Issue One; Volume One

From the Editor's Desk

     Welcome to Issue One, Volume One of Streets Ahead Magazine of Fiction. We here at SAM are pledged to bringing you the very best in up-and-coming writers and poets. This past two weeks have taught me much about being an editor and I would like to thank all of those who supported me from the Legend Fire Writing Community. Without their support and submissions this magazine would have never happened. Now on to the important stuff.

Yours

Daniel (Kiddy) Pool

Editor-in-Chief


     Our featured article this issue comes from Holly who lets her poetry do the talking for itself.

Distant Galaxies

By Holly

Distance galaxies swirl and dance
Worlds of light, dark and gray
Places foreign, yet familiar, wait
With secrets vast, appealing
Hidden beyond this mind’s eye
Memories for the making
Intangible becoming tangible
With soil beneath my feet
All in time, prediction becomes fact
Finally, a chime releases consciousness
The hibernation cycle ends. 


 The Ooze
By Tristan Hodgetts

“A Ghost Bunny”
By Brian Fatah Steele

Just so you know, I hate the bunny. 

      The bunny appeared about a month ago.  At first I thought it was cute.  Who wouldn’t like a little, adorable bunny floating around their living room?  I’m pretty sure it’s a ghost bunny.  Bunnies aren’t usually translucent and gliding about lampshades. 

      It started talking about two, maybe three weeks ago.  At first I didn’t understand it.  I thought perhaps I was being haunted by a lunatic.  But then the bunny informed me that it had realized that I didn’t speak Portuguese, so it switched to English.  Regardless, it still had an odd accent.  Especially for a bunny. 

      It would tell me things that I wasn’t really interested in.  It would recite lines from Bulfinch’s Greek Mythology or tell me about FDR’s childhood.  It would try and explain String Theory or tell me what the ingredients were in ketchup.  I was growing somewhat annoyed with the bunny. 

      At first I simply tried to ignore it, but that didn’t work at all.  I think it just liked to talk.  Maybe it couldn’t talk when it was alive.  I still wonder how it learned all those things.  I would try to drown out the bunny’s voice with music, but it would just talk louder.  Soon I just stopped going home so I wouldn’t have to see the bunny. 

      I went back after three days.  The bunny was very angry with me.  It said it wouldn’t let me pull a stunt like that again.  I tried to fight it off as it attacked me.  It burrowed its little bunny-self into my arm.  I thrashed around and slapped at my arm but it was too late; I had a bunny tattoo there now.  It talks to me all the time now, non-stop.   

      Just so you know, I hate the tattoo. 

ÓBRIAN FATAH STEELE   April 9^th, 2010

About the Author
     Brian Fatah Steele lives in Ohio with two cats that are probably plotting his doom.  Surviving primarily on a diet of coffee and cigarettes, he usually writes a mix of Horror and Urban Fantasy, often with a “Post-Mythic” genre element. He has successfully littered the internet with stories and articles.

DEFORM

By Meredith McLean

 

Introduction

     In an eerie little house on some anonymous street on another day in another year stood you. In the hallway, on the floor, fighting for the silence you’ll never achieve. You could hear the haggard man in the basement as he routinely turned to each window and spat out a desperate laugh that said he hadn’t been with a woman in years.

     You could hear the pacing of the unidentifiable creature trapped in the closet howling whenever it felt a memory pass by. Next door stood the bathroom enclosed by four walls and a mirror. It was occupied by a naked woman repeatedly banging her head on the singular, round mirror until her head smashed it into hundreds of pieces of refracted reflections, representing what was once her. But you did not dare go upstairs because you were very fearful of the second floor inhabitants. 

     You could swear the dead man in the kitchen with his scorched head rested neatly in the oven moved from time to time to get comfortable. And it was merely heart breaking to hear the wails of the twin children, a girl and a boy, locked in separate rooms. 

     All they could do was hammer their little fists and smear the walls with their tears. Of course, above that commotion was the attic. You couldn’t be certain but it seemed someone was up there singing like a songbird in a cage. Sometimes it sounded like a young man, on other days it felt an opera singing woman and occasionally it was almost as if an entire choir was in the ceiling’s tiny compartment. But at any given hour something was always there. 

     Now you knew you should’ve left. You could see the doorway beckoning you to safety but you asked yourself, “Where’s the fun in that?” Taking a course of fear, death and destruction is always far more entertaining then returning to the safety of nowhere. 

     So you removed any considerations for the preservation of your life and left them oozing and moaning on the hallway carpet. And now that you have no meanings, values, ideals, morals or supreme beliefs you are free to explore the house. Once you are in the dark you are capable to be enlightened and deformed. Most gloriously deformed.  

Chapter One: The Voices 

WE CANNOT SEE ANYTHING FOR DELIQUENTS CAN’T SEE US

              all people are delinquents of their own nature

                                             BUT WE CAN LIVE FOR SOUND        

  WOULD YOU die FOR SOUND?

THE ART OF SOUND IS INFINITE

                         YOU KNOW IT

I KNOW IT

                                                                THE MEN KNOW IT

                THE WOMEN KNOW IT

                                           THE PROSTITUTES KNOW IT

THE                                              ACADEMICS         KNOW IT

SAVAGES

       PHILOSOPHERS

                    WANKERS

                               ROYALTIES

                                               KNOW IT

THE ART OF SOUND IS love

                                                  THE ART OF SOUND IS pain

                 

                                                             

                                                  THE ART OF SOUND

                                                                           IS SOUND ITSELF
 
 

Chapter Two: The Twins

Lamenting for my Mother
                                                         Louder
To shout at my Father

Your rhymes are so tasteless             ShE’s my Mother too!

I’m sorry, really                               At least he loved you…

Like a screwdriver in my ear             Brother, be kind

Exactly!                                           I know, the wall is making us mad 

Sister?                                             Like an earwig!  

I don’t think we’ll escape                 But worse  

I just did                                         Yes?  

Please don’t cry!                             Don’t say that 

Keep shouting                                 Bastard! 

There must be someone                  What else can I do? 

Anyone                                          No one will hear  


                                                      I love you too

Who?

Anyone!

Anyone out there?!

You have the saddest voice

But no one will ever see it again           And you the saddest face 

…I’m almost certain                              I’ll remember it

If the wall weren’t in the way we’d         Of what? 
be staring right at each other

Remember I love you                           You feel so close 

Why not?                                            Don’t say that!

I know…                                            We’re not dead yet

Someone will come                              Look now were both crying



                                                             Eventually 
Maybe  
                                                             Soon?
Soon.

I love you

Chapter Three: The Unverifiable Creature

     The brutal sounds of claws Fabricate dread in my ears because we all know the little creature did not choose to be evil.  It was merely locked in a closet forced to be suffocated by evil.  

Chapter Four: The Dead Man

John Doe
DOB: 23^rd September 1945 Ph: 5538 9471

Education: Completed Highschool Education 

Experience:
1950-1952 My bed flowed down the YellOw River and I tried to use my pillow as an oar but it always got too soggy. Before long I would wake up and wet the bed.

1953  I would take Stalin’s hand and he would walk me to the school gate, then as I began to walk away he’d slump against the fence and whisper a word to me I can’t quite understand.

1957-1961 Claire was sitting on a balcony in some unknown location smiling at me. We’d hold hands and then jump but we didn’t fall because suddenly our feet would touch sand. She smiled as her toes wriggled in the grains of sand like old friends getting reacquainted. Then we would go to the water and she went for a swim. Her clothes floated to the top and she beckoned me further. In the water I couldn’t quite see her and as I went to hold her I wake.

1969  A complicated spiral of colours as Claire and me sit under a huge tree. Inside the tree an array of birds of all shapes, sizes and colours tend to their nests. We begin to climb the tree and my friend Greg greets me with a smile and hands me the bong. Now the three of us climb higher and higher until we finally reach the top branches.

1970-1981 The same dream, over and over, the car crashes onto the sand and Claire walks into the waves. She doesn’t come back and I cry under the moonlight.

1982  I sit under a withered tree as my family and friends talk to me. They tell me everything will get better but they’re not there to say that when I’m awake.

1983-1985 A montage of methods to kill myself. Drowning myself at Claire’s beach, hanging myself on the withered tree, jumping into a ring of fire and never returning, leaping off a flight of stairs.

1986  The dreams are stunted by the medication but I vaguely remember swimming amongst fish.

1990  I walk through a tunnel listening to the subway overhead and little glowworms hitchhike on my boots. I flick them off and they squeal in the dust. I squish them as I step forward in hopes of finding the end. Instead of an end it morphs into the house. I go through the front door, up the stairs and into the kitchen. Everything is at my disposal as my life can be disposed. I turn around and Claire stands at the sink. 

