The first page of a story should grab a reader's attention, and then hold onto it.

With this in mind, only the first page of each story has been offered below. If you're interested in reading the full text please look it up in the literary journal where it was originally published. Such journals need our support and I encourage you to check out their websites or-better yet-become a subscriber. Without such financial help, they can't continue their good work.

"57 Gatwick"

"An Invisible World"

"Picasso and the Tornado"

A flash went off as he approached the podium, which made him squint and temporarily lose his courage. He read his prepared speech in front of the cameras and then asked the reporters if they had any questions. One of them wanted to know if he had heard the explosion.
"No," he said looking at the microphone. "It was too high up."
George McCourt was not alone. Most people in Duluth didn't hear a thing that night, not until debris started crashing onto their city. A rainstorm of bolts, seats, burning luggage and bodies fell through the air. It took seven minutes for the explosion to be sucked into the ground, and when it was all over-when everything had finally fallen from the sky-police sirens filled the air, people came out of their houses to see what had happened. There was a full moon that night and many homeowners wondered what had just fallen into their front yards.
Flight 57 was running late but managed to rumble away from Minneapolis into good weather. It climbed to 29,000 feet and everyone settled into their seats expecting to arrive in London Gatwick the next morning. Flight attendants knew that chicken alfredo would be popular so they began to unwrap extra trays. They would serve it somewhere over Newfoundland and, by the time they reached Greenland, most of the passengers would be asleep.
The flight was carrying a maximum load of luggage and freight. Hundreds of suitcases and backpacks were stacked in the dark. A Picasso was boxed up for an art show in Edinburgh. The corpse of an old man was being flown back to his boyhood home in Ireland. Several bikes were clamped together and a number of baby strollers had been neatly folded away. There wasn't an empty seat on the plane, and the wings were loaded with 46,000 gallons of fuel.
"How many bodies have you found so far?" a reporter asked.
George gripped the podium and hated that word, found. It made the search sound like a treasure hunt. "We've recovered 139 bodies."
"How long until you find the others?"
He took a deep breath. "It's been a tough search for us. Very tough.

"Even though he was the County Coroner, it still surprised George how quickly cancer had colonized his wife's organs-it started in her ovaries and spread like evil fireworks. He found it hard to believe that she was gone and that he was still here, still healthy. George was a mountain of a man that weighed close to 300 pounds. He played college football for the Gophers and turned his back on the NFL because he didn't want to leave home. So now, when he wasn't working with the dead, he went to church where he kneeled down on his battered knees and looked up at the cross. "God has Sunday morning," he often told his sixteen year old daughter, "but the Minnesota Vikings get the afternoon." She rarely laughed at this. She was more interested in shopping and make-up and other things that George didn't understand. He worried that she was slipping away, but he didn't know how to stop her.
He was on his fourth beer when his cell phone went off. He had the television up high, the surround sound made his living room shake, so he didn't hear the sirens. When he answered the vibrating phone in his pocket he thought the voice on the other end was playing a sick joke on him. "An airplane? Oh, you're hilarious pal."
A police cruiser drove him to the debris field where the night air prickled his scalp and the red lights of emergency vehicles flashed through the trees-George looked around and felt adrenalin in his blood-at first he didn't see anything except for an odd shaped rock. One of the firefighters moved towards it and called back, "This one didn't make it either." At such an early stage in the search everyone still hoped to find survivors. It was just impossible to believe that they were all gone, that so many lives had been snuffed out above their city.
Several houses were on fire and at least fourteen residents of Duluth had been killed by falling debris. What surprised him most, at least initially, was the inescapable smell of jet fuel. It was everywhere. It was like an invisible fog had settled over the city. He cupped his mouth with his hand as firefighters and paramedics followed him down the street. Red lights continued to flash, sirens broke the starry night, and a line of frightened men moved forward, searching, searching, searching. No one spoke.
Luggage was everywhere. So were newspapers and magazines and smashed laptops and cameras and cell phones. One of the landing gear assemblies had dropped into someone's backyard. An engine had fallen in front of the Lake Superior Railroad Museum. It looked like it was supposed to be there, like it was a new display for the kids, like some friendly giant had dropped it there as a surprise. One of the paramedics touched it gently with an outstretched hand and let out a long, low, gasp.

