored Berber carpeting, instantly transforming its surface into an abstract painting of green clods and speckling red. He slides off his lounge chair and kneels next to the goopy mess. Silvia will be home soon from her therapy appointment. There’s going to be hell to pay and he needs to think quickly. Grab something to sop up the carnage— a rag, a towel, a sponge. Maybe something like a trowel to first scoop up the worst of it. Armed with a spatula, he attempts to spoon up the chunky clumps but he only manages to spread the catastrophe further. He tosses the guac-covered spatula…
“I’ll Have Water Overnice,” by Kaeli Dinh
I’ll have water overnice Freedom was getting to sleep over at our uncle’s. Fridays consisted of squirting ketchup into our waters and Saturdays with blankets over our eyes from the late-night horror films. We were three spoiled children that slept with sugar running through our veins and nightmares we didn’t tell our mother. Then the pencil marks on the wall got higher and our hands started to grab more. But uncle was still squirting ketchup into his water. Freedom was forgetting to answer his calls and taking cash out of the birthday cards he made. Keeping us healthy costs more than his insulin shots. But his hand kept feeding until he lost his sight. He was fooled humbling himself a Giving Tree. We took his only good apples and now his eyes. When he wanted…
“Algorithms and Lies,” A Short Story by Dave Swan
Mick Sanford stared at the screen, blinked, and shook his head, thinking his editor had lost her millennial mind. She’d just sent an email telling him to submit his new manuscript, “Murder By Desire,” for review—not by her, but by some artificial intelligence bot. Unbelievable. Muttering about the young punks wrecking the business, he started his video meeting app. “Good afternoon, Mick,” Lindsey Parrish said pleasantly a minute later. “I thought I might hear from you today.” She was going to hear plenty. “You’ve got to be kidding me. What the hell is this?” “The principle is really no different from spellcheck,” Lindsey said, unruffled. “It gives us metrics that affect the quality of the story. I’m not saying I’ll accept all of Max’s advice—” “Who?” “That’s what the bot is called. A lot of…
“Spare Parts,” Poetry PLAGIARIZED by John Kucera
Editor’s Note, January 26, 2024: We published this post in July of 2022. It has recently come to our attention that at least one of the poems was plagiarized. Thank you to Tara Campbell for alerting us to this literary swindler. We are leaving this post up, minus the poetry, so Google searches will still lead here and people can learn the truth. Our apologies to John Compton, who is the original author of the plagiarized work. Check out his poems here. John Kucera (a pen name for John Siepkes) has made a name for himself by stealing others’ poems and it is well documented. Below are just a few links for anyone who wants to hear more about his shameful acts of passing off stolen work as his own. We hope that you will…
“What You Said About Me,” Poetry by Eric Forsbergh
What You Said About Me The first two sips of beer are the best, you tease good-naturedly as we huddle on a second date -the dark eddy of a railway station bar. First, foam annoys the upper lip. Then bubbles bristle in the throat. On brew, the stomach bloats. But, oh, those first two draughts. A river of passengers flows past, head-on toward destinations, delays, side-tracks, cancellations. How we like to overlay our futures onto those of passersby, guessing at their plunges into rapids, cascades, often jutting rocks, hoping for a pool of calm. How are they a match? you laugh. A season on, and now you banter with me smilingly. Maybe this is more like wine, slow to unfold complexity in the us we’re tasting every day. ** Pursuit of Food The sea breathes…
“Beauty and the Gym” by Colton Vandermade
The gym is for the apartment complex. A majority of the gym’s population includes moms reaching back towards their fitter past and young childless men who will one day give up on fitness altogether once they begin their own child rearing. On a given Wednesday afternoon, the random assortment of moms and bros fills the small space. Moms on ellipticals and bros on the weights. Everyone has headphones in, everyone in the same room, but everyone’s individual music tastes transport them to immensely varying experiences. That is, until a mother of three and soon to be four cries out in alarm. A small puddle forms at her feet and she knows immediately that she is going to be a mother of four a whole lot sooner than she expected. The cry draws the attention of…
Student Poetry by Anai Gonzalez
my hoodie reeks of depression it has food stains and maybe tear stains too my scalp flakes from excessive stress regardless of how often i shower my hair isn’t even as beautiful as it used to be it doesn’t shine anymore and i’m losing handfuls of it and of course, my mother is right beside me to remind me of all this my smile is shadowed by my saddened eyes needless to say, it’s faker than ever these days my body isn’t anywhere as fit as it was just months ago i’m losing all my muscle fat, i don’t love my body anymore my skin consists of red dots spread across my cheeks exposing my imperfections, embarrassing me to tears my mind is way too troubled to develop concrete thoughts and translate them into decent…
“Circling the Bronze Sculptures,” by Paul Germano
She first notices him at the far end of the room, lean, rugged, rough around the edges, wearing dark-wash jeans and a grey hoodie under a brown leather jacket. He has short-cropped coppery-red hair and two days’ worth of reddish scruff. He rubs leisurely at the side of his face while pondering a watercolor on bark paper, an evocative rendering of a lonely fishing boat tied to a weather-beaten dock in murky water. He steps back, slightly tilting his head. He can feel her attentive gaze, but pretends not to notice. When the moment is right, he sneaks a peek and likes what he sees. Her dress is just tight enough, a navy-blue number with white trim and matching high heels. She has chestnut brown hair that’s shoulder length and silky smooth, piercing green eyes…