By Alvin G. Burstein
The psycho-analyst’s 3:10 patient was on the couch, reciting her usual litany. Bored, he looked at his watch. He brought his watch to his ear, hearing nothing. He looked at its face again. The second hand was moving.
With the litany as a backdrop, he began to think. Her dreams about a deaf [...]

If you don’t know Jim Harrington’s excellent “Six Questions” series of interviews, you should.
Below is the schedule of posts for June at http://sixquestionsfor.blogspot.com/.
6/01—Six Questions for Tom Dooley, Managing and Fiction Editor, Eclectica Magazine
6/03—Six Questions for Linda Manning, Managing Editor, Aurora Wolf Literary Journal
6/06—Six Questions for Jason Stuart, Editor & CEO, Burnt Bridge
6/09—Six [...]

PASSION IN VENICE

By Cormac Brown

A woman knows the face of the man she loves as a sailor knows the open sea.
-Honore de Balzac
They were mute as their oars cut through the water. The once vibrant streets of one of the world’s most beautiful cities were now thirty to fifty feet underwater. Along [...]

MISS ELLIOT AND THE ELDRITCH
Written and Illustrated by Laura Neubert
I lost consciousness at Thornfield and awoke in Millcote. My muscles burned, my bones felt as though they had been splintered, and when my eyes opened, they were scalded by the light. A groan was pulled from me as I returned to the waking world. That [...]

Miss Elliot and the Eldritch
Chapter 5
Written and Illustrated by Laura Neubert
I stumbled out onto the roof and looked about me. My eyes had adjusted to the darkness inside Thornfield; and when once more exposed to the light of day, they were pierced by the murky daylight and ached.   The wind was stronger here, with smoke [...]

Miss Elliot and the Eldritch
Chapter 4
Written and illustrated by Laura Neubert
Before dawn had broken I was gone. There were no alternatives for me. A strange, grandiose thing had beseeched me to come to it, and its distress was so intense that it had ransomed a child in order to persuade me
But even had there [...]

“Marriage!” I gasped.

“Yes Jane, marriage,” St. John repeated.

“I did not imagine that you were in want of a wife.”

His eyes held no desire or passion, no spark of adoration. He spoke of the matter as though it were a business transaction.

Snowflakes fell from the sky like ash and stuck to the ground in chill, off-white clumps. The earth had been made hard as steel beneath my feet. Each time I placed my soles upon soil, I felt the act of it reverberate up my legs.

In a satchel I had placed a small set of drawing supplies, which now thumped against my side as I walked quickly towards the home of Mary Garrett. The snapping chill bit into me, and I could not move quickly enough to escape from it. My pace, though quick, was not enough to keep me warm. It was small protection indeed, but out of a desire for warmth I clutched my baggage closer to me.

Reader, I left him. In three months I had not seen his face, nor heard his voice. In pushing his presence away from my mind I was able to gather myself again. For practical reasons I had changed my name. Certainly if I were called by my own true title then the past should soon catch up to me. In the quiet hours, I began to wonder if indeed my reasons were entirely practical. The blow that had been delivered to me was severe and I still reeled from it. Jane Eyre belonged in a place she could no longer stay, and so, for the sake of survival, my predecessor had been shut away. Where Jane Eyre once stood, Jane Elliot now held her place.