(To read the rest of the story please visit the good people at Glimmer Train)
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While Jennifer waited for the autopsy report she cooked homemade soup, pulped thick vegetables into salsa, and lifted apple tarts from the oven. Scattered around her were racks of cookies, disused bowls, carrot stubs and onionskins. The house filled with smells-sweet, spicy, tart-as pots teetered up from the sink. She made soda farls, champ, sausage rolls, colcannon, and shortbread. She boiled stews and bangers and boxty. And somewhere in the act of chopping and slicing and grinding, the ghost of her mother lingered on the perfuming aromas.
When the coroner finally called, Jennifer was whisking three eggs into meringue. Her hands were gloves of flour as she listened to the man on the phone talk in the secret language of human parts. Sternum was removed, he said. Trachea congested. Gall bladder contained two stones at four millimeters and eight millimeters respectively. Pericardial sac had fibrous adhesions and ranging effusions. Although the primary cause of death was bronchial carcinoma, a metastasized tumor-measuring two inches in diameter-impeded the cardiac system, thus causing shutdown. The man on the phone asked if she had any questions. She did not. She hung up.

The woman in an old-fashioned apron looked at the clutter around her. The kitchen had never been so disorganized, so full of germs. She thought about the egg-size tumor that had been found in her mother's chest. Like an uncooked and useless ingredient, it crowded her mother's life and spoiled the muscle of her heart. The doctors were right. A recipe of chemicals couldn't shrink it, or sponge it away, or remove it. Jennifer knew all about cancer, she knew how it lived in the dark and nibbled at the edges of the world.
She began to whip egg-whites into froth. She churned the whisk savagely as tears plopped into the bowl. When she was done, she dabbed her eyes with the back of her wrist and looked around: apple peels and chocolate, egg shells and brown sugar, measuring cups and cooling racks. She poured herself another glass of chardonnay and slumped to the floor. Her hands, she noticed, were shaking.

