Molara Wood's "Free Rice" in Per Contra: Short and haunting story. Save the Rice, a load carrier screamed instead for his life as he was swept off by a tide.
"A deafening splash, and I froze. My load-carrier had disappeared, fallen off the bridge. The river lapped violently around the brown sack below. No sign of him. A scream escaped me. I hurried down the side of the bridge and passers-by followed. We spotted the man’s head bobbing in and out of the water, arms flailing. Not a swimmer, he was being borne away in the fast flowing river. Men dived in.
“Save the rice, don’t save me!” the load-carrier shouted. He tried to tread water, away from the rescuers. “I can’t pay!”
"How Not to Be Unfaithful" by Sarah Evans
"Love does not come in a fixed supply, not like brain cells, or ova. It does not gradually get used up, like the perfume you dab behind your ears. Spreading it more widely does not diminish each person’s share."
Harabella by Biram Mboob in Granta Mag
"Sultan had elected to work at the Creek, because it was a solitary job. He wasn’t any good with people because he was neither one thing nor the other. There might have been places in the world where this would be an advantage, but Harabella was not one of them. The Plantation was not some anonymous City or backward tribal homeland. It was a place of work, a place of structure, supply depots and schedules. Things had to be very clear in a place like this, and Sultan was anything but. Protocol understood this perhaps, and allowed him the job. So he stayed here, alone with his pets."
African Cities Reader: Free download here
10 Micro Short Stories by Alex Epstein in Guernica Mag
The Woman Who Repaired Time Machines
Exactly like her mother, who taught her the secrets of the profession, she patches together the cracked axles of their obsolete time machines, and listens to all of their tall tales, and raises her daughter alone in the house on the hill. Maybe a day will come and she’ll say to one of them—maybe the one who doesn’t remember that he already recited a Cummings poem to her, maggie and milly and molly and may went down to the beach to play one day; or maybe the one who always cuts himself more than once while shaving; or maybe to someone else, who still hasn’t arrived at her time—“If time travel were possible, nobody would stay in this time.”
Crazy Glue by Etgar Keret
"I got home early. I said ‘Hi’ as I walked in, but there was no reply. I went through all the rooms in the house. She wasn’t in any of them. On the kitchen table I found the tube of glue, completely empty. I tried to move one of the chairs, to sit down. It didn’t budge. I tried again. Not an inch. She’d glued it to the floor. The fridge wouldn’t open. She’d glued it shut. I didn’t understand what was happening, what would make her do such a thing. I didn’t know where she was. I went into the living-room to call her mother’s. I couldn’t lift the receiver; she’d glued that too. I kicked the table and almost broke my toe. It didn’t even budge. "
Have a great weekend people!
The crazy glue excerpt is hilarious.
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