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Failing Forward by Bogdan Dragos

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Mafalda by Quino

in high school he repeatedly told her that he was saving himself for marriage and eventually she left him alone but after graduation she approached him yet again and this time he told her that he was focusing on his career as a writer they both had their dreams and they kept dreaming and fighting to accomplish them, insisting and getting up from every defeat failing forward as some would say It took decades but eventually both of their dreams came true they were married and he still hadn’t struck a deal with any publisher but made a relatively okay income self-publishing he wrote for a very narrow niche very trashy erotic fiction and his lovely wife helped him with inspiration and research “C’mon,” he urged her, “moan a bit harder, cry some too.” she did as she was told as he went around her with the…

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11

a king in his castle

at 08:22 he awakens and pushes
away the tarp he uses as blanket

he’s already dressed up
and wears shoes

looks around at the blackening
dampness of the walls

stretches a bit

takes off his coat and
the blouse
and the shirt
and the tank-top

grabs a tissue
wets it with rubbing alcohol
and uses it to wash his
armpits. He knows it’s good for killing
the bad smelling bacteria

He knows much about how the world works
for he’d been to school and even
one year of collage in his youth

When his armpits dry
he dresses up
and gets out and checks under the
big flower pots that stand before the
entry to the building

He is wise to keep his savings there
Otherwise the others would’ve
smelled it on him and would’ve
robbed him a long time ago
He counts the money
and feels satisfied with the sum

At 09:30 he eats a warm meal at the
local soup kitchen
and turns down
four bums who ask to borrow money

At 10:10 he walks up to the
big casino and
enters

Now his imagination kicks in

Behind the entry
he is greeted with luxury, he walks
on the red carpet
and sees the bright lights
and the game attendants who greet him
like a king

He is the king in his vision
and he had returned to his castle

He smiles
and walks around leisurely

A man needs to have but a clear
vision of a bright future
to live a happy present

He finds a seat
in front of a slot machine

puts the money into
the bill acceptor
and starts playing

He is one of the happiest
customers the casino
ever had
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20

childhood’s villain

Father used his fists
a lot
Though never on the kids

On the walls
and the furniture
and the doors
and the mailbox
and the fence
and the neighbors
and random people on the street
and strangers in the bar
and a few times the poor dog
and one time on mother

He was the childhood’s
villain

To defeat him one had
to become a hero

and becoming a hero
took time

And today
after all this time
the villain of childhood
was dead

He died at the hands of
some other character,
a neutral one

A cop who told him to
drop to the ground
and father didn’t
so he got shot

That was it
The end of his saga

Utterly unsatisfactory
anticlimactic
disappointing
just bad

There was no final showdown
between hero and villain

because those things
only happen in
childhood
and childhood had ended a
long time ago
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171

open casket funeral by Bogdan Dragos

j re crivello's avatarMasticadoresAfrica

what would be the reason to have an open casket funeral? Why should the living see the dead? He addressed the questions to no one in particular but his dead wife answered from the picture on the wall "Don't you wanna see me, darling?" "Not like that, I don't," he said. "That's why I have your portrait. So I don't have to look at your dead body in the casket. But your mom wouldn't understand..." "Darling, I think you're the one who doesn't understand. And I think it's time we talk about your therapist." "What about my therapist?" "You tell me. You tell me why did she have to tell you that she's single now and looking to settle. I thought she was supposed to help you cope with the premature death of your wife, not tell you her problems." "Dear, please..." "And one more thing. I don't like the…

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2

rice and walnuts

“I fucking hate rice,” she
told me. “And I’m beginning
to kinda
hate you for loving it.”

“Shit,” I said, “what
did rice ever
do to you?”

She opened her purse
took out the pack of smokes
and fished one out
with her lips. “Fuck,” she said,
looking for the lighter.
“I think I still
have the pits in my knees…”

“What?”

She shrugged. “I was a little girl,
alright, and whenever I
did something that my dear grandma
considered naughty she’d
pour raw rice in a corner
of the room and make me kneel
on it and just stand like that for…
I don’t know, hours.”

“Really?”

“Really!” She blew the smoke
in my face. “To this day,
bitch still wonders
how I could steal her savings
from the pension. I didn’t
even need the money. I just hated
her guts is all. And now
I hate rice. And you.”

“Well,” I said. “I never stole
from my grandma. And to
this day I don’t hate walnuts.”

“What?”

“Yeah, that was my version
of the punishment. I knelt on
shells of walnuts just
like you with the rice. And I
don’t hate ’em.”

She blew more
smoke in
my face
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38

how can you be such a monster? by Bogdan Dragos

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he spent four weeks
away from his family
in a rented apartment
somewhere on
the outskirts
of town

he told them that
he needed this
he was a writer
needed to focus on his work
conducting his research
undistracted

his little girl would call
from time to time
asking daddy to hold his
phone against his forehead
while she made a kissing sound
on the other line

very wholesome
except he lied about
holding the phone
against his forehead

“How can you be
such a monster?”
asked the naked prostitute
sitting on the edge of his bed

“Shut up,” he said
tossed his phone on the desk
and unbuckled

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43

more than enough to explain by Bogdan Dragos

j re crivello's avatarMasticadoresAfrica

there was nothing
to explain here

the man’s wife told them
everything they
needed to know

Her husband wrote poetry

Yes, that would be enough
to explain why
he cut off his penis
and tried to use it
as a pen
before collapsing
on the desk,
blood pooling
at his feet below

Being a poet was
more than enough
explanation for
what he did

She didn’t need
to tell the paramedics
that her husband
had been looking
for inspiration

“He’s a poet,”
was more than
enough

They understood

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35

the last notebook

he takes his old wrinkled
notebook
and the black pen

and finds a
spot from which he can observe
the people
and write down what he
imagines to be their inner
conversations

It passes the time

and it takes away
attention from his own
inner conversations

It’s like a prescription drug
he has to take for the
rest of his life
and the twenty-nine bookshelves
filled with notebooks
he has at home stand as proof of that

But this will be
the last one,
he promises himself
as he closes the notebook and
walks up to the bridge

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56

around the smokey hole

You can still be good
at what you do
without liking
what you do

It’s more common than
you’d imagine

The words reflected his face
in the steamy bathroom mirror

He watched
until he felt cold in his
nakedness
and shivered

reached for the towel
wiped
got out of the bathroom
put on clothes
and returned to his writing
desk

The blank page was ugly

unlike the somewhat encouraging
words on the steamy mirror

He reached into the drawer
pulled out the pen
stuck it into his mouth
clicked it

Reached again into the drawer
pulled out the gun
pointed it at the blank page
fired

He wrote for the remainder of
the day and the next
night around the smokey hole

It was finally
beautiful

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52

Mercy kill

j re crivello's avatarMasticadoresAfrica

From the hand of the writer Bogdan, we return to the path of short stories – j re crivello (editor)

by Bogdan Dragos

When the enemy strikes keep your gun close to you. That worked during the war, but the war was all those years ago and the saying didn’t apply today.

Today it was more like when depression strikes keep your ice cream at hand. He got into his slippers and went into the kitchen to grab a spoon for his ice cream. Living on the ground floor of an apartment building from the suburbs gives a man quite the sights to see at times. He peeked out the window and saw a man or child, couldn’t tell what the hell he was, only that he was very fat and he held a big silvery spoon in one hand and a pigeon in the other, and crushed the pigeon’s…

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14

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