Editor’s Note: In “Paper Cranes,” our second featured short story of November, Emily Rodriguez brings us a story about love in modern times with a little twist of the ancient art of paper folding. Curl up with a mug of a mellow brew and enjoy this story. * * * Paper Cranes by Emily Rodriguez In a weird way it’s like I actually have a use for algebra. It’s always been a game of figures and numbers. Nine steps total, thirty-seven exact creases, ten presses, approximately six pinches and a single tug. But first I need to form x. I fold the square sheet of paper corner-to corner until there’s a perfect x-shaped crease at the very center of the square. But I never solve for x. I fold the factor in on itself. Diagonal….

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Editor’s Note: Our first Featured Short Story for November features a narrator whose cockney British accent and spellings may sound a bit off (think Brad Pitt in Snatch), but rest assured, it’s all part of Mr. Craven’s master plan. * * * Disaster of the Will by Richard Craven A filmy substance welds shut my eyes. I free an arm from the embrace of the twisted mildewed blankets that I have grown to know and hate, prise apart my eyelids, accustom vile jellies to gloaming. The evidence of my desuetude: mounds of unlaundry, overflowing ashtrays. Crushed cans of Horst Wessell Marching lager littering the pitifully cramped floorspace. Once again I have slept in my clothes. I peel a corner of the orange curtain and peer outside. The mountainside, muddy, denuded of grass by ramblers’ boots….

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Silly or Young How silly I was then, Or maybe too young To see that the darkness on the wall Was just myself Reflected.   The wooden night-light That carved the image of a withered tree Standing, still in moonlight That’s what made it bigger   That’s why I was afraid.   So I cowered under covers, Silly to think my blanket Could shield me from my monster Too young to know I’d never really Escape it. ***   The Nights Are the Hardest  “The nights are the hardest,” she’d said. She was right. Night came. So did total destruction. Dark winds howled, pushed me, dragged me off my perch, down with a thud. Clay skin cracked, pieces of me spread across cold cement floors. Then came the winged creatures. They tore at me, scratching…

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She had one of those yards that embraced the desert. Jimmy appreciated that. Instead of battling the cracked earth, bullying it into producing a lush green carpet of grass, the area around the small terra-cotta ranch was covered with carefully combed pebbles and dotted here and there with decorative rock gardens. The fence was weathered, cowboy wood, and against each fence post leaned an old-timey broken wagon wheel, never a circle complete. Cacti twisted toward the sky, nestled in with otherworldly species, spiny and savage and casting a forest of sharp shadows. Jimmy eased the van up the cracked drive and turned off the engine, the sweet breath of the air conditioning dying against his face. He grabbed a large black duffle bag from the passenger’s seat and went to the door with swift, purposeful…

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“Can you believe how pissed he was?” says Lenore. She holds up a thumb and forefinger. “He came this close to telling us we’d never work in Atlanta again.” It’s opening night, half past midnight, and Morris Champion has just closed Titans. Lenore, Alicia and I are commiserating over coffee and doughnuts in the Buckhead Diner. There’s a clatter from the kitchen, the crowd is loud and boozy, and I’m uncomfortable that we’re shouting. A finger to my lips, I nod in commiseration. “He’ll get over it,” says Alicia, in a surly sotto voce. Her black curls are aquiver, the muscles in her prominent jaw tense. “He’ll remember refunding two weeks of advance tickets, that the Concord is sitting empty. Common sense will strike him dumb, and we’ll be on again.” “I don’t know,” I…

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