Big Pulp's fall edition PDF includes 28 stories and poems, topped by a gorgeous photograph by Lisa Schnellinger.

For a larger image, Lisa's biography, and gallery links, click here.

For this issue's contents or to purchase a copy, click here.

The restaurant’s radio blared oldies from its hidden speakers, Chuck Berry grinding out “Johnny B. Good” for yet another of its endless airings some six generations after its release. The waitress, Myra, didn’t even notice it as she absently bobbed her head in time. She was combining the sugar dispensers, filling them up. She filled the three empties from the bag in the station's cupboard and shook the fine grains from her apron.

Dwight, the fry cook, looked up from behind the ready counter, scowling at the empty tables. Myra walked between their gleaming Formica tops, passing out sugar in glass bottles, filling first the tables in the well-lit section that would be “smoking” later in the morning, then passing out to the tables in the darkened section on the other side of the pie cabinet and cash register.
(continue)

We met by chance on a Sunday
at the town aquarium.
He stood aloof in the octopus exhibit,
gazing at their writhing tentacles, and looking
inscrutably pained. He turned to me and said,
“They regard themselves as aliens
in their own world, a condition
with which I am somewhat familiar.”
I fell in love right there.
(continue)

Sophie, he wrote.

He paused, hurting. His writing looked
strained—of course it was strained! He
scratched out the name.

Sophie, Rick wrote again. This time the S
didn’t look right, not at all balanced. It was
not an S worthy of her name. He crossed it out.

Sophie, he wrote. And this time it was Sophie.
(continue)