I excitedly opened the envelope. At last, my senior citizen train pass was in my hands! I can ride for free anywhere in the city. All those years commuting and paying for that privilege are over. As a retiree, I ride for myself now.
But I have nowhere to go.
Bob is retired and writes when he is not busy with retirement. The past two years of semi-isolation have not been kind. Bob is looking forward to a better and more productive 2022.
I learned that a third of all birds are believed to have died off over the past fifty years—all except for Minnesota’s state bird, the mosquito. Apparently, they’re still very much alive and—sorry to say—prospering. As far as I’m concerned, those miserable bloodsuckers can go die, too.
Phillip Temples resides in Watertown, Massachusetts. He’s had five mystery-thriller novels, a novella, and two short story anthologies published in addition to over 160 short stories online. Phil is a member of New England Science Fiction Association, the Mystery Writers of America and the Bagel Bards. You can learn more about him at temples.com.
Reaching fifty can be quite traumatic.
Ancient Romans called it “Going to L”.
You must still bring home the bacon
which, for you, is now quite indigestible.
And, while watching pretty women pass by
continues to be very pleasant,
you’ve found, when they get closer,
you have to change lenses.
Gene Newman is a retired old guy (90 yrs) and former New Jersey journalist and columnist. Read more at GeneNewmanImagineThat.com.
After the labyrinth brought us full circle, Chuck proposed we apply cow-tipping to the upright-sleeping minotaur. Bovine, it’d be unable to rise. We could then navigate our way out at leisure.
But the minotaur climbed to its feet.
“That was,” it growled, “the wrong, wrong way to tip a dairy.”
Graham Robert Scott has yet to visit Tipperary. Or Crete.
“You could do surgery on my kitchen floor,” she said.
At dinner, I accidentally spilled my glass.
Mom got up and walked slowly around the table, spilling the other seven glasses—64 ounces of icy cold milk. It wet my jeans, ran down my legs, filled up my Sear’s Jeepers.
Jim is a versatile and experienced writer and editor of nonfiction and creative nonfiction works. He blogs about and has published articles about green home building and renovation, energy, the environment, and Climate Change. He has also published articles on science and spirituality, personal essays, and poetry. Jim lives in Walnut Creek, California, with his partner and their Labradoodle, who is out of work as a therapy dog for hospice patients due to COVID-19.
I cloned myself and kept him in my closet until I wanted to visit my girlfriend. I would go out, leaving him with my wife.
It worked perfectly for months.
Sneaking in last night, I found them in bed together.
She told me it was my turn in the closet.
Alan has worked as a successful screen and TV writer for over forty years. Recently retired, he began writing short genre fiction. So far he has been published in several online venues. New to the art of short fiction writing, he welcomes feedback. He may be reached at his Facebook page under his name or mosko13@aol.com.
He stared at her from his restaurant table. She blushed, sneakily glanced, and saw him write on a napkin. He left it on her table and walked away. Her heart almost escaped the chest. Was that a phone number?
The note read: You have a ketchup stain on your blouse.
Katya Duft is a public transit blogger (Tales From the Bus) and a recent Moth Story Slam winner; frequent participant of storytelling shows and contests. She is also a linguist who works in post-production.
Marty dropped dead at home, alone, on Monday morning. Tributes appeared continuously until Tuesday night, when Pat posted, “His goodness notwithstanding, I’ll mostly remember his pinging wit.”
Soon they attacked “notwithstanding,” followed by “pinging” (“rather ‘stinging'”? someone named Alex asked), then “wit” (“I’d say ‘sarcasm,'” Daniel declared), and, finally, “goodness.”
Paul Lamar lives with his husband, Mark, in Albany, NY, where he teaches workshops in memoir, fiction, and poetry.
She called to ask if it bothered me that she and my ex were dating.
Sounds bad until we note that he and I broke up over thirty years ago.
I said fine, please invite me to your wedding.
Doesn’t the Girl Code include somewhere, anywhere, a statute of limitations?
Mary Hickey writes fiction, poetry, and book reviews, and has occasionally committed journalism. She plays way too much online backgammon as mamabear.
“I know your secret.”
Shocked, I jerked away from the child who’d whispered in my ear.
Which secret? The possibilities—from innocuous to appalling—flipped through my brain at lightning speed. I feigned nonchalance.
“Really?”
He leaned in again. “You’re 61.”
“Oh, that.” I smiled weakly, relieved. “Don’t tell anyone.”
Laurie P. Mendoza is a 61-year-old elementary school counselor with a checkered past.