A special thanks to all the contributors of Tragic Pens Issue 2! We are currently in the process of shifting everything to our own domain. However, submissions will be read and considered so feel free to take a look at our guidelines and submit work for our upcoming issue.
Best,
Farhana Uddin
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Photograph taken by Tobias.
Pending
A man walks into a restroom, pulling on his son's hand. At places such as these, there are always people coming and going, merely a short stop on the way to their final destination. They leave their mark, a part of themselves, and then they're gone, like dust particles in the wind. It is a stop where all is left pending, based on reaching that destination.
“I don't know why you couldn't just hold it until we got there, Mike. I swear it seems you do these things on purpose. I'm hardly going to be able to get you settled at the house before I have to take off for a meeting.”
“Meeting? But . . . you said we were on a vacation and were going to do fun things together and spend time together. You promised.”
“I couldn't tell them no, Mike. We talked about this. You know how long I've been waiting for this opportunity.”
“But it's so far away, Dad. Now I'm never going to see you.”
“You're going to be staying with me now, buddy, just like we always planned. Isn't that great? . . . What now? Why are you crying? Stop your crying. We can talk about this later.”
“That's not fair, dad. What about mom? What about all my friends?”
“If you want to see me more, then you've got to make a choice. We've been planning this for years, don't you remember? We're almost there, Mike, we're almost there . . . after all these years.”
“No, dad, I want to go home.”
The man grew rigid and cold. “It's too late for that now, Mike. The arrangements have already been made. You're staying with me. Period. I'm going to get you some McDonalds. Meet me out there.” The dad was gone and the little boy remained.
A man left the bathroom stall. “He just doesn't get it, does he, Mike?”
“It doesn't matter. He'll never understand. I'm so stupid. I believed him.”
“Do you want me to take you back to you mom's? Your mom's probably going nuts right now, not knowing where you are. Your dad didn't tell her he was taking you. He just took you and he doesn't plan on letting you go back.”
“But . . . why? Why wouldn't he . . . “
“Because he doesn't get it, Mike. He just doesn't get it.”
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Almondie Shampine lives in New York with her two children. She has had two books published, and currently freelances full-time for magazines and newspapers. Visit http://www.helium.com/ for more information.
Photograph taken by Gerny.
Dust for Mickey
“Keep going, keep going…”
Rosie Claverton lives in Cardiff, where she regularly battles Daleksand Weevils. She is an aspiring novelist and master of obfuscation, but only on Mondays and alternate Wednesdays. You can find her at The World of Rosie Claverton.
Photograph taken by Khalid Al-Haqqan.
Sacrifice 
I spoke with him tonight. I did not hang up on him as I’ve been, because since this morning he has known something that he will do. He told me there was evil in his blood that he could not control, and because he could not keep himself from hurting others, he had to be destroyed. He had to sacrifice himself so that he wouldn’t hurt anyone else.
I didn't talk him out of it. I didn't try to stop him.
“I’m like my father, Diane. I like hurting people. I like making them feel as I’d been made to feel. I never imagined I could be this way, but then I hurt the very person I love the most. God, Diane, I almost killed you. … I’m so sorry.”
“Do you have your ID on you?” I asked him.
“And your number in my pocket.”
“They will know that I’m your wife.”
“You will know before they call you. I will visit you. Please don’t be scared. I will give you a kiss.”
“I will miss you and remember you as I loved you.”
“Thank you for everything, Diane. You’ll get two grand from social security, but I don’t think the Union benefits will cover suicide.”
“Can I pray for you?”
“Please.”
“I will pray for him to let you come home. I wish you could bring Rayne when you come so that I can know that you have her before you go home.”
“I will see you in a couple years, Diane. The Koreans are shooting missiles at us. World War III. It’s going to be the end of us.”
“The Myans predicted the end of the world to be December 12th, 2012.”
“Okay, so I will see you then. I love you, Diane. I think you’re the only person in this world I have ever loved.”