Chapter Five: The Laughing Man

Scene: A man, abnormally tall with thick but short hair. He is wearing a long, old Gestapo coat over a pair of Bart Simpson boxers. He routinely turns 90 degrees to each window at each wall in the room and laughs then sits at the stairs located at the far left.

Man: In an age where Man must Remain amused man must not be critical. Whether he believes he is or not. Man must laugh at love, suffering and above all things himself. Even if I, err, I mean Man has nobody to laugh with him.

[The man stands up and begins to pace left and right across the edge of the stage]

Man: Man has laughed at war, Man has laughed at cancer.

[The man stops and laughs loudly]

Man: And yet I don’t, Man doesn’t enjoy this… Let me out!

[The man removes the coat and drops it on the stairs. The man then goes to the window at the back right in the middle of the wall]

Man: In the north lies snow and vodka dribbling in drains.

[The man then goes to the window on the left wall]

Man: In the west towers march around yelling at quaint little houses.

[The man goes to the window on the right wall]

Man: On the east I see ancient stories and dreams that came from enchanted smoke.

[He then walks to the invisible wall that looks out onto the audience]

Man: In the south I see faces slowly chewing out their tongues. 

[The man walks back to the centre and turns to face the audience]

Man: And in the compass rose lies the warm centre of me! –pause- Oh, I mean Man! Man, man, man! Man is forgetful you know?

[A noticeable breeze blows through his hair]

Man: It’s cold again

[The man goes back to the stairs and puts on the coat, he then distinctly points at the stairs and laughs at them. He then returns to the centre of the stage and sits down with a blank stare]

Man: Loneliness isn’t funny. 

 

Chapter Six: The Naked Woman 


     She was once a free, loving, aMbient woman and glided across all the rooms, flaunting her tanned body on all the French beaches and even posing for the lover she captivated each night while they thought they got to knew each other. She had the power to take on whatever personality she wanted: The European model, the light of the party, the innocent first-timer. She could feel like the first time every time and that was her gift. She bought luxurious oils to maintain her glowing golden hair; she poured expensive creams into her expensive hands and made every detail of her body replenished. 

     Often times she didn’t even pay for these items, the lovers supplied everything for her. She thought that was why she called them lovers. Because they brought her what she loved and she gave them a physicality of love in return. But one night while dancing on the beach among a crowd of suitors or pleading they could give her what she needed she spotted a man walking among the dunes. He was not starring at her body like the usual men, he didn’t look even remotely interested. She danced her way through the circle almost as if she were intangible. The man was walking faster then she thought and she had to run after him. The man did not smile with a sexual interest, he did not attempt to say something witty and alluring, he simply stared her in the eyes as if he were watching her past like an old silent film. For the first time the ambient woman felt a new kind of a love. 

     The relationship blossomed and after several months of simply talking and holding hands she did what she thought would never happen, they married. It was no grandeur spectacle, only closest family and friends in the local church. That night they made love for the first time and it was no fiery escapade, nor a dull routine, it was just a soothing feeling of completeness. As time moved on the woman stopped tending to her hair and skin. She began to wear more modest clothing and kept her hair in a simple braid. The couple was married for over a decade when the gentle man that was her husband fell ill to cancer. It caught everyone off guard and the disease destroyed him in less then a fortnight. 

     When he passed the once ambient woman went home. She had a shower and scrubbed away the morbidly clean stench of hospital from her skin with a generic brand bar of soap. She stepped out and toweled off then caught herself in the mirror. The 14 years of faithful marriage had let her pride escape herself. She had slowly become average while being in extraordinary love. But there was a new feature to her and it frightened her completely. The grief, had scathed her with pain and concern. Her face sagged with misery, her arms dangled in apathy and even her blood moved slower in her pathetic body. 

     As the last cloud of steam finally cleared off from the round mirror she saw the bland monster she had finally become. She was lonely, grieving, and completely and utterly dull. An empty shell of love shattered all over the wall. 

About the Author:

     Meredith McLean is in her final year of schooling in Australia. She has had a few stints with writing such as an article being published and winning a poetry slam contest. She hopes this site will send her into the orbit of the top dogs of writing.

     Thank you for reading our very first issue. If you are just a reader then make sure to come back in two weeks for issue two, and if you're more than just a reader and want to submit pieces to us then check out our submissions page. Upcoming issues will have contests and new articles--so we look forward to seeing you, streets ahead of here...