WINTER BREAK 2014

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Folks, we'll be honest: It's been a tremendous first year at CHEAP POP, and we thank you all—readers and contributors and everyone in-between—for helping to make this all so wonderful. You've embraced us (thanks, Internet!), and we're so proud of the quality pieces we've been able to bring you in 2014.

That being said, we do hope you'll pardon us as CHEAP POP takes an oh-so-quick break from December 15 - January 18 so we can retool, refresh...all that jazz. And not to tell you what to do, but this is a perfect time to gather/write/edit your submissions to us!

We will still have stories the first two weeks of December, and then we'll be back on Tuesday, January 20, 2015, for the rest of the year.

Deal? Deal. And really looking forward to another year of wonderful micro-fiction. Thanks, again, to you all for supporting this endeavor.

Best,
Elizabeth + Rob

CAN'T YOU FEEL THE HEAT BETWEEN US — SAMANTHA MEMI

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I drove fast. The tires burned. I felt sorry for the tires. Not for the engine, only the tires. The tires came from a tree, a tree that had been bled, my tires were made from the blood of a tree. What could my engine have to compare with that? The full moon glimmered on the wet black road. Red eyes glittered from the forest. Were they the eyes of trees angry at my burning tree blood because of my impatience and love of speed. Did my tires scream to the trees Help! We’re burning our way to Hell. And the trees rustle, and the foxes and owls plan their revenge on the girl in the red sports car who drove so fast it hurt her tires, made them screech and smoke. Were the owls and foxes, weasels and rats planning an attack? Would I turn a bend at 100 miles an hour and find across the road a tree with red eyes glaring and no time to brake. 
            I turned into a bend, tires screeching. In the road a body, tyre marks clear and matte, streaked in the wet; tires which had found their way to Hell. I swerved to avoid the body lying there, unmoving, dead. My tires slid along the road. I twisted the steering wheel hard, and harder, and scratched up the bank and hit a tree. The tree screamed. The car twisted up into the air and spun round, engine roaring, wheels spinning, tires cooling, and came down to earth and I was flung out through the windscreen and landed in the road, splayed, unmoving, dead.
            I lay there.
            Any time soon I would come round the corner and see me in the road and swerve and crash.

Samantha Memi lives in London where she bakes cakes and eats them. Her stories have been published in magazines and can be read at http://samanthamemi.weebly.com.

THE SABBATH BRIDE — CHARLES BANE, JR.

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"Let us turn", the rabbi said by rote, "and welcome the Sabbath Bride." Arnold  put the full weight of his right leg on his cane, and turned; his wife did not appear. It was no one's business if she was detained.
            He walked her, her elbow in his palm, to the corner diner. Better to know each other a little before going in to Radio City.  A boy came by and muttered, " dirty Jews," and Arnold wheeled and punched hard. The Slav fell, his mouth bloody. Arnold leaned over him. "Do you know me?" he asked. The boy nodded. "You know I live there, at 369 Walnut Street?"  Again a nod,  hand on swollen lips. "And you are Krzysztof, the baker's son," said Arnold, "and if you tell your father or brothers about this, I'll do it again. Do you understand?"
            Arnold turned and walked Miriam to their first date. They walked into the diner and found a table. He felt ashamed then. Quietly, Miriam said, "There's blood on your shirt."  He looked down and she disappeared.
            Alone, he cursed, and then cursed again. "Why did you have to behave like that?  Scare off that pretty girl?"
            Miriam slid into the chair opposite him, napkins wetted in the restroom. "Lean forward," she said.
            Arnold painfully turned again in the sanctuary, and faced the front.

Charles Bane, Jr. is the American author of The Chapbook (Curbside Splendor, 2011) and Love Poems (Kelsay Books, 2014). His work was described by the Huffington Post as "not only standing on the shoulders of giants, but shrinking them."  Creator of The Meaning Of Poetry series for The Gutenberg Project, he is a current nominee as Poet Laureate of Florida. Find him online at http://www.charlesbanejr.com.

AVOIDANCES — J. ALAN MONTROSE

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After our battalion redeployed from Iraq we got thirty days of leave before we had to go back to work. I went home to my parent’s house where my mom and dad threw a big party for me. They invited all my relatives and some neighbors. One of the neighbors was the old guy that lived a few houses down the street. I used to mow his yard when I was in high school. He asked me if I killed anyone in Iraq. I wasn’t really sure what to say so I told him that he wasn’t supposed to ask me that question. The old man took a drink from his beer can and asked me why not. I guess mostly because it didn’t feel right to answer it, so I just said that it was some sort of unwritten rule that you don’t ask soldiers if they’ve killed anyone in combat. He laughed and said it was a rhetorical question anyway. Sort of like asking if it was hot in Iraq. He took another drink from his beer and said people weren’t supposed to ask him rhetorical questions when he came home in 1968 either.

J. Alan Montrose is an Iraq War Veteran who lives in Wahlheimat, Germany. He holds a Bachelor degree from the University of Georgia, Athens, and a Masters from the Universität Hamburg Germany. His work has appeared in War, Literature & the Arts, The Subterranean Quarterly, Knee Jerk, The Chattahoochee Review, as well as the German literature review Titel-Magazin. He currently lectures at the Catholic University of Eichstätt-Ingolstadt.

