Six Sentences

Music

2009-11-23T08:00:00.000-05:00

by Matthew O'Shannessy

I know there is a tiny gremlin inside my ear (hello!). It has a wet hessian sack full of pins and needles that it pushes up and down my ear canal. It pisses putrid white liquid until I can't hear a thing. It transforms into electricity and makes the muscles in my neck twitch in pain. Have you ever thought about scooping your eardrums out with the wrong end of a silver spoon? I'm convinced that the deaf have better sex than those of us who can hear music.

6S

Matthew O'Shannessy writes copy for websites about organizational change and epoxy resin flooring, among other things.

Blankets

2009-11-22T08:00:00.000-05:00

by Steve Himmer

The sticky heat and muffled sound remind Martin of lying in bed when he was eight years old and living in one of many cramped apartments he shared with his mother. He listened to the adult voices growing louder in the next room as she fought with the man they were living with then - the one he remembers as only a walrus mustache - and Martin knew that in the morning they would move somewhere else the way they always did after that kind of fight. Despite the dead, city heat in his room, he pulled the bedclothes up over his head until the voices were almost drowned out. Soon he was dripping with sweat so he peeled off his sweaty pajamas and pushed them out of the bed, then pulled the rattling box fan from the window into the tent of his blankets and sheets. Naked and clammy in that mechanical breeze, he sang to himself through the blades of the fan and pretended he was a musical robot instead of a boy beneath a pile of blankets. Eventually he fell asleep, and when he woke up the fan was back in the window and his mother had already packed his few things.

6S

Steve Himmer's stories have appeared most recently at Pequin, Night Train, and 21 Stars Review. "Blankets" is excerpted from a novel called SCRATCH, which he will probably let you read if you ask. He is the author of Precis, and keeps a dull blog.

For Every Mother

2009-11-21T08:00:00.000-05:00

by Monica Bustamante Wagner

My dear little baby. Please bite my chin with your toothless gums, pull my hair, and dribble on my shirt. Perch on my hip and squirm; I have muscles you can wear out. Pull my breasts at night; I want you close. Throw me your first kiss; I will never forget. My little baby, why do you have to grow up?

6S

Monica Bustamante Wagner has a Bachelor’s in business and a Master’s in HHRR. She loves to write and is currently finishing a YA novel (while nursing her newborn and helping her older boys finish their homework).

The Lifting Wind

2009-11-20T08:00:00.000-05:00

by Kirk Rao

I often remember leaving the military—driving off the base for the last time and taking off on an open highway out of Kansas, my hands on the broad steering wheel of my first car (an old Ford that I was able to buy and continue preserving while I was in the service), the sunlight hazing the long hood of the car into a blinding gold, a bright morning amid the last spring before the new millennium, and the windows rolled down to let the warmth whip through the musty cab. This warmth was carried by the same indigenous wind that had echoed the vast flatness of the Midwest when powdered visible by straight lines of sideways snow, that barrage of tiny shards of ice that stung like glass while we waited on the flight line for bloated tankers and roaring bombers to be launched and recovered. Now, as that warm wind barreled through the open windows of my speeding car, I felt it lifting me out of a four-year bond, four years, but I was still young and still drawing and learning piano and, even after the car, still had savings—I would need it for New York City. I was leaving behind, leaving below, those tired and defeated families trudging through the cheap isles of chain stores, and joining those free thinkers, whom I imagined shouting proudly and defiantly as they stood on the gueridon tables of private cafes, where I perchance would meet the one who would love me as much as I would love her, that is, if I would not otherwise meet her in the passions of my new job, this job being one I could get, now that I had the GI Bill and could finally return to school four years after the first time everything went wrong. In this way did I think of everything I would have, while that shining, resilient car I used to have flew further and further away until the lifting wind grew weaker and was finally gone. But its aging memory remains strong.

6S

Kirk Rao has a BA in English from Hunter College, where he's pursuing a career as a public school teacher. His publication credits include artwork in Cerise Press and Prick of the Spindle.

