Fiction Fix Seventeen
New fiction by Eric Barnes, Elizabeth Genovise, B.P. Greenbaum, Melissa Hammond, Victor Robert Lee, Rory Meagher, Dianne Nelson Oberhansly, Penny Perkins, Carter Schwonke, Ben Shaberman, and Alice Thomsen.
New fiction by Eric Barnes, Elizabeth Genovise, B.P. Greenbaum, Melissa Hammond, Victor Robert Lee, Rory Meagher, Dianne Nelson Oberhansly, Penny Perkins, Carter Schwonke, Ben Shaberman, and Alice Thomsen.
- TAGS
- literature
- stories
- fiction
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Jerry felt like an amateur psychotherapist. Within<br />
ten minutes of meeting Karen Quinlan, he had<br />
heard about her sexual harassment lawsuit with her<br />
former employer, the complications with her father’s<br />
colostomy, and her beloved mutt Roger. Jerry tried to keep<br />
the conversation on Roger because the dog appeared to have<br />
no gastrointestinal issues or sexual deviancies. Regardless of<br />
Jerry’s questions—How old is Roger? Where did you get him?<br />
Does he know good tricks?—Karen kept replying, “He’s a<br />
mix, you know. He’s a little bit of everything.”<br />
Jerry was amused by the fact that this woman sitting next<br />
to him at the vegetarian meet-up dinner, Karen Quinlan, had<br />
almost the same name as the woman from the well-known<br />
1970s right-to-die case, Karen Ann Quinlan. There was Karen<br />
Quinlan the vegetarian and Karen Ann Quinlan the vegetable.<br />
He tried to remember what happened to Karen Ann.<br />
Did they ever pull the plug? Was there a plug to vegetarian<br />
Karen’s mouth that could be yanked?<br />
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