GOLF BALLS — DANIEL W. THOMPSON

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In a cocaine haze I flush the motel room toilet and check my face. It’s good light so I see the blue cavities under my eyes and tender reds of my nostrils. I repeat squeezing my fists to inflate my forearms and look to the bathtub for a couple of inclined pushups. I want to feel flush and virile but it’s a narrow bathroom and I’d have to lie across part of the toilet compromising the pushup angle. I do a couple more fist squeezes and hold the last one until my face turns pink in the mirror.
            She’s sitting on the couch. The television is on, SportsCenter. I know she’s not watching it because I asked her what her favorite sport growing up was and she said bobbing for apples, then laughed for a minute straight. I shouldn’t be nervous or self-conscious since I’ve already paid, but I can’t help wanting to impress.
            Once on a date I talked so long about working at the driving range my date went to the bathroom and never returned. I have to ensure that each golf ball is struck at least 5,000 times before it can be thrown away. Of course this is an impossible task, unless you implanted a pedometer of sorts in the balls, and I’ve tried to figure it out but can’t. Instead I pick a golf ball up, let it roll around in my hand, squeeze the dimples, maybe bounce it on the pavement parking lot, and by doing all that I can tell whether it’s been hit more than 5,000 times. There needs to be a certain reflex in the ball. A tone.
            This is my first time paying for sex. Old Junior, this Vietnam vet who comes down to the driving range pro shop to drink coffee each morning made the suggestion. Said he’s been paying since the seventies and that some of the buzz disappeared when they made him start wearing condoms but now he wholeheartedly endorses the policy. He gave me a number. I think they call her a madam and she asked me if I was a cop. Did I have any diseases? How much did I weigh? I lied about the weight. I told her I was 165 but really I’m 130, maybe 135 when I’m flush.
            It was the girl’s cocaine. Said she was feeling shitty. Said if I was cool with it, she’d even give me a discount. I told I already paid over the phone.
            I walked over to the couch and she looked up at me. Her nostrils were red too and there were shadows around her brown eyes. I asked her if she had ever been to a driving range and she said no. It was the first time I realized she had an accent and smelled a little like garlic bread. I sat down, turned off the television and started explaining why I throw away golf balls sometimes.

Daniel W. Thompson’s fiction has appeared recently or is forthcoming at publications like Bartleby Snopes, Camroc Press Review, Literary Orphans, decomP, and Spartan. As a child, his grandfather paid him $5 an hour to clean up frozen cow patties and pull stones out of the vegetable garden. Now he lives in downtown Richmond, Virginia, with his wife and two daughters cleaning up diapers and dog fur—no compensation has been offered.

EPITHALAMION — CEZARIJA ABARTIS

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What she liked best about the Fourth of July fireworks was the cloud underneath the illumination as the breeze blew the smoke away and the next firework lit up the space where the previous fireworks used to be. In the churning smoke she saw, for an instant, Michelangelo’s masses and curves of Dawn and Night in the Tomb of Lorenzo de Medici. Who had the confidence, even arrogance, to plan his own tomb? In another instant she saw a whale sailing the sky. She would herself like to ride that bucking whale. The children ooh-ed and ah-ed when a particularly large firework exploded or a rapid sequence of small ones. The sound of the explosions thumped on her chest.            
            Alan was recording the event with his new digital camera. She saw three or four people around them doing the same.            
            “This is a great little camera,” Alan said. “Look at this–even in the dark, with no tripod.”
            She agreed that the colors were vivid. But it really was not the same thing. The screen was a four-inch rectangle. But the real sky was all around her, so that she had the sensation of floating.
            After nearly fifteen years of marriage, Alan could read her mind. “I know that you’re thinking I should just be watching the moment. Well I am. I’m pointing this and I’m watching too.”
            “I didn’t say anything.”            
            “And I’m trying this out for the wedding.”            
            They were going to their niece’s wedding the next week. A spectacular blue ring exploded, and the crowd cheered. A yellow peony followed and lit up the billowing smoke underneath. The presenters followed that with a smiley face. She laughed at the cheesiness and wit.            
            Let Katy and Gavin have a full, happy, layered life filled with fireworks and marble statues and whales in the sky. Let them have the sharpness of the smoke smell and the strong feeling of the sound against their bodies. Let them hold their breath in wonder and laugh at the release of the light. Let them sleep with a sweet slumber and wake to a happy dawn. Let them have the stars above and the stars below.

Cezarija Abartis' Nice Girls and Other Stories was published by New Rivers Press. Her stories have appeared in Per Contra, Pure Slush, and New York Tyrant, among others. She participates on ShowMeYourLits.com and Zoetrope.com. Her flash, “The Writer,” was selected by Dan Chaon for Wigleaf’s Top 50 online Fictions of 2012.  “History,” published by The Lascaux Review, was chosen as April Story of the Month by The Committee Room. Recently she completed a novel, a thriller. She teaches at St. Cloud State University. Her website is http://magicmasterminds.com/cezarija/.

