You’ve been gone so long.
And now you’re back!
I missed you!
But you smell different,
And you look happy
Where did you go without me?
What is this?
I can’t believe you ran your hands through someone else’s fur.
My heart is broken.
You smell of next door’s cat!
Francesca Morrison is a born and bred Londoner now living in Vancouver. She recently came runner up in a Flash Fiction contest and was longlisted for the CANSCAIP 2022 Writing for Children Competition.
The orbiter streaked the pastel skies of Alpha Centauri. Two humans stepped out to view their conquest, carrying with them a flag. But another flag was already there. A tyrannosaurus rex appeared emblazoned on it in red. The humans despaired.
“How’d they plant it with such short arms?” she fumed.
Matt Strutz (He/him/his) is a fiction author living in Norristown, Pennsylvania. Born in Downers Grove, Illinois, he moved out East to live with his life partner. They met online through a shared love of writing and live together with their three cats. Matt is interested in exploring the wide range of human emotion and experience through storytelling. When he’s not writing he can be found running, climbing, woodworking, painting, or hiking.
A glistening perspiration drop sparkled in the sunshine next to her left eyebrow. Work friends, we jogged together once a week. Sitting on a bench after a long run, she spoke passionately about something.
“Are you listening to me? What are you doing?”
“Falling in love with you.”
“About time!”
Dart Humeston is a Floridian who dodged hurricanes and alligators while working as a university administrator and faculty. He writes short stories and novels.
When the writer took his wife on a hike up the mountain trail, little did he know that his difficulty with words would cause her death. As they navigated the ravine they startled a massive rattlesnake, which struck out.
The writer, terrified, tried every snakebite anecdote he could think of.
Robert Carlberg struggles with words sometimes. The ones he’s looking for can stay frustratingly just out of reach, while unbidden nonsense frosts his pirate topiary.
That winter, he found endless ways to make her blush—mostly by telling dirty jokes or secret desires, late in the evening when the wind beat the windows and rattled their bones. Then he’d warm his hands against her burning cheeks. In this way, they made it through the nights.
Sam Hall is a young writer from England. When he’s not writing, Sam likes to worry about not writing.
“Magenta roses!” she exclaims as I step off the bus. “My favorite!”
“Ma’am, have we met?” I ask.
“No,” she says. “But it was fun to pretend to be the lucky lady.”
That evening, my mother reaches for her second best vase, then remarks, “Your brother got me opera tickets.”
Joanna Norland is a writing coach, playwright, mother of two and mom blogger at mumswrite.com. With just enough spare time on her hands to scribble fifty fictional words a month and read two fifty word stories a day.
Mess Sergeant Kelly, a nice old guy,
always asked us as we left the mess hall,
“What did you think of today’s chow, boys?”
We always gave the same charitable reply
just to make him smile.
Kelly was a little deaf
and couldn’t tell the difference
between “Swell” and “Swill”.
Gene Newman was a USAF cryptologist during the Korean War and is a retired engineer and journalist, including stringing for the N.Y. Times and being a crossword puzzle creator for the New York Times and USA Today.
Alone on the empty dock, she removes her wedding band and fights the urge to hurl it into the sea. Bubbles rise and burst beneath her.
Just another fish.
Still, she peers further into the inky blackness and frowns at a floating handkerchief. She hopes she has used enough rocks.
Patrick Eades is a writer from Sydney, Australia. He is working on his debut novel. You can find more of his work at Patrick Eades – Medium.
A month before I married his daughter, my father-in-law told me about a summer job he worked in his late teens.
It was for a logging company near Sudbury, but he wasn’t a logger.
He walked down new trails ahead of the loggers, spade in hand, killing all the rattlesnakes.
Peter Wilson is a freelance writer living in Toronto.
Losing marbles—a common event.
When others lose theirs, few lament,
but when we lose our own, though very few,
we never notice, but others do.
Of those remaining, not yet redacted,
some roll away while we’re distracted.
Memories are rarely carved in stone—
including favorites we call our own.
Ken Gosse usually writes whimsical, rhymed verse. First published in First Literary Review–East in November 2016, later in Pure Slush, Home Planet News, Lothlorien Poetry Journal, Spillwords, and many others. Raised in Chicago suburbs, now retired, he and his wife live in Mesa, AZ, with rescue dogs and cats.