by Andrew Wilmot
info
purchase in print
Purchase a handbound, individually numbered chapbook of this story from our Etsy store (quantities may be limited)
purchase the ebook single
read
YESTERDAY IT WAS SAFE. Yesterday it was Grace Kelly and Singing in the Rain. Allan had heard the music and seen the light flickering from beneath the door before entering her room.
Yesterday was a good day.
Today Allan woke at five to eight with what felt like a ten-pound medicine ball balanced precariously on his chest, forcing the air from his lungs. He floundered in the dark for the liquorice whip of cord protruding from his torso and yanked it out, immediately discharging a deep sigh. He then reached over and switched off the alarm on the clock radio glowing green at the corner of the nightstand.
His thoughts were muddled. He wondered which of them — and how many—had plugged into him while he had slept. If he shut his eyes again he’d be able to hear their disparate thoughts, fading but still present. He thought briefly about turning on the light, looking to see who’d moved in the night, whose face was a little fuller, whose colour a little less pallid, but decided against it for fear of waking one or all of them sooner than was necessary.
Their bodies lay scattered between the bed and the door, limbs interlaced like fallen latticework. As Allan’s eyes adjusted to the light slicing thinly through the blinds, he viewed pockets of carpet like miniature demilitarized zones spread throughout the huddle of lightly snoring bodies. He slowly pushed back the covers and swung his legs out over the foot of free space right next to the bed. He charted a path through the still-slumbering bodies and made his way to the door. He gently turned the knob, careful not to brush the outstretched hands on the ground.
log in for the rest of the story
(or to download the ebook)
about the author
ANDREW WILMOT is a writer, editor, and artist living in Toronto, ON. He is a graduate of the SFU Master in Publishing program and spends his days writing a lot and painting stupidly large pieces. He currently works as a freelance reviewer, academic editor, and substantive editor with several independent presses and publications. To date his work has been published in Found Press, The Singularity, Glittership, Drive In Tales, and Turn to Ash, and he was the winner of the 2015 Friends of Merril Short Story Contest. His first novel, The Death Scene Artist, will be published by Buckrider Books, an imprint of Wolsak & Wynn, in Fall 2018.
more stories
by this author
When I'm Old, When I'm Grey
by Andrew Wilmot
13
After an unexpected malfunction, the technology which enables humanity to cross vast distances has separated an interstellar traveler from the love of her life — not in space, but in time. Now, while her companions remain in stasis, she must endure the loneliness of the journey until the moment her lover wakes.
Winner of the 2015 Friends of Merril Short Story Contest, When I'm Old, When I'm Grey imagines the strange — and strangely familiar — forms that fear and longing can take, as we venture forth into the unknown of the future.
buy this story:
Glass Houses
by Andrew Wilmot
5
One night, thirteen-year-old Ned Powell is horrified to discover that his skin has taken on the physical properties of glass. Over the years, he finds himself resented by his father, coddled by his mother, rejected by society, and always on guard for the next devastating crack. In order to make peace with himself, Ned must overcome a fragility that goes much further than skin deep.
“An original, tender, metaphoric story about a man made of glass.”
— Steph VanderMeulen, Bella's Bookshelves
buy this story:
from the library
In Our House
by the Sea
by Kirsty Logan
2
Romance is candlelight on cheekbones, blurring gazes and the press of heels on strange sheets. But what happens a year later? You’re sharing bath towels and bickering over who forgot to buy a light bulb. There is beauty in a familiar hand on the nape of your neck. There is love in waking up under a shared blanket. This story is about the romance of domesticity.
“Kirsty is one of the best and brightest . . . when I read her stuff I feel like I could taste it, chew it, roll it around on my tongue, the language is so delicious and sturdy and musical. She also has a knack for getting relationships exactly right in her writing, whether between parent and child or lovers or friends.”
— Amber Sparks, Fiction Editor at Emprise Review
buy this story:
When I'm Old, When I'm Grey
by Andrew Wilmot
13
After an unexpected malfunction, the technology which enables humanity to cross vast distances has separated an interstellar traveler from the love of her life — not in space, but in time. Now, while her companions remain in stasis, she must endure the loneliness of the journey until the moment her lover wakes.
Winner of the 2015 Friends of Merril Short Story Contest, When I'm Old, When I'm Grey imagines the strange — and strangely familiar — forms that fear and longing can take, as we venture forth into the unknown of the future.
buy this story:
Eleven Miles There,
Twelve Miles Back
by Meghan Rose Allen
1
Deep in the heart of Ontario cottage country, Izza Ingram’s biological family disintegrates when her parents become trapped in a moment Izza can barely remember. Lost to their parents, she and her sister Paulie form an unlikely family unit under the guidance of their parents’ friend Doug. In this trio of their own making, Izza, Paulie, and Doug try to navigate the differences between the families we are born into versus the families we choose.
buy this story:
The Psychology of Animals Swallowed Alive:
Love Stories
by Kirsty Logan
4
Embark upon these twenty short, scrumptious flights of fancy from the unmistakable pen of Scott Prize-winning author Kirsty Logan, and you will be astounded, titillated, disturbed, amused, heartbroken, and above all, astonished.
“Logan crafts an exquisitely wrought diorama full of tenderly compelling characters; observations about grief, worship, social order, and human nature, and a love that transcends definition.”
– NPR on Logan's debut novel The Gracekeepers
buy this story:
If You Waited Here, You Would
See Almost Everything
by Danny Goodman
11
After Ray collapses on the sidewalk outside a New York coffee shop, the bittersweet vagaries of his long marriage come into focus, one heartbeat at a time. From his new vantage point, flat on his back, all their conflicts are laid out against a canvas of sky, contrasting miscommunications and infidelities against something slower, steadier, and ultimately much vaster than he ever realized.
buy this story:
At the Bar
by Rebecca Rosenblum
2
Health care workers on a night out unwind, allowing the anxieties and passions they've had to suppress on the job finally uncoil, like tendrils creeping out into the world - and into each other. Written with empathy and panache, this story is a portrait of briefly flaring humanity - of people granted a temporary reprieve from professionalism, and not quite knowing what to do with it.
“At the Bar is Rosenblum at her best - exploring the complicated nature of work and relationships with her trademark perceptiveness, humour, and compassion, and creating characters that will stay with you long after the story is over.”
— Amy Jones, author of What Boys Like and Other Stories
buy this story:
The Oughts
by Richard Rosenbaum
1
Polly knows what she wants: to be in the greatest band in the world. Oliver knows what he wants: Polly. Together they are The Oughts, a duo trying to attain the unattainable, one basic chord at a time.
“Richard Rosenbaum’s The Oughts jabs its sticky little fingers right into your heart and swirls them around in there for a long, long time. Its characters unfold in pitch-perfect awkwardness and tender apathy, and readers will be struck by the surreal hinges and twitching imagery that Rosenbaum flawlessly weaves in. Writers in the audience should take note: Rosenbaum has created a writhing work of fiction that any scribe would aspire to be capable of pulling off.”
— Liz Worth, author of Treat Me Like Dirt: An Oral History of Punk in Toronto and Beyond and Eleven: Eleven
buy this story:
Trigger Finger Blues
by Chad Pelley
3
Marcel, a sensitive sniper, knew his life was missing something. But he didn't know what until he set his crosshairs on it: Violet Caine. A ginger-headed lover of Thai food, wanted dead simply because her brother messed with the wrong bike gang. It's a story of redemption coming too late, and the ways happenstance can turn a warm man cold. Then warm again. Whether fate wrote his troubled life, or he wrote it himself, he wants Violet Caine to be the end of it - be it figuratively or literally.
buy this story: