Open Pen

Tag: fiction

  • No Non-Swimmers Beyond this Point

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    Rick White is what the sign says. So I sit in the shallow end propped up on a floatation device, one of those long polystyrene tubes. I look down at my belly, which years ago I would’ve been proud to expose in a bikini but now I keep covered by a black one-piece ‘cozzy’ as…

  • Free to a Good Home

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    Rick White Before Kelly wanted to be an actress, all she wanted was to be like her mother. When she was a little girl, five or six, she’d put on Christine’s patent heels and shuffle around on the linoleum kitchen floor — knee high and invisible to the crowds of grownups who occupied their home…

  • F23

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    Rick White Everyone had always assumed the orchid was fake. A facsimile of life, deliberately placed in an elevated position on a shelf next to the photocopier as a nod to the outside world that so obstinately continued to exist. The orchid had a way of drawing the eye, its delicate white petals visible from…

  • Crab Bucket

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    Rick White Just call me Uncle Crab Bucket. I knew this was a good idea. I’ve taken my five-year-old nephew Troy crab fishing. He’s still not talking that much, and my Dad took me crab fishing when I was younger so I thought it might bring him out of himself, as people are fond of…

  • Dog-Face Malone, Meet Linda

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    Rick White I’m in a hospital waiting room, squinting against the violent iridescence of a thirty-thousand watt strip-light which illuminates this purgatory and sears itself into my hungover brain. The walls are a Hellish beige and there’s the usual accoutrements — uncomfortable plastic chairs, out of date magazines, slumping elderly people and a strange sort…

  • A Beautiful Proof

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    Rick White The girls look as though they’re crying, but their makeup stays the same. On the hockey field they flock and gather, a chattering throng of black-winged migratory birds, waiting for the final bell of school to ring. They write messages of everlasting friendship on school shirts, in glitter-stained yearbooks; every sentiment carefully crafted…

  • Ahead of Me in Time

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    Kim Chinquee After so many days of cloud cover, I want to penalize the sky. Get out of bounds, I want to say to all the gray. I like clouds, but they must be so high and clotted that I can’t even see them. The air looks to me like a giant sheet of blankness.…

  • The Red Cover

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    Kim Chinquee The book with the red cover read ‘You Can’t Threaten Anyone’. After my dad died, I found it on his table. I found a lot of things on his table – every card I sent him, along with all my letters. The book with the red cover only listed items. It was a…