(To read the rest of the story please visit Chautauqua Literary Journal)
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Not much happened in Paradise, Minnesota. It was just another farming town, just another dot on the map that nurtured corn and soybeans and alfalfa. All of this changed one afternoon when the skies turned green and a tornado fell from the clouds. Nineteen seconds later, the town was scoured off the face of the earth.
Before this happened, Paradise was an anonymous place, just one of thousands on the prairie. It had a church, two liquor stores, and three bars. Although outsiders made fun of its wishful name it was a good place to raise a family. It was, as the news anchors would later report from their satellite trucks, a town that was crazy about football. After the Archangels won three straight championships, the place lived for the grid-iron and the smack of plastic helmets. Choices were made. Money was allocated. The town council bought new bleachers and a hi-tech scoreboard. The football field became the centerpiece of town, it became a grassy jewel surrounded by a big parking lot. After the tornado, most of this-along with the rest of the town-was sprinkled across two counties.
Ella Marie Sandvort hated sports, especially football. She kept such thoughts to herself and went to the pep rallies where she cheered along with everyone else. Ella Marie Sandvort, who was in the eleventh grade, dreamed of large cities and large experiences. She dreamed of losing weight. She dreamed of painting. Her parents called her Ella, her teachers called her Ella Marie. Her peers called her Ellie if they liked her and Elephant if they didn't. She was a stocky girl that liked chocolate and slabs of blueberry pie. Her legs were thick and sturdy. She had a gift for memory, especially when it came to foreign languages like Spanish.
After school she locked her bedroom door and entered a world of painters. She had her favorites-Picasso, Dalí, Kahlo-and in the safety of her room she dappled with oils and watercolors, odd shapes and textures. Aside from her parents, she never showed her work to anyone else or shared her private ambitions. If she was to be known as Elephant, so be it. After all, she was going to leave town after graduation so what did a little ridicule matter? Once she got her diploma she would become history, dust, she would be just a vague memory at future reunions.
On the afternoon that the tornado spun itself down from the clouds, the students of Paradise High School stood in front of the library and waited for the buses that would take them home. Ella leaned against a brick wall with one foot beneath her rump for support and she felt eyes examine her fat. The cool kids, the popular kids, waited near the curb and pushed each other playfully. They talked in the secret code of slang. They flirted and flexed.
Ella looked at the hulking thunderhead and thought about painting it. She thought about acrylic squishing out of tubes. She enjoyed making rivulets of color in art class. Mr O'Brien said she was good so maybe he would be interested in seeing some of her work? She cared about his opinion so, maybe, yes.
"Hey Elephant," an athletic girl with strawberry-blonde hair shouted. "You find a date for prom yet?"
She ignored the hurtful words and wondered how she would paint the sky. It was sea green, it was boiling, and it was so prematurely dark that the streetlamps flickered on. Lightening pounced in jagged thrusts. The wind, which had been swatting treetops, hushed into silence. It was very very calm, which of course made everything very very scary. No one spoke, not even the cool kids. Ella forgot about paints and brushes when the tornado siren whined into action.
Miss Varpness and Sister Agatha came out of the school and ordered everyone into the library. Varpness, an aging substitute teacher with an easy laugh, pointed to the library door but no one moved. Becky Hollgaard began screaming at something. It was something that none of them had seen before. On TV, yes, but no one had actually seen a tornado. Not like this. Not right in front of them.
It twisted down from the heavens, rumble-screaming, and it sucked dirt and debris thousands of feet into the air. It was gargantuan. It had a life force of its own. Ella watched trees spin around inside it like toothpicks. Mud fell from the sky. The wind picked up and that's when everyone started to scream. It didn't take Sister Agatha or Miss Varpness long to get the students into the library after that. This was no drill. This was the real thing. Everyone tingled with fear as they ran into the basement and hid between stacks of books. Sister Agatha held her crucifix and commanded everyone to crouch down. She put her finger to her lips and looked at the ceiling.
They waited.
They listened.
And while Ella was down there on her knees she concentrated on the familiar books in front of her. They were in the art section of the library and Ella opened a book called Picasso in Barcelona. There were several paintings and photographs but what really caught her attention was a picture of him in a stripy shirt. He stood beneath a palm tree and the sky above him was blue and unthreatening and calm. The sun was shining and everything was so peaceful, so warm. Ella closed her eyes and concentrated on Barcelona. Picasso took her frightened hand and the two of them strolled through the ancient streets. She turned the page and stood next to the Mediterranean. The wind was delicate and there were no waves. The kind man patted her head and asked about Minnesota. She told him about severe thunderstorms and tornados and said that she was scared. There's no danger here, he winked. I'll keep you safe, pequeña.
Then this man with a sunbrown face gave her a hug and Ella felt safe, safe from tornadoes and teasing. She blocked out the world around her and existed deep within the arms of a man who repainted the world in vibrant shapes and colors. She knew in real life he was overbearing and self-centered, but at that moment she really needed him to hold her hand and look into her eyes.
You're okay, he whispered again. Don't worry about the outside world. I'm here, little one. I'll protect you.
When the electricity snapped off no one could see their hand in front of their face, and that's when the screaming really began. What Ella's peers had been doing beforehand was just practice but now everyone mastered full-lunged shrieking. Mouths opened wide and neck muscles bulged. Throats went raw. Someone next to Ella peed their pants and the smell floated up in the darkness. A wetness surrounded her kneecaps. She pinched her eyes shut and thought about Barcelona and blue skies and Picasso. Miss Varpness ordered everyone to stay calm and, like Picasso, she promised that everything would be okay, that nothing bad would happen, and that they would all be safe. The tornado got closer and closer. They could hear it. They huddled in the dark. They listened. They held each other's hands. They prayed.

(To read the rest of the story please visit South Dakota Review)
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