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Almondie Shampine lives in New York with her two children. She has had two books published, and currently freelances full-time for magazines and newspapers. Visit http://www.helium.com/ for more information.
Neville Sukhia is a photographer from Pune, India.
Ryan Nichole Jones is currently a junior at Mossyrok High School. She aims to have her book published one day.
Photograph by Nemo
Victoria Cho currently resides in Brooklyn, New York. She graduated in 2005 from Boston University with a Bachelor of Science in Film. She has attended writing workshops with NYU, Sackett Street Writers Workshops, and Gotham Writers Workshops.
Photograph taken by Dusdin
Photograph taken by Tim Forbes.
Shelley Brown is a lawyer by trade and a writer by heart. Her work is largely intended for private, non-profit purposes, but some of hermore recent expressions can be found in web spaces such asTheNextBigWriter.com. She lives in Jersey City with her husband, 3 year old daughter and a host of imaginary friends.
Photograph by Roy Hutchinson.
Disclaimer: This photograph was taken by Ricardo Martins. The featured display can be found in the Science Fiction Museum located inside architect Frank Gehry's landmark Experience Music Project building at the base of the Space Needle in Seattle, Washington.
Photograph taken by Evets Lembek.
Something stirs
Something stirs inside as I unfold the letter again. Read the words quietly. Fold it again. Only to unfold it again in the same manner moments later. The words puncture the soul and leave me without breath.
And I mumble under my breath, Who are you to leave me defenseless today? I shift in my long dress with the beaded bodice and the tulle skirt. I wonder now what this dress might represent if but a part of me stirs so readily for a man other than the one wearing the matching tuxedo to such a gown. I gaze into the mirror and squint my eyes, looking for the poise and grace I held only an hour ago, but all I see is a shadow of guilt and a myriad of questions I can only ask myself. I choose not to ask, sweeping them momentarily from my mind.
I whisper a name to no one in particular, only saying it to hear the sound reverberate within my mind. I unfold again. I am stirred again. Fold and composure seeps back, somewhat. Unfold and I tingle. Fold and I sigh.
None of this will do. So I sit, fold and unfold. Quickly I’ve become consumed with the motion of my hands and I pause and angrily think again of him and his poor timing. Why might he leave me questioning everything I’ve ever wanted now? With tear stained words, halting words that would be nearly illegible if I did not know his hand so well.
I look to the door, wishing someone might come and relieve me of my thoughts. Yet at the same time thankful no one breaks into this thought process, this series of hand movements, this blind doubt building.
Doubt has risen and takes the place of any confidence I might have carried down any aisle in any church to any such man but him. I fold. I stare into my own eyes looking for some answer and I cannot tell who I’m looking at anymore. I procrastinate, obliterate reason and move on to duty. What duty? Is duty enough for marriage? Is it enough for me? Never. It would never be.
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Photograph by Dusdin
Making Waves
This is the only wave, breaking with the blood and all its substantive nutrients, its calcium deposits and the flecks of oxygen and iron together racing past purple to black, drying beneath the skin, the split open heart of the knuckle, like the faces of wood that you can peel away from one another. It’s terror that you can swallow up hoping it’ll choke down easily enough.
It’ll be forward and together until it strikes the wall to hand itself out as flyers on the street, it separates so easily you’d never even know one side was not near the other anymore. The pain left you and there was only the absoluteness of clenching your fist that helped you feel the pressure inside where all of it was just waiting, storing itself up until you decided to test it out and see if the whole system worked.
You curl up your fist in front of a smooth concrete wall, or brick since their roughness does feel that much better. You let it fly, without pistoning, without that posturing cock of the arm, just the snap back you should be striving for beyond the surface. You let it run, a bull out of the gates speeding with that willpower to bring your world of flesh and bone through to the other side, or to feel the pieces of it separate and go off where ever they might, to leave you with that broken, silly wave.
