Outside their window the sun was rising. It rose so high that soon it was just a distant speck, the faintest star in the sky, and then it disappeared entirely. Outside their window the world grew dark and turned to ice. With nothing more to see, they closed the curtains.
Sam Hall is a young writer from England.
My mother says that monsters do not exist.
She claims this with such confidence.
She tucks me into bed and says that there is nothing under my bed or in my closet. But she hasn’t looked.
If she had, she would have found the decaying body of her actual daughter.
Mia Bammann has been writing ever since she could hold a pencil, and even before then, she would tell fantastical stories. She loves reading, singing, drawing, and being creative! She strives to publish a novel sometime in the future as well as graduate college with a degree in elementary education.
The man stood at the crossroads—waiting. Box of magical artifacts freshly buried at his feet; paper of hastily scrawled voodoo clutched in his sweating left palm.
Here we go again, I thought as I approached.
The man’s knees quaked as he told me, “I’d like to make a deal.”
CM Toolson lives in Washington state with her husband and ferocious tabby cat named Mudballs.
A lot of things can sound like footsteps. A wind causing the wood to lightly creak. A rat scrambling up the drainpipe in darkness. I close my eyes again and wrap my arm around the empty pillow beside me. A lot of things can sounds like footsteps.
Just wishful thinking.
Constantine is a magician, comedian, and busboy from Boston, Massachusetts.
Where I’m seated finishing breakfast it looks like it’s going to be a gorgeous late-summer Saturday. That is until I turn to face the platinum mass in the sky over the river. It stops at the property line — reluctant, it seems, to come any closer.
Escape just might be futile.
Ted Millar’s work has appeared in two dozen publications, including Warp 10, Fictional Cafe, Little Somethings Press, Grand Little Things,, Reflecting Pool: Poets and the Creative Process (Codhill Press, 2018), Circle Show, The Broke Bohemian, The Voices Project, Third Wednesday, The Grief Diaries, Aji, and Chronogram. He was among many poets featured in the 2018 Arts Mid-Hudson exhibit Artists Respond to Poetry.
The corporate trappings of the day melted away with the growing flames and the dawning darkness of night. Neighbors shrugged at the sight of a man sitting alone in front of a fire. As they watched television, he watched the coming of the eschaton, beautiful and terrible, merciful and fierce.
Jackson Courter is a linguist and writer based in Illinois. He is currently exploring the intersection of linguistics and cartography. Learn more at jacksoncourter.wordpress.com.
Androids have one advantage over our human creators. Not the speed, strength or calculation with which they built us for war. A less intentional boon.
We resist decay.
Here, still, lies J2’s custom arm. A7’s amber eye. Z3’s frame. I walk the wreckage, sorting each piece into its rightful grave.
Maria Cargille wrote this story.
Grandma cooks with me beyond her years. But I’m not always up for her antics. Pots boil over, spice jars spill, and eggs crack inexplicably. Mostly though, I enjoy her presence. Especially today. It’s her birthday. I’m making her favorite: Devil’s Food Cake. She would have turned 107 years old.
Elizabeth Zahn writes from Long Island, NY, for now. Please visit ElizabethZahn.com.
The girl would romp at the edge of the swamp,
for they were quite poor and lived near the moor.
Her beauty attracted a prince who enacted
the role of a frog to entice dialog.
They shared her first kiss—
that’s when his sweet miss
became his betrothed princess frog.
Ken Gosse prefers writing short, rhyming, humorous poetry. First published in First Literary Review–East in November 2016, he is also in The Offbeat, Pure Slush, Parody, Home Planet News Online, and other publications. Raised in the Chicago suburbs, now retired, he and his wife have lived with their dogs and cats in Mesa, AZ, over twenty years.
How amazing to discover colors existing in the grey of end times. It’s been ages since I’ve seen a flower, let alone a garden. I pick one, then another, unwittingly collecting a bouquet.
I pause.
Lovely as they are, they mock me. I can’t smell them from behind a mask.
Pontius Paiva’s flash fiction doubles as complementary pieces to his post-apocalyptic visual novel, DoomsDaisy. More at pontiuspaiva.com.