You and a friend have been stranded for over a decade.
You have searched for years, covering hundreds of miles, finding no signs of others.
You hear a loud roar and see a spacecraft approach.
Is it a rescue, or an unknown danger?
Markings on the craft read Earth One.
Denny E. Marshall had had art, poetry, and fiction published. One recent credit is fiction in Night To Dawn 35, April 2019. See more at dennymarshall.com.
Mark had waited sixty years for revenge.
Searching the retirement home, he found Ben snoozing, feeble. But Mark felt no sympathy for his old enemy.
“For what you did to me at that party,” Mark sneered.
He raised a magic marker, and marred Ben’s face with a moustache and glasses.
G.B. Burgess is a graphic designer. She is occasionally commissioned at parties to create moustaches and glasses.
Standing by the open doorway, she heard the floor creak behind her.
Too afraid to move, she tried pushing her eyes far enough to see the mirror in her peripherals.
A warm breath caressed her neck. Her pupils widened and her eyes filled with tears.
“Found you,” whispered no reflection.
James started writing at a young age as a means of escaping reality. Now his goal is to redefine the psychological and horror genres.
It all started as a joke, but thousands of us did end up camping in the desert. We couldn’t get any closer than five miles from Area 51 because of the military roadblocks, but a large tent city quickly emerged. When the alien ships arrived, the joke was on us.
Eddie D. Moore travels extensively for work, and he spends much of that time listening to audiobooks. The rest of the time is spent dreaming of stories to write, and he spends the weekends writing them. His stories have been published by Jouth Webzine, Kzine, Alien Dimensions, Theme of Absence, Devolution Z, and Fantasia Divinity Magazine. Find more on his blog.
Every night the master sleeps with his head resting in the groove of a guillotine,
the blade elevated, notched by a lever. Lanterns illuminate the narrow chamber.
All any disciple need do is enter and release the blade.
Each night the master dreams of the wisest, purest, most devoted assassin.
Bob Thurber is the author of “Paperboy: A Dysfunctional Novel” and two collections of stories. A celebrated master of Flash and Micro Fiction, his work has appeared in 60 anthologies, received dozens of awards, and been used in schools and colleges throughout the world. He resides in Massachusetts where, though legally blind, he continues to write every day. Visit his website at BobThurber.net.
Tomlinson raged to his feet, scattering the table and playing cards. “Cheater!” he hollered at O’Leary.
“Go home, Tomlinson, you’re drunk!”
As Tomlinson stumbled toward the barn door, his boot knocked over the lantern.
For three days, Chicago burned.
Tomlinson blamed it on O’Leary’s cow. Nobody alive could contradict him.
Jen Mierisch draws inspiration from science fiction, ghost stories, and the wacky idiosyncrasies of human nature. She lives, works, and writes just outside Chicago, Illinois.
Her heavy legs had stood and waited. Her aching arms had pushed through the crowds.
A salty tear rolled down onto her tattered jacket as she watched the doors of salvation thud closed. The city was full.
Now she had nothing left to do but head back into the sand.
After graduating university with a degree in Drama and Theater Arts, Jennifer Kennett somehow began writing speculative fiction. She has had work published in Mad Scientist Journal (fall 2016), Longshot Island (Spring 2017), The Weird Reader (Winter 2017) and Astounding Outpost (Winter 2017). Follow her on Twitter at @Jen_Kennett.
“The demons are coming,” the old woman said from the corner of her cell.
“When,” the sheriff asked.
“As soon as you kill me,” she replied.
“What if we don’t kill you?”
Cries from the townsfolk rose above the window.
“That’s not how this goes,” she said, her smile anticipatory.
C. P. Lopes is a Canadian writer whose brain is in a constant tug-of-war between fantasy and reality. She’s blessed with two amazing bright and talented children, a brilliant and supportive husband, and the most affectionate dog on the planet (#FightMe).
The man used to chastise the dog for drinking from scummy puddles beside the road.
That extra-hard leash-yank was what returned to him after the water was gone, when he and the dog both lapped at rare graces of liquid, the man’s knees muddied.
Eventually, the dog had to go.
Evan McMurry’s fiction has been published in more than one dozen journals, including Post Road, Euphony, Arcturus, Oddville Press, Lotus-Eater Magazine, Palaver, Mulberry Fork Review, and more. His story “Nothing Kinky” won the New Millennium Fiction Prize, and his story “Nixon in Heaven” won Exposition Review’s Flash Fiction contest. “The Fall of Rabbi Gold” was selected as a finalist for the Al-Simāk Award for Fiction from the Chicago Review of Books.
The gorgeous brunette needed a room. I was looking for something more. She wasn’t. A shame, that.
The window sign is coming down again. My new flatmate is a dazzling redhead.
Here’s hoping we both have better luck this time and she need never know what I am capable of.
Christine Nedahl is a retired teacher from the Rhondda Valley, South Wales, now living with her husband in Arboleas in the Almanzora Valley, Spain. She enjoys writing about anything and everything, but flash fiction and poetry are currently favourites. She has been published in a number of anthologies and is a member of Writers Abroad.