Shelby Rice - "A Flicker in the Night"

Shelby Rice's "A Flicker in the Night" is about the relationship between the narrator and his mother. The story tell s of how he or she would always wait for the mother to come in and tuck her/him in. Now, his/her mother no longer does this, and death is implied, so the narrator can no longer sleep.

I'm still not really sure how I should evaluate short-short stories, but I know that I really like yours. In particular, I love how you structured it to emphasize every sentence in the ending. It gives each sentence a real power that they might have otherwise lacked. The scene with the mother is touching, but something about it is also somewhat off-putting. Maybe it is because of the imagery of the perfume that would follow her everywhere. Something about the idea of this perfume clutching to her all hours of the day seems somewhat disturbing. How often does she reapply it? Or does she really overdo it that much at the beginning of the day?

Besides this one little flicker, I can't find anything to complain about though. There were a few grammatical issues and one case of a missing word or phrase, but those are things that you'll fix in revisions without issue. You portray your character's emotions well, and you make me remember times when I would stay near my parents because they were security. All in all, good job!

Alyson Smith - "Swiss Cheese"

Alyson Smith's "Swiss Cheese" is about a girl named Brett that is a surgical intern at a hospital. When a trauma patient comes in fromt the local prison, she gets assigned to work with him. This brings up terrible memories about her own mother's murder and leads to a confrontation with both the man that assigns her to the prisoner and the prisoner himself.

I enjoyed the general plot of the piece. It was nothing earth-shattering, but at the same time, I have to admit that it was more enjoyable than I thought it was going to be. I'm glad you didn't go for the plot-twist that I expected and have the prisoner be her mother's murderer. I also love the facts that you threw into the piece: the cows fall to relax them before they die, the way lethan injections worked, etc.

There was also a lot of language used that seemed completely unnecessary to tell this story. It's particularly bad at the beggining where you are describing the surgery of the banana. It almost sounds here like you are trying to be a Victorian author with lines such as, "She frowned in concentration, her hands, slippery with inner fluids, tried desperately to salvage the ripped, yellowed flesh that was coming apart even as she attempted to pus the squishy innard back inside the swollen cavity." It's just too much, and it detracts from the overall understanding of your work.

Second, while I'm not saying it's unbelievable because I have no idea, I'd find it hard for people to be willing to go through an expensive twelve-hour surgery to help a man destined to die in a week anyway. I understand that hospitals are supposed to do whatever possible to help a patient, but I'm curious if the prison would bother rushing the man to the hospital. The entire incident would likely cost a couple thousand dollars, and I'm not sure the general public would be all that happy about such things.

Molly Kirkpatrick - "Blood"

Molly Kirkpatrick's "Blood" is about a girl of an unknown age, assumed to be in her late teens to mid-twenties, that has been sent by her mother to a psychiatric ward after the death of her father. Throughout the story, we learn more about her relationship with her parents, her feelings about the ward, and who really should be put in the ward.

I really love the voice of the story. While I know it's a voice that you commonly use, it's something that you always manage to pull off very well in a variety of situations. However, in this particular story, the voice is not established early enough, and the first instance of that wonderful voice was found to be particularly jarring and surprising. It doesn't come up until page two's, "...but, dude... They really don't." An easy fix to this would just be to take that paragraph on page two (the entire thing) and transpose it to the opening of the piece. I think this would help immediately establish setting and would require very little work to make this entire issue disappear.

Another thing that I really liked was the use of the mother's need for cleanliness. It did border on disturbing, which I felt you really wanted to do. Anyway, I know that I was disturbed by her skin peeling from her hand because of showering too much. Normally, I'd say that it made me want to go take a shower, but... yeah.

I kind of had an issue with the character of Kado. While I know that he's not that important to the story, I feel that he relies a bit too much on the hippie/vegan stereotype to convey who he is. I cannot really think of any unique details to his characterization. Rather, he seems to be there to provide a new element to go back to the father. He seems unnecessary and could be cut entirely without affecting the main story.

I also must admit that I'm not a big fan of how much money they seem to have: a beachhouse and a boat and goodies at a marina seem much for people that live on a teacher's salary exclusively. How the hell could they have afforded such things?

Paul Vance - "Support Group"

Paul Vance's "Support Group" is about a man that attends a meeting for sex addiction? those sexually abused? something like that... Anyway, he talks about his issued with masturbation and women throughout his life, constantly apologizing for his awkwardness and inability to say "those words." In the end, he just walks out of the meeting.

I really love that you did this piece entirely in dialogue. It works really well and is exceptionally entertaining to read. Some of the lines are really funny, and one really gets a sense for the character. He's got some unique views on life, in general, and the structure of this piece really works. That being said, sometimes his awkwardness comes off as too-heavy and gets annoying for the reader to trudge through. I like the awkwardness, but you have to be careful not to make it TOO heavy-handed.

There were some images that he started and worked with that were interesting and weird, in a good way, like the rotting pee for semen. They really helped distinguish the work. The were some areas, on the other hand, where the image was cut off and it sounded weird, like when he said, "I still did it in the trees after that, though. And the squirrels..." Be careful in things like this because it sounds like he was doing something sexual to squirrels.

The ending was odd though. With him just walking out, I wasn't sure how to take it. Was it supposed to say how he didn't identify with the people in the meeting at all or about how selfish he was? I just had no idea how to understand this.

Emily Feagan - "The Marriage of Ruth and Isaac"

Emily Feagan's "The Marriage of Ruth and Isaac" is about a mother that is hesitant about her daughter's wedding and can't show completely happiness. She thinks they are getting married too young, too insecure, and without enough knowledge. She also seems to want to avoid having a case of empty-nest syndrome by clinging onto her little girl as long as possible.

I still really love your rustic imagery and nostalgic memories that anybody can seem to have fondness for despite the fact that the memories don't belong to them. I also love the use of floral descriptions and the importance of flowers in the story. However, I felt that you really could have done more with both the use of the pastel-colored flowers and the use of flowers as a device in the story. With them, you could have expanded the story further and fleshed out the characters some more.

I feel like the negative aspects of the mother are told to us and never really shown to us. Why is she the practical one? What makes her so much more practical than her daughter about this wedding? Is she even that much more practical, or is she just trying to be negative to hold onto Ruth longer? A couple added scenes of wedding prepartion can really get this aspect of the mother across well.

The story, as it stands now, has places where you can easily transition to those scenes without moving the story around easily. Really, all your story needs is some more expansion, and I know that with that expansion, the change at the end (the support for the daughter) will seem more powerful.