Otium

Piotr's Novel ($ One Million)

by Jonathan Ullyot
31 January 2007

I am talking fast over all of this because this is the sad part and I am not sad or deported now, and I don’t like this part at all. I wanted to cut my poor Russian throat with razor. But these razors are too small in America, and pushed 3 and 4 in the plastic cases so you just snap them on the stick. And they are also very expensive. So I thought it would be easy to jump off roof. But it is hard to get up there and it was second choice, so I wanted to wait for Sunji to come back first to see if she could help me.

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Excerpt from Conception

by Kalisha Buckhanon
31 January 2007

“Whatever you want. I got money. I mean, this ain’t all I do. I do more than drive a cab. I got a house. I got money. I could take you out, anytime, wherever you want to go…I got money.”

“Well give it to me.” I shut my eyes tight, and the rising vomit sunk down once more. I opened my eyes long enough to see his hips jerked forward as he lifted himself off the seat to reach into his left pants pocket. I had been right—a slick black pistol slid out right along with countless bills. He bent down to collect them before I could ask, and when I opened my eyes again his hands were outstretched and in them he held a pile of cash which looked like a fat, giant spider in the moonlight.

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The Gift

by Lila Shapiro
31 January 2007

When I was twelve, my grandmother started talking about death. She brought death up like this: we were driving in her car, swerving back and fourth across four lanes of a South Florida highway, when she turned towards me and shouted (she was hard of hearing), “Lucy! Promise me this—when I go, you be the first to get to the jewels.”

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Excerpts from “Untitled Phil”

by Jenna Telesca
31 January 2007

This time of year belonged to the watermen. Men that drove boats that were reliable and made for efficiency. Men who painted their boats grey and had only a tiny alcove for protection from the water spray. These men were starting a long day of crabbing, fixing broken crab traps and hosing down their boats.

Phil Larken was not among these men.

Phil Larken was lying in his bed, fast asleep, dreaming. In his dream, Phil was squinting against the sun as he pulled the pots hand over hand into the boat. He was surveying the trap. Eight medium size crabs and two softshells. The crabs climbed over the cage and the chicken remnants, raging against the capture. Deceit! Deceit! They screamed to him.

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In Order to Remove the Boot

by Megan Stielstra
13 January 2006

By the time she’d finished all the letters, the bottle was gone, too, and Penny cried twenty-six proof for all the things he was supposed to have said but hadn’t. I love you and I need you and sweetheart and darling, and before she knew it she was ripping the letters into little pieces, slowly at first, with deliberate, even tears—riiiip—I think of you often?—riiip—Fortunate to have met?—riiiiip—You’ve been considering? But as she threw the little confetti scraps into the air she knew that he was the closest she’d ever get to love—and the ripping got fast and angry and destructive, papers flying around the bedroom, origami birds crunched underfoot, deep gutsy sobs pulling from her middle ‘till she finally collapsed in a lump and balled into the carpeting, that sniveling pathetic sort of crying, the soundtrack to desperate acts.

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