The story of the week for October 29 to November 2 is…
Sabbatical by Khalilah Okeke
and
Closing the Loop by J Bradley
All posts by Tim
JEAN LLOYD: Mother
I don’t mind what you call me
Mum, Mummy, Mother
but I care how you treat me.
Have respect for me.
Care for me.
I am dying and time is running out.
There’s no going back.
So much wrong.
Too much to heal.
I’m your Mother.
I am Mother Nature.
Jean lives in Bath in the UK. She is trying to care for her corner of the world.
VICTOR: What Makes Me Really Sad
What makes me feel really sad is not that I am a sick old man and every part of my body is aching. Nor is it the thought that I am going to die sooner than one may hope.
It is my son’s assurance that his youth will last forever.
Victor is a Russian that could be thought of as a literary anglophile.
NKOSI IFE BANDELE: Mothballs
Whenever I enter the teacher’s lounge, the schoolmarm starts loud-mouthing about maintaining standards. She smells like mothballs.
Spying me, she blames the Blacks, non-native speakers, and once even the feminists, insisting she doesn’t care what we think.
She makes everything smell of mothballs, but we don’t say anything about that.
Nkosi Ife Bandele is a storyteller who has worked as journalist and has written for stage, TV, and film. His two novels, The Ape is Dead! and The Beast, are published by Crimson Cloak Publishing and can be purchased at crimsoncloakpublishing.com/nkosi-ifebandele.html. See more on his website: eshubandele.com.
VIJAI PANT: The Raksha Bandhan Pang
Another Raksha Bandhan. He had always wished for a kid sister, who would tie him a rakhi.
“Mom, why can’t I have a sis?” he queries.
The mother gives him a blank expression. She has just undergone her third abortion.
“Can’t afford daughters,” her husband, a rickshaw puller, would say.
Vijai Pant is a school teacher in India. In his free time he lets his creative juices flow in the form of stories and poems.
J BRADLEY: Closing the Loop
You failed your haunting final, so you are relegated to watching professionals do what you’re not licensed to do: lure the rest of your family to the shack in the woods, the one where you had your first kiss with your second girlfriend, the one where they found your body.
J. Bradley is a two-time winner of Wigleaf’s Top 50 (Very) Short Fictions. He’s the author of Neil & Other Stories (WhiskeyTit Books, 2018). He lives at jbradleywrites.com.
SUSAN GALE WICKES: A Sweeping Saga
It wasn’t often you’d see Tillie without her broom.
From sunup to sundown she’d sweep the sidewalks, the streets, the floors of the little shack she called home.
After dark, she was nowhere to be found.
But on quiet nights, you could hear laughter as she streaked across the sky.
Susan Gale Wickes is from Indiana. Her only mode of transportation is her trusty SUV.
JOHN H. DROMEY: ‘Tis the Season for Frights
All Hallows Eve. The most popular haunted house in town was as dark as the inside of an uncarved pumpkin. Not one of its clockwork creatures was stirring.
Why?
The property was under new management. The penny-pinching promoter took one look at his scary electric bill and pulled the plug.
John H. Dromey has a story “Cross Genre Traffic Does Not Stop” reprinted online in Unfit Magazine.
Editor: I should have re-titled this story “Who Turned Out the Frights?”
MARY GUNN: Paws For Thought
He needed a home. I let him move in. Bought a new bed. Fed him well. Tended to his every need. Let him sit by a real coal fire.
But every time I turned my back, he sneaked off to the woman down the road.
He was just another tom.
Mary Gunn writes short stories and poetry, including Japanese-style poems. She lives on the east coast of Ireland.
KHALILAH OKEKE: Sabbatical
My house is made of windows. I clench the rock in my hand and shove it in my pocket.
They slur words by the barbecue—the meat sings as it burns.
I jump on the trampoline and break through. My ankles begin swelling as I limp through empty beer cans.
Khalilah Okeke was raised in the Pacific Northwest and now resides in Sydney, Australia, with her husband and two children. Her work has been published in Down in the Dirt magazine, The Red Eft Review, and The Orissa Society of the Americas Journal. You can follow her blog at khalilahokeke.wordpress.com.