William Owen writes novels, graphic novels, comic books, poetry, and most anything else with words, primarily in NYC, but really in just about anyplace a pen and some bits of paper might fit. He received an MFA in Creative Writing from Goddard College; his work has appeared in literary journals, anthologies, and online spaces, and his new webcomic, Chep Changer's Poor Impulse Control, will be coming shortly to chepchanger.blogspot.com. He has worked as an environmental activist, package handler, factory worker, groundskeeper, proofreader, editor, and currently produces e-books for Macmillan. He lives in Brooklyn.
“I stole that locket from you,” he told his mother who was standing at the sink, washing the cups. He knew his mother would be affectionate and would smile at his confession of the innocent, little crimes of his childhood. Still, there was this faint, silent ghost of apprehension poking at his ease. Despite all the comfort of familial belonging, he was after all confessing theft.
“What locket?” The lady, busy in her work, didn’t look at him.
“It was a small, golden color, one with four blue crystals, all synthetic I suppose. Do you remember it? I took it from the main closet.” He looked at her, smiling.
“Oh well! You’ve often done far greater mischief than this!” She threw a brief glance at him. He knew she was bantering. Yet, he could not help noticing how she did not smile. He looked ahead and started to saunter, saying, “I shifted it deftly whenever you would have me for a change.”
“Hmm!” She still didn’t smile. “Such a cheater you are!”
“But I finally put it back. I don’t remember how long I kept it but I did put it back in the small box that contains your notions.” He turned back and came near her.
“Then it’s all right,” she said softly. He heaved a cool sigh. For days he had been anticipating this scene of confession. It was a smiling face, glistening with affection that welcomed him in the image. But that was all a reverie. He could not impart the anticipated degree of innocence and liveliness, and she didn’t welcome him as he had expected. Nevertheless, the confession went fairly well. He was happy now. He had finally made his confession, one speaking for that dark, servile, hidden, almost inaccessible. A bleak region of self that haunted the light by its shadow, to get known. So it was known now, but just by a tiny bit.
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Ernest Dempsey is the editor of the print quarterly The Audience Review (New York). He has authored four books so far and is completing is first novel. Dempsey is a lead writer/editor at the World Audience Publishers http://www.worldaudience.org/.
Cowboy by Adam Moorad
He was a tall man with a thick build and was very angry. I remember how the muscles in his jaw were clenched tight as he laid back, stretching out across the table.
Years ago he had been a football star and earned a reputation of sorts as a winner with a team in Texas. The game was the passion of his life. “I came here because I have trouble getting out of bed in the morning,” he said embarrassedly. “My head feels fine, but my body is old and worn-out. I need to be able to get up and go. For one day I would like to feel the way I use to, and not like an old man.”
There is a tone that accompanies the voice of an old man through which you can see real pain. It comes after a long life of hard work that has brought him much success and happiness, or one or the other, or neither. Then, suddenly, he finds himself unable to go on as he once had. Something in his biology stops. The physical decay that has been unfolding since conception finally catches up. He bursts into tangents, perhaps unknowingly. The elderly brain waves of his mind crash sporadically from his lips, left unchecked by failing brawn of an ego blunted by time, and he is now unable to express himself as he once did. It is in such moments that a man learns he is just a man.
The sky filled up with darkness on that winter night, and then the lights started coming. How could I miss the silver radiance of the arms reaching out from across the fence to touch me? It was a moment of pure decision. Should I let it last? Or go back into the sanctity of my home.
The way across the grass was rippled in the radiance of the lights above. They would all think me mad! They would laugh and say:”Mad old lady!” I stopped, and the arms came about me. There was nothing mad about the feel of those arms. Madness would have been rejection of the experience.
Then they lifted me up, and I saw the great pink mouth of dawn. I was breakfast, not company. With a polite cough I leaned over and bit that ripply appendage that held me. The liquid that ran from the wound was like rain water.
I was dropped, and home, and called it a dream. Did I dream it or did it dream me? I never told and never knew.
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Christine Emmert is a novelist, poet, and playwright who likes the challenge of writing in many genres. Her work has been published in three countries. Her novel, ISMENE, came out in 2004. She lives in Pennsylvania with her husband, Richard, three cats and a dog.
