The Rialto Books Review Vol.023--AVAILABLE NOW
Necessary Christmas
by Nicholas Story
On Christmas Eve, Uncle Wayne came down the stairs carrying an old wooden chest. He dropped it on the living room carpet. He was pleased with himself, like he had just delivered the gift of the season. It was Grandpa’s war box, straight from the attic. We knew what was coming.
On the couch, Mom swirled her punch and grimaced: “Do we have to do show-and-tell every year?”
“The kids need to know their history,” Uncle Wayne said, fiddling with the dented latch. “They were never taught how to remember!”
Moonlight Blues
by Adam Kozak
Leigh Carlton pulled the coffee from the cupboard with two hands and placed it on the counter next to the coffee maker. He swung open the filter basket, inserted a filter, then opened the coffee.
The pungent earthy smell of coffee filled his nostrils. His hands shook. He wedged the handle of the spoon between his fingers, his stern, aged face wrinkled in concentration. One scoop.
Two scoop.
Three scoop.
His fingers slipped and coffee grounds spilled on the counter and scattered across the clean, white surface.
Dammit.
The Lighthouse, Part VI
by Alexandra Ranieri
As my exhaustion mounted, their voices became sweeter in tone to my ear—and I would fain have listened to them, had I not been bound to Candice’s fate as well as to my own. I looked ahead, not with fervent hope, but in the idleness of despair, and blinked against a spot which appeared just then on my vision. The more I blinked, however, the greater the spot grew, til it seemed a bright and shining star of blindness in the dark turmoil of sight. It looked like the light I had often seen on the water, stripped of its veil.
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