Street Dance

2009-11-19T08:00:00.000-05:00

by Cat Hughes

Oh, she wishes it had happened today. She doesn't even remember what he looked like: the average office suit she recalls, but her imagination has added a messy haircut and an unshaven face – some small protest to set him apart from his co-workers. It started with that awkward back-and-forth shuffle of two strangers trying to pass each other on the street; then he grabbed her right hand and put his arm around her waist, swirling her in a mini waltz in the middle of the lunchtime shoppers and angry passersby. He set her down on the pavement and smiled, walking away, stretching his hand behind him as he went. She would understand that moment if it happened now – two people sharing a delicate second in a day that hadn't gone to plan for either of them. But no, when it happened she was sixteen, so she just frowned, trudged away and hoped no one had noticed.

6S

Cat Hughes sneezes when she eats mints – no one has been able to explain this phenomenon.

Pick Me!

2009-11-18T08:00:00.000-05:00

by Bradley Alan

You can bet your last nickle I was startled when the nutty grey haired loon sitting across from me on the bus leaned over and wiped her scabby red booger on my shirt. She called me Leroy and told me I deserved it and then twisted her ankle as she hurried off the bus. I proudly wore that booger like a brooch for the rest of the afternoon. It dangled from my breast pocket like a war medal, signifying my ability to cultivate 'crazy' in the most common of conditions. My bus pass doesn’t expire till 2012. I should probably invest in some really good laundry detergent or at least carry a wet nap.

6S

Bradley Alan writes, paints, and otherwise creates beauty in Phoenix, Arizona. He does not play the harmonica or have an ironing board, but he does make amazing Ramen noodles. For a visit to his ridiculous mind, check him out on his blog.

The Physical Therapist

2009-11-17T07:00:00.000-05:00

by Connor de Bruler

My friend Lolinda is an alcoholic. She's now in her final year of training as a physical therapist and she has a penchant for drunk and driving. She'll down a couple bottles of Newcastle or Busweiser as she swerves through four highway lanes on her way to some dark and secluded saloon on the edge of town. She does her internships for physical therapy at the local specialists office. Most of her patients are victims of car crashes. Every time she drives out past my window, I can almost see the sweet blood red irony that flows amidst the broken glass and twisted metal in her future.

6S

Connor de Bruler grew up in Greenville, South Carolina and has lived in Indianapolis and Nuremburg, Germany. His work has been published by Bending Spoons Literary Magazine and Fictional Publications.

The Table

2009-11-16T08:00:00.000-05:00

by Kim Soles

The table held the roasted bird with all of its tender fixings. Arms lifted, passing giant festive bowls stuffed with mashed potatoes and cranberries and overflowing woven baskets of fresh rolls, circled to the right and left without order. Chatter and clatter continued after Grandma Rose preached her Jesus-full extra thankful blessing. New York stories laced the air from the home-for-the-holidays daughter and sports lingo of the day ahead filtered in from the boys. Grandma Rose had her turn chitchatting about her dearest friend Jesus Christ, her see-thru, baby blues captivating her audience as she confessed concocting a drink of Clorox bleach with a mighty wish to abort her second daughter. Her daughter managed the potion, as Rose continued the confession, taking responsibility of her daughter’s inability to conceive children and asked for forgiveness at the table of giving.

6S

Kim Soles is a designer, nature photographer and writer who escaped from New York in 2001 and lives in Philadelphia, exactly one hundred miles from Brooklyn.

Daunted

2009-11-15T08:00:00.000-05:00

by Lauren Risberg

She stood before him draped in an elegant marble dress, unmoving folds suspended from the child's frame mid-flutter, each pearly crease meticulously carved and polished. He tightened his sweaty grip on the artist's chisel, paralyzed in the gaze of her unshapely head. Maybe it was the skulls he heard rolling like glass marbles in his sculptor's toolbox, maybe it was the silent putrid corpse that lurked between unpainted canvases in his storage closet, maybe it was the scattered pallid gravel crunching like chalky bones beneath his shoes, but his hand felt like lead at the thought of disturbing her intricate marble coffin. The unfinished statue had no mouth, no face, no eyes, and she breathed so easily the same grit-dusted air that stung his lungs when he inhaled. He feared if he carved her face, she might bleed. He dropped his chisel and fled the studio, his hands immaculately clean.