SHOPLIFTING — LAURA CITINO

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Every day that summer we went down to the corner store on Oak Street. We went late afternoon, when the heat reached the edge of madness. The sun shot sharp at our eyes as if angled through a magnifying glass. Anyone with a lick of sense was inside with a fan or beer or weed trying to make the hours pass. Men in oversized t-shirts with brown papered-bottles tucked between their legs sat on collapsing porches. Sometimes they'd wave to us. 
            “Girl,” they called. 
            “What up, mister?” We twitched our hips a little as we walked by.
            “Who you think you fooling?” they called. They grabbed their crotches and hollered.
            The dusty brick building never had many customers. Our classmates spent afternoons at the gas station trying to get the older kids to buy them cigarillos – the kind that made your lips taste sweet like maple sugar. The corner store seemed from a bygone era, a relic from our parents' childhoods when the drunks were stumbling but harmless and hard candy cost sofa change. Metal grates crisscrossed the windows and a handwritten sign declared NO LIQUOR with the Arabic translation scribbled below.
            We stole more than we bought. I'd get a Milky Way or a warmed over hotdog to keep up appearances while you'd sneak out handfuls of cheap taffy in the pockets of your cutoffs. Once onto the pavement we'd high five and cram the sugar into our mouths. We weren't poor, at least not to our own knowledge. But the neighborhood was. We could feel it in the last dying elm trees, stiff chewed-up gum and cigarette butts sticking to our shoes. Bad folk loping the streets. Even at fourteen going on fifteen we were sucked dry of ambition and the neighborhood replaced it with the dangerous feeling of being disadvantaged. 
            We'd split the share at the old elementary school playground, which was abandoned in the summer except for gangs of smoothed skinned boys playing three-on-three. Curses, slurs, and the rhythmic bounce of a ball on concrete echoed through the air. We lazed in the uncut grass, the straps of our tank tops pulled down to avoid tan lines.
            We talked about boys. Endless enigmatic intent hidden in a bit lip, a coarse laugh, a hand on a knee on a leg on a shoulder. A boy named Jason, another named Marcus. Hands on bellies on your ass cuddled in recliner chairs in my parents' basement. 
            You blew your bangs out of your face and undid the top button of your shorts. The roundness of your lower belly sticking out was a little disgusting. Naked. Soft. You caught me looking.
            “I'm a growing girl,” you said. You scanned me up and down. “Bet I could wrestle you.”
            I grinned. You went to move but I was faster. Your wrist was in my grip. You leaned forward and whispered, “Go ahead then.”
            Quick as a blink I was on my back.

Laura Citino is a fiction writer and essayist from southeastern Michigan. Her short fiction has appeared or is forthcoming in journals including Midwestern Gothic, Bluestem, Passages North, and Sou'wester. She received her MFA from Eastern Washington University. She currently lives with her partner and teaches English in Terre Haute, Indiana.

KNOW IT ALL — TODD MERCER

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Nostradamus sits in darkness, rocking his chair by the front door as his errant daughter Madeleine sneaks in. She startles when he flips on the lights.
            He holds a bronze plaque that says “2:46 a.m.,” which is of course the actual time.
            “It’s getting old,” Maddy says. She smells like cigarettes.
            Her Dad quit opening mail in early middle age. Maddy holds up envelopes and Nostradamus guesses the contents.
            Junior year of high school she says, “Guess what, Dad? I’m—“
            “—pregnant,” he finishes. “A girl. Seven pounds, nine ounces, one blue eye and one brown. A linguist who also collects butterflies. Have her watch for signs of diabetes.”
            Maddy says, “Damn. Damn. Damn.”
            Nostradamus is already over it, eating a sandwich above the kitchen sink.
            Madeleine hears one day that the country’s declared war. She rushes to her father with the news. The kitchen table is covered in scribbled parchment.
            “The complete history of the war!” he tells her, “Such supreme folly, this one.”
            She couldn’t tell him anything.
            All the other Dads were early European versions of bumbling sitcom Dads, morons of obliviousness, objects of both pity and chiding ridicule.
            Sure, it’s nice to know the order that the ponies will finish at the track. Cool to know which year the Detroit Lions win the Super Bowl. But a girl could use a father, one who makes a few bad calls, one who isn’t holding the tablets of the Ten Commandments while she’s learning sin.

Todd Mercer won the first Woodstock Writers Festival’s Flash Fiction contest, and his chapbook, Box of Echoes, won the Michigan Writers Cooperative Press contest. His digital chapbook, Life-wish Maintenance, is forthcoming from RHP Books. Mercer's poetry and fiction appear in Apocrypha & Abstractions, Blue Collar Review, The Camel Saloon, Camroc Press Review, Cease, Cows, Dunes Review, East Coast Literary Review, Eunoia Review, Falling Star, 50-Word Stories, The Fib Review, The Lake, The Legendary, Main Street Rag Anthologies, Mobius: The Journal of Social Change, One Sentence Poems, Postcard Poems and Prose, Postcard Shorts, Right Hand Pointing, The Second Hump, and Spartan.