The Stranger in Chock-Full-o'Nuts

The Stranger in Chock-Full-o’Nuts is the story of the beginning of a love affair between a young woman and a much older man. It is the man who possesses the aura of the supernatural.

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…as a struggling young actress, I first lived in the city, I had worked for a while as an office temp. After several months, I got a job on the morning shift in Chock-Full-o’Nuts on 57th Street and Eighth…

By Antoinette Carone

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A Better Life

Minoru is trapped working in a brothel in turn of the century Japan. But he has a dream to come to America. He…

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….early morning at a house of prostitution in a small city in the southern part of the island of Honshu, Japan. The year is 1910. Shizuko, a beautiful woman in her late thirties, prepares breakfast. Her 17-year-old son Minoru opens the door and is carrying cordwood for the kitchen stove. The morning is cold and both Shizuko and Minoru wear…

By Anonymous

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Memory Loss A Blessing

This story traces the life of a traditional healer tasked by her ancestors to find grief-healing…

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…month-long journey from Madjembeni—a small scenic village that flowed with fresh water. The water smelled of fish and pebbles in Bushbuckridge to the waterverse. It also smelled of cows and wild animals because that’s where they also…

By Keketso Mashigo

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No Going Back

At 9:00 p.m., a thunderstorm forced him to climb to 10,000 feet to fly above the…

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…miles from Le Bourget Air Field, he began to see the flares. Less than 33 hours earlier, 500 people had watched the 25-year-old pilot take off from a muddy Roosevelt Field runway in New York. He hoped to become the first…

By Pete Black

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Bitter Fruit

…felt his marriage to Susan had been on the rocks for years. Things just weren’t right between them. They were completely different people. These days they hardly spoke to each other and when they did it usually ended in an argument. The niggling doubts he’d been having for years were increasing as their marriage trundled on. They were just going through the motions. They could have an argument about…

By Chris Platt

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Wallflower Observations

“We were the wallflowers. The weeds. The throwaways.”

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…again I was left standing alone against the wall while the pretty ones all around me were chosen and floated off as though they were helium balloons on streamers which never touched the ground. The girls’ giggles when the handsome boys’ hands caught theirs and led them off lingered in the air on either side…

By Carmen Baca

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Her Eyes Were Open

…served three years on a ten to fifteen stretch for armed robbery when the Governor of Ohio decided, for monetary reasons, to pardon a big group of nonviolent offenders. Somehow my shyster lawyer got me on the list and I have no idea how he convinced them that I was non-violent. Suddenly I was a free bird; back out in the civilian world with no parole and no…

By Benjamin Fine

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