Story: Small Towns, Modern Loneliness
A new short story, written by Michael Kurt with an illustration by Laura Helsby! As summer starts, Hailey Serton reflects on the end of high school and who she’ll be in college.
Written by Michael Kurt | Cover Illustration: Laura Helsby
Description: As summer starts, Hailey Serton reflects on the end of high school and who she’ll be in college.
An Excerpt
Hailey Serton’s mother annoyed the shit out of her. Despite the many years they’d spent living in a small apartment, they had not become bonded by their shared experience of her teenage life. So when she got home late from the Melville Shakespeare Festival, Hailey gave the living room a wide berth in hopes that the undoubtedly strong smell of cigarettes could not be detected on her summer dress.
“Did you have a good time?” her mother called, turning away from what she was watching on the living room TV.
She had not had a good time, actually, but was too tired and too dirty to be trapped in a conversation about it. “Sure,” she called back.
There was a pretentiousness to anything Shakespearean around which Hailey could never fully relax, despite many years of community and high school theater. Fern Michaels, who had asked her to take the bus with him to Melville, thought she might like it, which, given the kind of person she was, was not entirely surprising, but deeply disheartening.
Hailey’s mother followed her almost all the way into the bathroom. “How was the bus?”
“It was a long trip. Especially back,” she replied, closing the door.
When Hailey met Fern last year, she was quickly able to convince him to wait with her in the parking lot after rehearsals. Her mother was chronically late and Fern was chronically lonely, so she was doing him a favor. What she did not expect, however, was that Fern’s mother would circle the school for a half hour before finally offering to drive her home. So, by the time Fern asked her to go to the festival with him, she felt that she’d owed him many times over.
Through the bathroom door, Hailey’s mother asked: “Did he try anything?”
“Who?”
“That boy.” Her mother didn’t like his name, and avoided saying it. “Fern, or whatever.”
“Did Fern try anything at the Shakespeare Festival in the middle of a crowd of theater dorks?” Hailey traced what looked like Central America in dirt on her leg and noticed a burn mark on one of her socks, which was regrettable, but fine. “No. He didn’t try anything,” she said, and wondered for the first time why he didn’t go by his middle name, which was Thomas.
Story: June 2022
June 2022 is a piece of short fiction from Michael Kurt. On a night jog, after finally deciding to forget her past and improve her outlook on life, a woman encounters the very thing that she’s feared most, and the pain is transcendent.
JUNE 2022
Written by Michael Kurt | Illustration by Laura Helsby
Excerpt:
It was a June night. Almost hot, almost raining, and full of pollen. I thought about turning back for allergy medicine, or a long-sleeved shirt, but knew that if I allowed myself to turn around, I’d allow myself to walk, and then stop, and then go to bed early without stretching or running or manifesting anything. So I plodded along. Doing what I called running. Block to block, I told myself I could make it until the next stop sign without slowing down. There were no cars on our street, or the next street after that. Just even, clean sidewalks. Empty roads.
I could hear myself breathing. It didn’t take long to get winded. After a short stint of confident running, where I felt like things weren’t too bad, I began to feel my true age. Deeply. In my knees and chest. But I tried to keep on anyway, for a few more blocks. Just to the next stop sign.
A cyclist passed opposite me, quickly, barely a blur, and I felt embarrassed to be seen out of breath. It pushed me on, farther, one more block. Then again, another block, for fear of being looked back on from a distance. And it felt good. It felt like progress. Like after however long it had been, I could still make room for health and my own wellbeing; for my aging body and my positive—in the middle of this thought, I was hungry. Not terribly, but suddenly hungry. There wasn’t a breeze, it was calm, and I desperately looked for the cyclist who, just a moment ago, I willed to never be seen by again. Maybe he too was weak and would turn back soon, defeated by the night. The hairs on my neck, then head, then all of my body, rose. I could feel them against my clothes, on end, pushing against the fabric.
I had made it to the stop sign at the end of another block. I tried to read the name of the street, but it melted, green and white, reflective letters, and became unrecognizable streaks on the pavement, pooling, then growing thin, before seeping into the gutter. I grabbed for the pole, but it was below me, and my arms cycled through the empty air before the tree limbs and leaves tore the skin of my hands away. I plowed through the trees wildly; flailing, the hunger growing. Will I be alive?, I thought, passing through bits of trees, after this, crashing along the rooftops and against chimney stacks
June 2022 is a piece of fiction, written by Michael Kurt, whose work includes the short comics Halloween and Sinkhole.
The Illustration for June 2022 was done by Laura Helsby, who is an illustrator and comic book artist from Manchester UK, specializing in black and white inked work. They love anything horror, as well as vintage cassette tapes and vinyl records, especially punk.