Quietly.
Don’t wake her. I get out of bed. Up again in the middle of the night. I turn on the TV. Watch until I get tired. I go back to bed she’s standing in the hallway, two old lovers in the dark.
“I missed you,” he says. He touches her. There are no inhibitions in the dark, especially for old lovers. He takes her arm and brings her back to bed.
They hold each other and fall asleep.
He gets up again. He looks at her side of the bed. It’s empty.
The next night, quietly he gets out of bed and waits in the hallway. Nothing. After an hour of TV he climbs into bed and rolls over. There she is.
She takes his hand.
“I’m ready,” he says.
His breathing becomes softer
and softer
and softer
and…
Torn between the greater good of peace, at last, between peoples of differing cultural mores and traditions on the one hand and his selfish concerns about posing as the chained primate in Grigori’s elaborately feigned appearance of insanity as his ticket home, Astronaut Simpson agreed to play Jocko the surly monkey in the upcoming television transmission back to Star City, Russia from the confines of an admittedly long past prime Mir, hoping earnestly that when his time came to return his prehensile tail would fit into his spacesuit.
© J.B. Pravda
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Born in Brooklyn, NY, graduate of the University of Florida College of Journalism, Joseph Baron-Pravda began a career in law in 1971. Recruited at that university's law school for service as a 'kid' lawyer with the Federal Government during Watergate, where he immediately 'Felt' something was amiss. Later as lobbyist and private businessman. He has been a prolific writer in all genres, with an emphasis on short works, including microfiction/flash fiction as well as full length and One Act Plays. A 10 page excerpt from his play 'Patsy', involving a fated 'reunion' of JFK Jr. & the oldest daughter of Lee and Marina Oswald, won him a highly competitive place at the Kennedy Center last summer, with subsequent lifetime privileges at the annual Intensives featuring such literati as Marsha Norman, Steven Dietz, Lee Blessing, et. Al.
A cancer survivor, now fully recovered and active as a 'try'-athlete, he writes full time, having been published in ebook and other electronic media, as well as print; his diversity writing is featured exclusively by the Office of Diversity Initiatives, Office of the President, University of Central Florida website; he now resides in New York and Florida.
You can find out more about J.B. Pravda at http://www.angrysponge.com/.
The man set about his daily business of aligning film reels, selling tickets and watching over the little theater. About a quarter past noon on Sunday the patrons started filing in, mostly mothers with their children. Amongst the chatter of young voices a young lady appeared, poised with her student identification card in hand. The man denied her card and let her in for one dollar. It was a children’s film, she mostly slept through it in the back of the theater in one of its plush leather seats.
That morning she felt she must escape the day and slip into the little theater she had passed so frequently. Her blouse was crumpled as she exited her seat wiping sleep from the corners of her mouth.
“Ma’am you’ve left this.” The man came from behind the ticket station and placed an envelope in her hand as she jilted into the days shine on the cobblestone street. With sleepy mortification she turned her heels and clicked down the street where she rested on a bench examining the envelope. The envelope contained her student card, some flyers for a show at the theater on Thursdays and an invitation to the show. On Thursdays he projected films he made accompanied by a live music performance by himself and company.
She had never taken an invitation from a strange man before. She went for lunch a few streets from the theater and blushed as she sipped her coffee and tore bits of bread. She perspired as she returned to the theater to thank the man for being so kind. He was tearing the last of the tickets for the next film.
He put his finger to the air.
“I am sorry, I must go start the film, one second.”
She waited, shifting her weight foot to foot, examining each film poster tacked up inside.
“Yes,” he said. “I wasn’t sure you would return, you seemed so nervous and shy.”
“Yes,” she said. “But I couldn’t live with myself if I did not return to thank you for the invitation.”
“Please it is my pleasure to welcome you to the theater.”
They chatted awhile. He wrote an address on a torn piece of paper. They would meet tomorrow around two in the afternoon.
