Smith

Stories by Lindsay Smith

There are many futures.

ARDIS PART ONE BY LINDSAY SMITH 34THPARALLEL MAGAZINE ISSUE 118

Are you some crazy man? You’re telling me the photo hasn’t been taken yet?

Her eyes reflect the empty sky. Someone to love, she says.

ANGEL LOVE BY LINDSAY SMITH 34THPARALLEL MAGAZINE ISSUE 61


A knock on the door makes her jump, the book drops to the floor. Nobody ever knocks. She waits a long moment, her hand on the wooden table, touching the hardness of it, is she dreaming?

Listen to the surf. I could lie here, lie here with you forever.

STARTING AGAIN BY LINDSAY SMITH 34THPARALLEL MAGAZINE ISSUE 89

But you can’t. She buries her face in the pillow. Oh, I know. Things change. Yet the surf. Harry stretches his body along Aster’s bare back. Yet the surf. The surf will always. Always. Aster? Aster?

He loved you more than he loved living.

CATALINA JONES BY LINDSAY SMITH 34THPARALLEL MAGAZINE ISSUE 60


Catalina squints her eyes. Head back, chin jutting. I wrote him a letter. Never come back.

Don’t I live here any more?

HOMECOMING BY JOE HERRERA 34THPARALLEL MAGAZINE ISSUE 107

Answer the fucking door bitch? Maybe she’s not at home. But she knows I’m coming. Maybe I said Sunday and not Saturday. But I’m sure I said Saturday. What if she didn’t get the email? She must have got it. She didn’t answer it. 

Her happy life vanishes forever.

NIGHTSHIFT BY LINDSAY SMITH 34THPARALLEL MAGAZINE ISSUE 91


Renata doesn’t see Little Josh tottering in the driveway, doesn’t hear him yelling, mummy wait.

He stares out to sea, wraps his arms around himself, it’s all so simple.

PARTING TOUCHES BY LINDSAY SMITH 34THPARALLEL MAGAZINE ISSUE 90


He pulls out the WILL, flaps it against the palm of his hand. The red ribbon unravels and flutters away. Harry grabs for it. The ribbon coils lazily in the air, falls to the water, tangles on a dead fish floating belly up.



Gaudi had no money. He used whatever he could find, clapped it together, so one part of a balcony was this shape and the other entirely different. Imperfect perfection.

PERFECT BY LINDSAY SMITH 34THPARALLEL MAGAZINE ISSUE 92

Imperfect perfection.

Your father never gave you swings.

PLAYGROUND BY LINDSAY SMITH 34THPARALLEL MAGAZINE ISSUE 106

You’re like your father. You’ll get more and more like him as you grow older.

I’ve no idea who I was to him. 

REALITY DREAMING BY LINDSAY SMITH 34THPARALLEL MAGAZINE ISSUE 97


Memories are the same as dreams. Can you tell the difference? In the end there’s only a movie.

It would be like old times.

REAL LOVE BY LINDSAY SMITH 34THPARALLEL MAGAZINE ISSUE 95


I thought if I came back, kept coming back, I thought that maybe, I was just dreaming I know, but I thought maybe you would come back too, some time, and it would be like old times.

There’s something up with this. It only does fifties.

SWEET NOTHING BY LINDSAY SMITH 34THPARALLEL MAGAZINE ISSUE 103

“Fifties is good,” Harry says. He takes out a hundred, two fifties. He smiles goodbye to the woman, stuffing the fifties in his pocket. Harry crosses the road swinging his re-usable plastic shopping bag. An old man lying on a bench raises his hand, “Can you spare fifty?”  Harry drifts through a supermarket. They’re out of Vegemite. At the checkout the blonde asks, “Did you watch the football at the weekend? That’s 14.85.” Harry hands over a fifty. The checkout chick asks him, “You got anything smaller?”

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