Initiation

By Adetokunbo Abiola 

I do not wake this December afternoon because the waves of the Atlantic Ocean breaks on the Kuramo beach with a roar. After a few days of living in the abandoned shack, I am used to the sound of the ocean. What wakes me up is Muyi’s shout: “Come later in the day! Come later in the day! I’ll give you money.” I am not used to Muyi, my elder brother, speaking this way. If he said, “I’ll break your head, you motherfucker!” It would have been more in character. However, his conciliatory tone makes me curious, and I roll over on the sand and stare. 

Dancing Jasper shouts at him: “Moni owo mi da? Where is my money?” People say Dancing Jasper works for Alaye Papa, the ‘Area father’ of this part of Kuramo Beach . Sweet Mama, who owns the bar where Muyi and I work, calls him Omo Alaye Papa. One of the ‘Area Boy’ at the beach told Muyi and me the previous evening:

“Settlement is your certificate for Kuramo. Once you settle Dancing Jasper you and your brother can work here.”

How To Treat A Genie

By G. David Schwartz

There are several ways to determine how to treat a genie. Most say it is to do so like a salesman. That is, with rudeness and sub-specialty. 

First, you must learn to recognize who and what is a genie, which is not as simple as it seems. They are not scepters you can recognize by their movement, deduce by their absence. No they are rely there.

You may bump into them and not even notice you did so. They are not quite human. But still they try on shoes. Don't you think genies need shoes?

You are allowed to hit the genie. On the head, or kick the genie in the knees. The trick is, of course, you need to locate the genie. Still, the genie has no human emotions, nor any non-human emotions. Druids do feel pain. They do not need politeness. Nor do they need napkins. They are extremely rude non-people.

The Show

By Ron Koppelberger

Mawson August tapped the rust colored ashtray with a sleight subtle rhythm. Inhaling he savored the gentle caress of vanilla-flavored clove. Chaldea Clove, “Discreet yet neat!” it said on the box. The bottle of Heineken sat lonely and nearly full next to a half-eaten plate of green beans.

The teddy bear on the television screen looked soft and fuzzy, friendly; Mawson got cozy in his easy chair and clicked the remote control to his new flat screen liquid digital. He belched a growling tiger and patted his stomach.

Inhaling deeply he relaxed and exhaled a mushrooming plume of smoke. He turned out the table lamp next to him. Silhouettes in dancing storms and evanescent shadow played across his face in peripheral morphus exchange with the light from the glowing television. Mawson sighed and checked the cable guide, Click, Click, Click. Channel 138, a movie “The Lady and the Purchased Passion,” 187, “free will” it read, 209, “Kick yer Butt in Hell” it read. He opened his eyes wider in the darkness and the glow of flittering chatterbox vision. “ Kick yer butt in hell,” he read again. For a moment he was indecisive in his choice, “Why not.” he whispered. The tranquil pause between seconds and minutes ticked by as he waited for the satellite relay to capture the picture.

The screen flashed a simple one word announcement, “Evangeline,” then there was gray static, again the screen flashed “Evangeline!” He waited, bonded wandering eyes expectant, “Evangeline!” The rapt face of a brilliant twilight sunset, compliant to the approaching indigo shade, shaped in the fashion of a man, eyes scarlet and the rest in shadow except for a row of pearly white teeth, “Evangeline!” superimposed across the man’s silhouette. A low hum refrained in a soft pillowy echo, “Evangeline,” it whispered. Mawson looked at his watch it had stopped at 12:37 A.M., “Evangeline the man whispered a bit louder. “The spoils of war,” he spoke aloud in sibilant rhythm with the crickets that had begun chirping. His mouth opened a tiny bit and he reached up to the pearly whites and pulled out a piece of folded notebook paper. His dark hand held the paper, outstretched almost as if offering the secret note to Mawson. He unfolded the piece of paper.

“Evangeline!” it said in maroon script. The man took a wooden match from the shadows before him, striking the match against his check a tiny inferno of brilliance charmed the well of gray-black shadow. Holding the match to the paper he set the scrap on fire. It burned and his face gnarled to a look of absolute hatred. “EVAGILINE!” he screamed shaking the space between Mawson and the screen. Understood, implicit in chaste degrees of illumination a giant red and amber sun filled the screen, the unassuming figure of an angel in flight fluttered across the screen and a shower of rose petals filled the air in gentle undulating harmony. A silent rhapsody in cadence with the sound of a beating heart filled the room. Mawson saw an unborn fetus and the conclusion of the moment. The screen filled with light<“Salvation.” it read. There was an intangible unspoken purity in the angel as the gentle hiss of static woke him from his quiet reverie and his secret discussion.

The dream, he possessed the betrothal of a gracious existence, the dream, he shivered for a moment and the twilight wild whispered “Evangeline.” in his ear. The better of a revolution rolled before him, wheat and saffron, near the edges and in the distance, fire great heaps of flame.


Ron Koppelberger has written 97 books of poetry over the past several years and 17 novels. He has been published in The Storyteller, Ceremony, Write On!!!, Freshly Baked Fiction and Necrology Shorts. He also recently won the People’s Choice Award for poetry in The Storyteller for his poem "Secret Sash."

If I Should Fall In Love

By Randy Lowens

“A thousand times,” she whispered into the darkness of the stubble on his chin.  “A thousand times.”

By conservative estimate, they'd got it on twice a week throughout ten years of marriage.  So the math was easy.  With roughly fifty weeks in a year, that was a hundred couplings per annum.  Over the course of ten years, they'd done it more than a thousand times.

A body would think that sex with the same lover would grow stale over so long a period, that after, say, five hundred instances of intercourse it would become boring.  At least routine.  A body would expect a girl to long for adventure, for some exotic spices added to her fare.  To close her eyes and dwell on ethnic diversity.  To imagine being young and ravaged by a gang of shirtless construction workers.

But no.  Well, yes, she had those fantasies.  But also, each time she had carnal knowledge of her husband, each time they mated like a pair of graceful, frantic deer in rut, when their sleek and sweaty limbs entwined and their hearts thumped like steam engines pounding down some treacherous, gyrating pair of rails, she transcended herself. She left the planet and lay floating, suspended in air, deathless yet not alive, existing in the eternal embrace of winking noon day stars.

They had once fought so often, with such spite and venom, that they sought counseling.  At the close of the session, the pastor warned that no relationship could survive on animal passion alone.  Without a spiritual connection, divorce became an option.  The old preacher had admired her nylon-clad legs that flirted from beneath a plaid skirt as he spoke of God, and she knew he was a fool.

“If I ever get bored, I'll leave you, Baby,” she sighed into the breeze from the box fan resting on the windowsill.  “Or, if I should fall in love, I'll stay and just have an affair.”


Randy Lowens resides in the central Kentucky city of Richmond.  He has been published in A-Minor, Wrong Tree Review, Fried Chicken and Coffee, and elsewhere.