The story of the week for August 24 to 28 is…
A Lost Moment by Patrick Yu
All posts by Tim
CHARY: Play to Lose
Wrinkles on her nose and graphic tee bestill his heart. Their first album’s good, he reassures, but nowadays they’re trash.
Eyebrows quirk.
Seizing his chance, he suggests they experience real music this weekend, but she declines.
He says she’s playing hard to get. She says he’s playing hard to want.
Chary writes at a snail’s pace.
REB ELKIN: Try Again
She has been here at least eight times before, judging by the number of past selves in the crowd. She carefully keeps herself out of their sight. They must not know that they will fail. They will find out soon enough.
She lifts her blaster and locks onto her target.
Reb Elkin writes science fiction & fantasy, and is slightly obsessed with time travel.
JOHN H DROMEY: Overkill
“If he hopes to hold on to his title, our newly-appointed chief of police really needs to get his priorities straight.”
“Why? What did he do?”
“His first day on the job, he found a housefly in his office. Rather than handle it himself, he called for a S.W.A.T. team.”
John H. Dromey’s short fiction’s been published in Mystery Weekly Magazine and over 150 other venues.
LISA LILLIBRIDGE: Live Generously
Today I encountered two women on my walk. Wearing a pink, Live Generously t-shirt, an older woman didn’t look up as I said hello for the 6th day. The second woman, younger, walking two labs—one brown, one yellow—turned away when I said good morning.
I will keep trying.
Lisa Lillibridge is an artist/photographer/writer raised in South Dakota. She spends her time in Burlington, Vermont and Sandwich, Massachusetts. Her work is mostly about identity and the tricky business of finding home within oneself. See more at lisalillibridge.com.
NATALIE PARSONS: Breath
They touched our faces, stroked our clothes, fingered our chain-laden necks, loaded us into the coffins. They set the coordinates.
“Why?” I said. “The world is big enough!”
“Hush; there is no air left for you. You took it away when you started breathing.”
“Besides,” another added, “space is bigger.”
Natalie Parsons is a writer and blogger, and she’s trying hard this year to get really good at it. Find more of her writing at itspastmybedtimebut.wordpress.com.
PATRICK YU: A Lost Moment
A bright morning
The blue skies and waves
Toes in the sand
I sip coffee
As two children
Search the shore
“Hey dad look”
They call out all the marvels they explore
Dad oblivious with cellphone to ear
Smiles and nods
A moment
Absorbed
With warmth
From a casual stranger
Sometimes life’s moments get lost.
JENNIFER L FREED: Hannah’s Walk
Scent of mown grass. Faint jingle of Brody’s tags, and the pull of his leash in her palm.
Down the street, Milo and Sasha splashing in the pool, and little Ben crying, “Wait for me!”
Then the honeysuckle sweetness hedging the Jones’ yard. She’d hardly noticed before her vision dimmed.
Jennifer L Freed mostly writes poems, but likes 50-word stories. Her website is jfreed.weebly.com.
TOM HARRIS: New Atlantis
Alex was a deaf, mute tour guide. Today he was under with a group of twenty or so, signing to explain how, just fifty years ago, people worked in these vertical buildings stretching into the sky. In the tallest of them, the upper windows, not far underwater, were still intact.
Tom Harris is an engineer and teacher inspired by daily life. When words fill up his head, he shakes them out on virtual paper.
PAUL LAMAR: Madame Kosinski
Despite the disasters, both personal and professional, that characterized Madame Isabel Kosinski’s days, she found renewal in the half hour when she was alone, standing by her Chevy Caprice in Rosemont Park, having two cigarettes and a cup of coffee, every day, rain or shine, surveying the netless tennis courts.
Paul Lamar lives with his husband, Mark, in Albany, NY, where–in better times–he teaches, reviews theater for a local paper, and conducts a chorus. Alas!