Fiction | Page 25 | The Common

Border Strip: Three Stories

April 15, 2019 Arabic Fiction, Fiction, Issue 17, Issue 17 Fiction, Translation

A Trip to Ain Diwar

We woke up at five o’clock in the morning and ran to the Hophop bus that was waiting at the school gate. It was colored and beautiful and had the words Scania speaks and the Volvo hurts written on it. The children stood in line in an orderly fashion as they boarded the bus. Teacher was carrying a stick made from a pomegranate branch given to him by the son of a local official, who is lazy but who always comes first in class. Sheikh Khadir, the driver, was washing the bus, and as they boarded, the children splashed the children behind them with water.

Under a Pile of Moons

April 4, 2019 Fiction

By BETSY JOHNSON-MILLER

We travel together to the outskirts of Alone. Hunger permeates the car like teenage funk, but there are no crumbs on the seats. I do not allow snacking.

I don’t know what is the most surprising—that a tumor grows inside me, that my love is not in the car, or that Hope sits in the backseat. A pillow, a book, and a look that annoys me every time I glance at her in the rearview mirror.

From A Lucky Man

February 20, 2019 Fiction

Excerpt from the novel A Lucky Man by Jamel Brinkley

James kept busy at the security desk now, doing the work of both men while Lincoln sat there with his stomach on his lap. He felt a sort of bond with James now, a familiar gratitude. But one gets sick and tired of saying thank you. When he was engaged to Alexis, and during their first years of marriage, his friends would also tell him how lucky he was, but this was said as a joke. Lincoln would say thank you and agree, would tell them how grateful he was for her, but this wasn’t true. He deserved her—this was what he believed, and he knew this was what his friends believed in. A man of a kind should get what he deserves, and if a man like him couldn’t get a woman like her, then something was terribly wrong with the world.

From The Study of Animal Languages

February 18, 2019 Fiction

By LINDSAY STERN

“All my life I’ve been waiting,” says my father-in-law, through the stall door. We have stopped at a rest area along the interstate, halfway between our homes. I would meet him back in the car, if only he would stop waxing poetic.

“Frank?” I face the mirror, smoothing the hair over my thinning spot. “I’ll be—”

“First for school to end,” he interrupts. “Then for my twenties, then for success. Marriage, children, et cetera. For them to leave. For their children. Then the waiting became less conspicuous. Waiting for the cry of boiled water. For the paper. For spring. It took a mighty long time to understand that what I’d been waiting for wasn’t each thing, actually, but the chance to wait for whatever came next.”

From Where the Dead Sit Talking

February 12, 2019 Fiction

Excerpt from the novel Where the Dead Sit Talking by Brandon Hobson

CHAPTER ONE

I have been unhappy for many years now.

I have seen in the faces of young people walking down the street a resemblance to people who died during my childhood.

Coloso

November 16, 2018 Fiction

By HUGO RÍOS CORDERO

In the same way that some structures carry time on their shoulders, we too want to observe its traces. Every place, of course, has anchors that halt time as it passes by. In Europe, the huge cathedrals are mute and impotent witnesses of history. Likewise, the old sugar mills of Puerto Rico remain to remind us of an era that, while gone, is still harbored within them. These metal monsters, abandoned to their rusty luck, become sanctuaries of memory. The mill Coloso, one of the last of the dying titans, is now only a grey silhouette lost in the green and twisted landscape of the valley.

Passageway

October 29, 2018 Fiction, Issue 16, Issue 16 Fiction, Translation

By VANESSA VILCHES NORAT

Translated by AURORA LAUZARDO UGARTE

The hole is behind the headboard. We opened it some time ago. I couldn’t say exactly when we became aware of the weariness lurking around us, maybe eight years ago. It lasted for hours, sometimes for days. Then it disappeared. During those anxious periods, we didn’t know what to do. It’s a horrible feeling. You can’t stand being with that person any longer. It’s not boredom in the strict sense of the word. Intolerance, perhaps. Everything annoys you. The way they click their tongue, the unexpected smile, the wrong word said at the wrong time, the obsequious caress. Even the things that you thought were funny before seem unbearable now. It may be the cumulative effect, a friend said. A sort of allergy—you stuff yourself on your favorite food until one day your body says: Enough! You break out in red spots, itching and sweating, which only makes it worse. Just like that. Too much of a good thing, I say. One day we looked at each other and we couldn’t take it anymore—I was fed up with him, and he with me—and we searched for a solution.

Hunger’s Pace

October 29, 2018 Fiction, Issue 16, Issue 16 Fiction, Translation

By ANA MARÍA FUSTER LAVÍN

Translated by RICARDO ALBERTO MALDONADO

“Hunger. It’s like an animal trapped inside you, Thomas thought.” —James Dashner

The flavor of those eyes continued to dance in her mouth as she savored the aftertaste with little smacks of her tongue. Just before dawn, she lifted up her gaze toward the infinite, making out only the light that was deep blue and amber. Everything is relative to day, to night, to colors, and to sustenance. When you are hungry, your steps assume an ashen color as if in a dream of incineration—somber, grayish, full of pain. We’ve all been hungry, we are hunger, yet she was alone. Especially after that early morning when nature exploded into wind and rain, leaving her home battered. That morning, three of her kittens, her only companions, drowned in her basement.

Baby Was Not Fine

October 29, 2018 Fiction, Issue 16, Issue 16 Fiction, Podcasts & Audio

By MINDY MISENER

Right before Baby finished ninth grade, Jerry (Baby’s dad) announced that Baby and Carla (Baby’s older sister) would work for him that summer. Baby thought it was a great idea. She would much rather landscape for Jerry than work at one of the three pizza/sub joints in town, or at a basketball camp for kids, which was most of what of her teammates were doing.

Jerry was six-three (two inches taller than Baby) and had a thick mustache and a laugh that rattled fine china. He’d built the house they lived in. In church he sang the loudest and the most out of tune. Six nights a week he did a hundred push-ups. He never took a sick day. It was true what everyone said, that Jerry was the most hardworking, honest man in Waldo County, Maine. The other thing people said was he didn’t suffer fools, but Baby was not one hundred percent sure what this meant, so she couldn’t say if she agreed.

Sofa

October 29, 2018 Fiction, Issue 16, Issue 16 Fiction, Translation

By CEZANNE CARDONA MORALES

Translated by CURTIS BAUER

My parents conceived me on a sofa in a department store. My mother worked in the underwear section and was a second-year nursing student. My father worked in the household appliances, hardware, and gardening section, and was a fifth-year social sciences student. They’d hardly been dating a month, and they’d never worked the same shift. Until that morning in May. No one saw them enter the warehouse holding hands—the store wouldn’t open to the public for another hour. No one heard them either, despite the fact that the sofa still had a plastic covering on the cushions to protect it from any stains. The sofa was more cream than yellow; it had solid wood legs and fit three people comfortably. Though my parents didn’t intend it, that morning there were already three of us.