6S

Lauren Risberg is left-handed and wishes her handwriting were better.

Three Cherries

2009-11-14T08:00:00.000-05:00

by Emily Anne Epstein

I think of my boyfriend like my grandmother thinks of an Atlantic City slot machine. I've got a bloody mary in my left hand and a fistful of pennies in the other. I'm just sitting here so the woman in the aqua suit keeps bringing me the free drinks. Occasionally, I run out of pennies and think maybe... I should move to another machine. I don't. I know if I get up, someone else is gonna sit down and win the jackpot.

6S

Emily Anne Epstein is a journalist based in Buenos Aires, Argentina where she is known to practice photography, writing and poor Spanish. Visit her website here.

Dark Imagination

2009-11-13T07:00:00.000-05:00

by Rod Drake

She said she had lost her husband. She didn’t seem that upset by it. Maybe he was sick for a long time, so it wasn’t unexpected, almost a relief in a way. Or maybe she didn’t really love him, or had fallen out of love with him, and didn’t care all that much that he was gone now. Or... perhaps she had killed him. She could have made it look like an accident, people do it all the time, and the authorities wouldn’t investigate a common, ordinary death like this; it wasn’t a page one story (he was nobody famous or infamous), there was no great amount of money to be inherited and the death wasn’t bloody or extreme – just a seemingly normal passing that might hide a dark secret.

6S

Rod Drake is the Official 6S Author of Halloween and Friday the 13th. (Beware a black cat crossing your path today!)

Success

2009-11-12T08:00:00.001-05:00

by Thomas Sullivan

In 1908 Henry Ford mastered the assembly line and brought affordable cars to the masses. In 1940 Dick and Mac McDonald gave people the fast food restaurant. Heaped with praise, these three men were considered to be idols, wildly successful heroes. But the car is now killing the planet while fast food ravages our bodies. Today’s darlings of the business world include Bill Gates and Steve Jobs, with their accelerating computers and glittering iPhones, quickly replaced but difficult to discard. Staring at a heaping mound of toxic castoffs in India, I wonder what their success is doing to our bodies, our minds, and the planet?

6S

Thomas Sullivan's memoir of teaching Drivers Ed (Life in the Slow Lane) is forthcoming from Uncial Press in February 2010. More of Thomas’s writing can be found here.

The Man on the Cloud

2009-11-11T08:00:00.000-05:00

by Cat Hughes

Billions died on the journey. Some dragged themselves through mud until their legs were sturdy on firm ground. Some took to the sky, stumbling and tumbling like leaves in the breeze until they found their form. Some returned to the sea, tentative splashes turning into powerful dances. Some invented a man with a beard who lives on a cloud. Then they gave him the credit for all that hard work.

6S

Cat Hughes often regrets clicking "send" instead of "delete."

Good Friends

2009-11-10T08:00:00.000-05:00

by Yvonne Eliot

They had lunch together a couple of months after the breakup. It went really well: they talked about work, mutual friends, maybe collaborating again on that writing project. For the most part, it was friendly, companionable, with only a couple of awkward moments where one or the other wasn't sure if the conversation had started to drift toward old roles, habitual intimacies which were no longer appropriate, but each time they dragged things back to safer ground, and the ambiance of casual friendship was preserved. Afterward, she gave him a quick hug, saying how glad she was they could still be friends, and that it meant a lot to her. He watched her walk away, that brief contact with her body burning through his clothes, against his skin, feeling the ghost of her mouth, her tongue, her scent, her laugh, her eyes, the way she always seemed to know what he meant even when he wasn't sure himself. Through the window of the restaurant, he saw her get into her car and start to drive off, and he finally allowed his mask to fall away, leaving nothing but his heart in his eyes.

6S

Yvonne Eliot loves creating watercolor lyricism and eating pumpkin pie with lots and lots of whipped cream.

Role Play Isn't Just for Lovers

2009-11-09T08:00:00.001-05:00

by Tom Forrister

"I have to take a leak," my buddy whined five minutes after we passed the last rest stop for sixty miles. "Can't you hold it?" I sighed, and he shook his head, so I pulled over into a field where we ventured out into the darkest storm, just the two of us, all alone. Lightning flashes illuminated a gun in his grip that was pointed directly at me. I dropped my car keys and raised my hands in the air, Caesar's last words (Et tu, Brute?) repeatedly stabbing like a knife in my head. "Hold it, HOLD IT!" my betrayer screamed when he thought I would run, his sweaty fingers click-clacking against the trigger so tremulously I couldn't hold it anymore. It was in this moment that the clouds emptied, buckets of rain washing away my shame, and I started to cry when my friend threw his unloaded weapon at my feet and held me tight, wrestling my ever elusive vulnerability.

6S

Tom Forrister is an aspiring writer living in Salem, MA with his wife and 2.5 ball pythons. White picket fence to be added later.

Struggling

2009-11-08T04:00:00.001-05:00

by Nathan Good

Today feels a little like the day I saw the dog with its head stuck in railings. Sometimes I think back to the way I stood there and watched it struggle. Its hind legs scrambled for grip, its back arched and straightened, its neck muscles spasmed and saliva dripped from its gaping mouth, passing panicked breaths. Now as you raise your head I see that same look in your eyes. "Please," you say, and hold out your hand hoping that I will cover it with mine and tell you it's all going to be ok. "Please," you say again, but I'm still thinking of the dog and how I should have helped him.

6S

Nathan Good lives in Derby. His friends do not call him "The Enigma," and he resents them for that.

Blood Bath in Strings

2009-11-07T08:00:00.000-05:00

by Anne Earney

Elizabeth had time to play the harp these days, for one could only spend so many hours roaming the castle alone. She experimented with finger placement and rhythm. It was difficult to coax the sounds she wanted from the harp, sounds she might have heard before, in the days of the servants, in the days before… She tried not to think about it, but the harp made ugly sounds, which were pretty sounds, but ugly to Elizabeth, for what she wanted to hear, what she yearned to recreate, was the fearful skittering of thin shoes across the tiles, the screech of bitten nails on the stone walls, the wails women make when… Elizabeth could almost hear those sounds, almost, as she tore her fingers across the strings. She thought it too bad there was no one left to enjoy her artistry.

6S

Anne Earney lives in St. Louis, Missouri. She works in a grocery store, making good use of the MFA she earned from the University of Missouri-St. Louis. Her fiction has been published in places such as Dossier Journal, Night Train, Versal and Big Ugly Review.

Six Small Meals

2009-11-06T08:00:00.000-05:00

Six Sixes by Peggy McFarland

6S

Peggy McFarland, a longtime friend and supporter of this site and community, is celebrating a birthday today.

Word

2009-11-05T07:00:00.000-05:00

by Felicia Gregory

Can you tell how intelligent someone is by how they write? If someone uses big and difficult words are they smart? If I call myself a writer am I gifted, insightful and cultured? No. What we read is not a test to be graded. The words we read, whether from a shopping list or a great novel are nothing more than a hand shake or a smile; they are merely another brush with humanity.

6S

Felicia Gregory completed 3 1/2 years of college. She works at a grocery store as a cashier with better people than she ever met at school.

Toward Landings

2009-11-04T06:00:00.000-05:00

by Jonna Beck

He never asks twice, but he always asks. I lie in this translucent state between awake and asleep wondering if he can tell that I want to fall asleep but can't and try to talk about the day before but instead I say, "The sheet is broken and all I could do was wrap it around my head." He rubs cream into my wounds, trying to heal the past, but the future rapidly infiltrates the interstitial space between here and there as Godamer the Cat climbs the curtains. Tomorrow, he'll take the car, and I'll walk, but today he walked. When I picked him up, the kitchen grease dripped from his shirt and all he said was, "You're late." We drove the five, long miles home in silence.

6S

Jonna Beck attends Texas State University.

