12 Articles

After Dinner Conversation Magazine – November 2024

This magazine publishes fictional stories that explore ethical and philosophical questions in an informal manner. The purpose of these stories is to generate thoughtful discussion in an open and easily accessible manner. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The magazine is published monthly in print and electronic format. All rights reserved. After Dinner Conversation Magazine is published by After Dinner Conversation, Inc., a 501(c)(3) nonprofit in the United States of America. No part of this magazine may be used or reproduced in any manner without written permission from the publisher. Abstracts and brief quotations may be used without permission for citations, critical…

1 min.

From the Editor

If I’m being honest, running a literary magazine is mostly a slog. And then you read a sentence like “In the vacant plot of soil in the backyard of his house, tucked away between the neighbor’s walls, that dour man found joy, in a world where he otherwise only saw purpose,” from Pappou’s Garden. Or, “His [day] job was an argument against the existence of the soul,” from Reni Winter, Dead at 57, also in this issue. And all the work is worth it again. When I was teaching, I used to play a game with my students; find a single sentence in the reading so perfect you could put it on a bumper sticker. It’s weird, I know, but stories can be overwhelming. Single sentences are easier to digest.…

20 min.

Hatching Dragons

Content Disclosure: Mild Violence The call came at 3.40 pm and woke me up. Afternoon is the worst time of day. It is sandwiched between the morning when everything seems fresh and ripe with promise, and the evening when darkness gives you a decent pretext for going to bed. In the afternoon the sky is glassy, the sun merciless, and you feel passage of wasted time as physically as bleeding. I was napping with my AC on full blast. I was old enough to remember the period when caring about climate change made people admire you rather than suspect you of collaborating with terrorists. That long-ago golden age. The time before dragons. The call was from Rose of course, though she used another anonymous number. David only called for another…

22 min.

Reni Winter, Dead at 57

Content Disclosure: Death or Bereavement “Reni Winter, Gifted but Troubled Rocker, Dead at 57” On the number 21 bus, Zach Boyd was scrolling through Facebook when that headline grabbed his attention. He was the right demographic to care about Reni’s death; he was also the right demographic to still be using Facebook. He read the headline three times before tapping the link. He couldn’t believe it. It must be a hoax. Surely, Reni couldn’t be dead. Fifty-seven was too young. The link led to an obituary on rollingstone.com, the once revered music magazine and cultural touchstone, now an oversaturated website. Reni clicked on the masthead to make sure it was the real Rolling Stone and not one of those look-alike domains. He’d read that’s how hackers got your passwords. Or…

12 min.

Pappou’s Garden

Content Disclosure: None “Traditions make the people, and adherence makes the man.” Those words suffocated Pappou from the very beginning. They were coughed up from his father’s mouth and scattered like poisoned seeds across the hardwood floors of his childhood home. Pappou grew up navigating the undergrowth of those words, until finally the spores caught in his own lungs and flourished. He flowered into a handsome man, yet he waited for his sisters to marry before taking a spouse, as was tradition. And when Pappou did finally marry, he worked hard to provide for his family, as was tradition. In the vacant plot of soil in the backyard of his house, tucked away between the neighbor’s walls, that dour man found joy, in a world where he otherwise only saw…

22 min.

All in the Family

Content Disclosure: Sexual Situations Few people are unlucky enough to meet their soulmate. Violet Dart met hers at age eleven, when Aunt Aster came home. Violet lived on a farm in Scranton, Maine. Most of Scranton and the surrounding towns consisted of plots of land with a few acres of pasture and a scattering of homes. These homes were inhabited by hundreds of Cushings. Violet didn’t know the names of all her relatives, or how they were related to her. But it didn’t matter. The Cushing adults were her aunts and uncles, and the Cushing children were her siblings. Preferential treatment was frowned upon. Violet’s father Aaron was an only child, but her mother Sapphire had eleven siblings, a typical Cushing family. Sapphire’s great tragedy was that her twin sister…

23 min.

Junk

Content Disclosure: Terminal Illness; Depiction of Alcohol Use; Trauma and PTSD At first it was just bottlecaps. And you might laugh at that. You might think ‘what kind of sentimentality is there in a bottle cap?’ But that’s a dumb question because what type of sentimentality is there to anything? We control the sentimentality. You control the sentimentality. I control the sentimentality. Heather told me that affirmations work. You can apparently retrain your brain on them if you really believe them. So I have to tell myself that I control the objects and the objects don’t control me. And I have to believe it. The affirmations have to be about me and not about the objects. She says that sentimentality isn’t really real, I mean you can’t actually touch it.…

22 min.

