by W.A. Smith

They are sitting at the table: Grace, the quiet, graceful mother; Ellen, the sister from another planet; Emerson, the Daddy Emeritus; and Charley. Supper is roast beef and mashed potatoes with gravy…and lima beans. There is no room in Charley’s life for lima beans. He’s herded some of them into a split-open Brown-’n-Serve roll and shored the whole thing up with mashed potatoes; other beans he drops delicately into his mouth, and with a deft maneuver brings his napkin to his lips and deposits the hated slime-beans into it, lightning quick, before their taste has time to settle on his tongue. The lumpy linen goes discreetly into hiding in the cave of his lap. He will not eat these beans, no matter what.
(read on…)

by Atalaya

She was no beauty.

A scraggly, ungainly creature with strange bluish eyes, Griselda lived in uncomfortable and jealous promiscuity with a woman; herself dark, smart and selfish who occasionally and carelessly invited a man into their home. She called him Bill and he smelt rather nice. Evenings with Bill followed always the same pattern. He brought flowers and a bottle. The woman had spent time cooking and dressing and she pretended not to be quite ready, going at him with her claws painted red. They kissed lightly and he sat down on Griselda’s couch, unfeelingly. She did not mind. Not too much anyway. He let her come close to his legs and fondled her. Then the woman shooed her away, and, grudgingly, she retired to that place under the kitchen table where she liked to take her nap on the old blanket, with her food-basin and water-cup close at hand, or rather close at paw.
(read on…)