“Did I let a demon in?” by Sassi Bhutto
Emptiness walked in uninvited and refused to leave. When? How? I can’t recall . . .
Category: Thursdaze
Following the success of the Mondays Are Murder series, Akashic introduces Thursdaze (because the weekend won’t come fast enough), modeled after our highly addictive Akashic Drug Chronicles Series—which has produced volumes on marijuana, cocaine, heroin, and speed. Stories in Thursdaze, as in the printed anthologies, encapsulate the writer’s fictional experience with marijuana, speed, heroin, cocaine, or any other drug, real or imagined, controlled or prescribed, illegal or soon-to-be legalized. Like Mondays Are Murder, stories in this series must adhere to a 750-word limit. There is an emphasis placed on stories that stylistically emulate the drug of choice, allowing readers to indulge risk-free. Thursdaze is your fiction fix to help you power through to the weekend.
“A Version of Everything” by Kristen Valentine
We decided that one thing we could do with the money is buy a house, so we looked at some houses and it was weird and to offset the weird we got tattoos . . .
“Hold Me Closer” by Zacc Dukowitz
After the ceremony she wanted to go back to the room for a moment before the reception, which was going to be held in the master ballroom. She needed to freshen up, she said. Just go ahead with out me. But he had his suspicions so he trailed along after her, against all of her protests . . .
“Dead at the Mirage” by Kitty Bowerman
The road to Vegas is its usual Friday afternoon parking lot. We are meeting friends and plan to do mushrooms—as in those kind of mushrooms. It’ll be my first time. . . .
“One time this was fun” by Hillary Fink
I feel myself drift away. My body is no longer mine, and the words coming out of my mouth sound foreign and out of character. The car starts to pick up, and my friend’s laugh sounds as though it is light-years away, even though she is so close her hand is on top of mine . . .
“The Surrender” by John Jeremiah
I had talked myself into a luxurious three-bedroom apartment in a classic Tudor building in Jersey City. It was 1969. Back then, a suit and a little grooming would suffice if accompanied by a few months’ rent . . .
“The Butcher and the American” by Andrew Cotto
The American walked the ancient Italian countryside on unsteady feet. It was a familiar path, but he had been up very, very late with guests from the States, toasting to liberal optimism with liberal quantities of Tuscan wine. They had, essentially, drunk all night, waiting for election results from the States, which didn’t report until three a.m. Italian time that Barack Obama had become the forty-fourth president of the United States . . .
“Johnny Was” by George Dimos
Johnny was barely fourteen when he started drinking . . .