Taps

Content Disclosure: War or Battles Scenes; Death or Bereavement I am alone, standing on the crumbling back steps of the old church, my trumpet by my side in my right hand. The church cemetery, dotted with countless rows of neatly arranged headstones, descends gradually towards the slate grey sea. It is a raw blustery day in mid-April. The first buds have appeared on the wild roses that have overgrown the cemetery wall, and on the storm-blasted stand of oak trees beyond. A single white sail is visible offshore. The damp salt air carries a faint smell of decay, of seaweed and debris washed up on distant beaches. Far below, a small group of mourners is gathered by an open grave. He and I were about the same age, from neighboring…

11 min.

The Perfect Daughter

Content Disclosure: Depiction of Alcohol Use; Depiction of Self-Harm Standing in a handstand, Jane arched her back and lowered her feet towards the head. Scorpion pose. She saw herself in the mirror, balancing in this challenging position. It was close to perfection… And she felt sick at the sight of it. From the loudspeaker played the soft sound of Indian music. Lighted incense sticks were spreading the suffocating aromas of sandalwood and saffron. The yoga instructor strolled between the students trying the pose. Jane came back on to her feet and rolled up the mat. Tears filled her eyes, but she kept them from pouring out with an effort of will. The instructor looked at her. “I’m sorry,” she said and left the room. In the locker room she sat…

2 min.

Author Information

Hatching Dragons Elana Gomel was born in Ukraine and currently resides in California. She is an academic and an award-winning writer. She is the author of seven non-fiction books on narrative theory and speculative fiction, eight novels of dark fantasy and science fiction, and more than a hundred stories. She also writes on Medium. She can be found at her own website www.citiesoflightanddarkness.com; Facebook @elana.gomel; Instagram @elanagomel Reni Winter, Dead at 57 Joseph Lyttleton is the creator of the 10 Cities/10 Years travel project, for which he lived in a new U.S. city every year for a decade. His writing has appeared in Across the Margin, The Lit Nerds, and Third Wednesday. His first novel, Yahweh’s Children, was independently published in 2018. Since 2017, Lyttleton has lived in Madrid, Spain, where…

1 min.

Additional Information

Reviews If you enjoyed reading these stories, please consider doing an online review. It’s only a few seconds of your time, but it is very important in continuing the series. Good reviews mean higher rankings. Higher rankings mean more sales and a greater ability to release stories. Print Books https://www.afterdinnerconversation.com Purchase our growing collection of print anthologies, “Best of,” and themed print book collections. Available from our website, online bookstores, and by order from your local bookstore. Podcast Discussions/Audiobooks https://www.afterdinnerconversation.com/podcastlinks Listen to our podcast discussions and audiobooks of After Dinner Conversation short stories on Apple, Spotify, or wherever podcasts are played. Or, if you prefer, watch the podcasts on our YouTube channel or download the. mp3 file directly from our website. Patreon https://www.patreon.com/afterdinnerconversation Get early access to short stories and…

1 min.

Special Thanks

After Dinner Conversation gratefully acknowledges the support of the following individuals and organizations. In Alphabetical Order Anonymous, Marie Anderson, DB Babak, Ria Bruns, Brett Clark, Jarvis Coffin, Rebecca Dueben, Tina Forsee, Deb Gain-Braley, David Gibson, Mercedes Holmes, Ron Koch, Sandra Kolankiewicz, Donna Lormand, Rena Ong, Anja Peerdeman, John Sheirer, David Shultz, Frank Strada, Mitchell Sweet, Annie Thompson, and Bill Weston. After Dinner Conversation is supported in part by the Arizona Commission on the Arts, which receives support from the State of Arizona and the National Endowment for the Arts. Donation Information Please send your 501(c)(3) donations to: After Dinner Conversation 2516 S. Jentilly Lane, Tempe, AZ 85282 https://www.afterdinnerconversation.com/donation https://www.patreon.com/afterdinnerconversation…

After Dinner Conversation: Philosophy | Ethics Short Story November 2024 (Digital)

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