By Vahishta Mistry
Short, standalone stories. May have been published elsewhere
Unfinished Bob the junkie scavenges cigarette butts from the ashtray in the smoking area outside the hotel. I look into the nearly full bin and see that someone has discarded a nearly unsmoked Camel and hope that he gets to it before Marcus the dour German maintenance guy goes on his cleaning round. It’s almost …
The rain pattered down on her window, mist curled in wreaths around the flowers she had planted around the sill. Dull, muted yellows, soft reds and dim whites amidst a grey swirling shape. The cold invaded the room, reaching into every corner, despite the best efforts of the noisy radiator. She drew her legs up, …
“You know, I hate it when this happens, it always happens.†“What?†“I’ll find some incredibly attractive woman, who looks at me, looks away and then does that whole daring me to come over and talk to her thing, and then I notice something about her that puts me off completely. Happened this morning, I …
43,000 ft ASL The passenger in seat 12A adjusted his seatbelt. The flight was 4 hours old; the stews were catching their first rests after serving 130 passengers dinner and the colicky babies were calming down, soothed by the incessant humming of the four huge Pratt & Whitney engines outside the cabin. The trauma of …