SHORT STORY: "The Machine Man" By Ashley Barron

"The Machine Man"
By Ashley Barron

On the very edge of the great steel city of Idenro, there is an old machine shop. The wind blows through the windows, rusted open from years of disuse. It makes a hollow, forlorn keening as it whistles through all the rooms and around all of the old metal contraptions that are so rust-covered, you'd swear there was no metal left, only rust. Because of this moaning of the wind, the old machine shop is nicknamed the Howling House by all the citizens of Idenro, and is generally avoided.
However, once a month, an old man comes to visit the machine shop. He was once a well-respected, well-loved tinker; but now, time has taken its toll on him. His shop stands empty and unvisited; his workshop, once so filled with the sounds of whirring machinery and clanking gears, is silent.
So once a month, the old man takes his bucket and his tools and makes his way to the Howling House. He walks inside, lovingly and curiously surveying all of the old, rusty gadgets with the keen eye for which he was respected in his day. Then he chooses one, and only one, out of the piles of ancient machinery. He brings it home with him to his empty workshop, and for that one night of the month, the small room comes alive again. He oils it, polishes it and generally repairs it until all its flaws have been buffered away and it is as good as new. Then, he brings it home with him and puts it on one of the innumerable shelves lining the walls of his house. He does this once a month, every month, without fail.

SHORT STORY: "The Sound of a Breaking Heart" By Ashley Barron

“The Sound of a Breaking Heart”

By Ashley Barron

January twenty-second, 2031. 
I will never forget the day that they came to collect my son, the same way they had come for my husband and my brother so many years before. 
Back then, in a happier, more distant life, the perils of war and the tragedies that come with combat were something that I, and my family with me, had very little knowledge of, and certainly no prior experience with. We were content to exist within the pleasant little bubble that we called ‘life,’ ignoring the trials and tribulations of the world around us. There was no war coming, we imagined, if it didn’t affect us directly. 
If I had known how much that would change; how our happiness would fade and slowly be siphoned away, bit by precious bit; how the war and all its hardships and horrors would rise to consume our existences; I often wonder if I wouldn’t have found more time to treasure it while it was ours.
I was in the living room, dusting, when the message arrived. I remember it clearly, the musical chime of the doorbell breaking the almost-reverent silence around me as the purple feather duster slid carefully around the portraits on the mantel, collecting the fine layer of grey lint on the white surface. I would save the pictures themselves for last.
“Kat, could you get the door?” I always hated to stop in the middle of my chores, especially this particular chore.
My twenty-year-old daughter, then, God bless her, was the first one to receive the news. I tuned out the world around me again as she bounced toward the door from the kitchen where she had been making strawberry shortcake, whipped cream and sugar still dusting her hands and cheeks, and reabsorbed myself in the delicate task of dusting, moving on now to the photos themselves. Carefully, I straightened my husband’s picture,  adjusting the small glass memorial plaque beside it back into perfectly symmetrical alignment. 

SHORT STORY: "Give Me An Answer" By Ashley Barron

“Give Me An Answer”

By Ashley Barron

“Pssst. Hailey. Hey, Hailey.”

She tried to ignore him. She tried to ignore him with all of her might, focusing her eyes with vicious intensity on the sheets of paper lying on the desk before her. The standardized testing answer sheet, with its countless little circular bubbles waiting eagerly to be filled in, was resting neatly on top of the right page of her State Reading test booklet, blocking the questions from sight. She was halfway done with the test, and there were still forty minutes to go before Mrs. Goodwin would call a halt. 

“Hailey. Come on, I know you can hear me!”

The whispered solicitation came again, cutting through her concentration as her eyes flickered across the words of the Dickinson poem printed on the pale white paper. She did not want to look up; did not even want to acknowledge him, but she knew that if she didn’t, he would not be averse to blowing a spitball at her in the middle of the test. 

Sighing, she let herself look up, a glare settling itself comfortably over her pale, rounded face as she shoved her mouse-brown hair behind her ear to make eye contact.

Drew waved at her, his innocent smile masking the spark of mischief in his bright blue eyes. His mop of dark brown hair hung into his face and slightly over his glasses, and he pushed it back as he continued to smile and wave. 

“What do you want?” Hailey hissed, eyes flickering nervously around to make sure that Mrs. Goodwin was not standing nearby. “I’m trying to take this stupid test.”

“Yeah, I know,” Drew whispered back, nodding eagerly. 

“So shut up!” She crossed her eyes at him. “We’re gonna get in trouble!” 

“I need your help, though.” His voice was pleading, beseeching; it was the puppy-dog begging voice that he always used when he was trying to wheedle her out of something. His eyes were doing it, too; begging her, their sapphire depths seeming to yank right on her heartstrings with their neediness. 

“You need my help with what?” she whispered furiously. 

“This question,” he jabbed the eraser end of his mechanical pencil at his own test booklet, which was covered in marks and smears of graphite, despite Mrs. Goodwin’s admonition not to write on the testing booklet. From the corner of her eye, Hailey could just make out the inscription ‘this test sucks eggs,’ scrawled right below the neatly printed text of the Dickinson piece. She dared not look further, though; already a cold, squirmy feeling was developing inside her gut.

POETRY: "In My Heart" By Ashley Barron

“In My Heart”

By Ashley Barron

In the beginning-

when I was a different girl-

thought I knew

where it was that I belonged.

Hair ribbons and twangy guitar,

mournful love songs in Southern dialect

thought they were for me.

Tried to forge my identity

out of what everyone else

seemed to want me 

to be.

POETRY: "In Address to the Unseen" By Ashley Barron

"In Address to the Unseen"

By Ashley Barron

Other half of my self,

Spirit that is not mine, 

but that belongs to me all the same.

Presence that I feel

when I am alone in the dark,

lost, afraid,

in need of comfort. 

I see you not,

and yet I know you are there.