The Stool

2009-11-03T06:00:00.000-05:00

by Luke Wilson

I buy a stool from a car boot sale; it has three legs, is upholstered in sweaty faux leather, and has a button in the middle of the seat. I get the seat home, sit on it, and yelp with pain as a sharp object breaks the skin of my behind. I run my fingers over the red seat of the stool, and I find that to one side of the button, a pin like object is embedded in the stuffing in such a way that it doesn't protrude through the leather unless pressure is applied. Gingerly, I investigate further, and find it to be a syringe which is half full of an unknown brown liquid. I take the syringe to the police, and they send off its contents to be analysed as a matter of urgency. When the results come back, they tell me that the syringe was contaminated with the HIV virus.

6S

Luke Wilson works as a software developer for a semantic web company, holds a degree in theoretical physics which he doesn't use, and spends some of his spare time trying to write.

Dear You, First Love

2009-11-02T07:00:00.000-05:00

by Carter Maddox

I'm writing this to tell you that last night K asked, "Where'd you get this, babe," about that picture thing you gave me when we were still seeing each other. I looked at it--the frame's a little out of date now--and bumbled on what to say. You know what I'm talking about: the picture thing with the stamps, the great films and great directors theme (mostly Jewish directors, might I add--did you know I have a Hebrew tattoo and every day I wear a ring with Hebrew on it, did you?); those were really your interests then films plays scripts writing being Jewish (?). And now I'm the--oh, god! (do you know how profoundly you've put your foot in my path, my life I love you)--I'm the writer...and so is K. And I think I could love him, and it's more than I loved you, and he scares me every day but I don't want to quit him not yet at all at all, and I understood that he understands me, that he asked about the picture thing because it's so me, that it's my kind of kitsch, that it looks like something I would have picked out for myself at Target on a whim some Saturday a few years ago when that type of picture frame was in style. And so to tell you both I loved you without saying it in those words in particular, I told him, my hand on his hipbones, that the picture thing was a gift.

6S

Carter Maddox's first play, Take!, is premiering in December at Texas State University - San Marcos. He's managing editor for his school's literacy journal Words Work, and his scriptwork has been published in GuyWriters magazine.

Awakening

2009-11-02T06:45:00.000-05:00

by caccy46

Her eyes opened slowly as she stretched the stiffness out of her lower back and legs. Such a simple gesture that felt so satisfying. As she slowly swung her legs over, sat up and slid out of bed to head for the shower, the woman never registered it had been many months (or had it been many years?) that her days began in a vastly different way; that the initial moments of consciousness were filled with a dread that began in her chest and slithered through her entire body leaving her laden on the mattress burdened with the weight of a beached whale. The first feelings after awakening felt instinctual and sickening, forcing her to roll herself onto her stomach and bury all she was into her pillow, afraid to face the light lurking outside her darkened room or the unwanted glimpse of the illuminated hour on the clock instilling more guilt because she knew it was not possible yet to force herself up. She would silently plead for sleep to take over again, wiping away time, light and the sinking weight that left her powerless. How was it possible for her not to notice the drastic change as she went through her morning, performing rituals that usually took place in the gloaming, if at all?

6S

caccy46's full 6S catalog is here.

The Predictor

2009-11-01T07:00:00.000-05:00

by Cat Hughes

He's there everyday, this gap-toothed, grizzled old man standing outside the corner store. Sipping from a can of cider at all times, he wears a stained, mangy trench coat, whatever the weather. Sometimes he's arguing with bearded, long-haired, old drinking buddies; but mostly he's alone. I see him on my walk to work every morning and my heart takes a pause as I approach. Everyone who passes is greeted with either an enthusiastic thumbs up, or a high-pitched, possessed: "Fuck off, ye bastard!" He's become a very reliable predictor of how my day will turn out.

6S

Cat Hughes writes apologetically on a regular basis. She then deletes it.

A Teutonic Conversation

2009-11-01T06:30:00.000-05:00

by John Price

“I had a dream about you last night.” “That’s really fascinating.” “Yeah, it was about your birthday party that I wasn’t invited to, except instead of birthday hats, everyone was wearing those pointy German helmets from World War I. Yours was kind of sparkly and pretty, which suits you.” “You should stop speaking now.” “Jawohl.”

6S

John Price grows things in upstate New York.