He banged the door behind him without replying. She melted.
After nineteen years, her husband didn’t need a reason to be annoyed.
Giving up, she commissioned a humanoid. Same looks, his smile–the way he once was.
Now she could let him go,
and still have him to her liking.
Mandira Pattnaik writes in India. Her work has appeared in The Times of India, Editor’s Pick Juggernaut Publishing, Microfiction Monday, Fiftywordstories, Paragraph Planet, FewerThan500 and (Mac) ro (mic).
Whenever two hummingbirds strive for dominance at a feeder, whenever they fight over a patch of blossoms, whenever one strafes my head because I’m too close to its food source, I am reminded that hummingbirds, like all birds, are the evolutionary descendants of dinosaurs.
A hummingbird has a T-Rex heart.
Robin writes in the odd corners of the day and night and often about birds. See more at thenightmail.com.
I met this intriguing woman on an internet dating site, fascinated by her profile line that said she was a welder on a deep-water offshore oil rig.
We’d been hard at it for three months and two days.
The Texas authorities dubbed her the “Ninety-nine-day killer.”
I was that close.
Ed N. White is a writer of Mysteries. A teller of Tales. A graduate of the University of Iowa with an M. A. from the University of Rhode Island. An unapologetic self-publisher of Thrillers and Middle-Grade mysteries. A New Englander trapped on the Suncoast of Florida hoping for a little snow.
A youngster came home from school with scraped knuckles and a torn shirt.
“Fighting again? I think your classmate Donnie is a bad influence on you. Have you been playing violent video games at his house?”
“No, I haven’t. Donnie won’t let me. First I have to win a fight.”
John H. Dromey’s short fiction has been published in Mystery Weekly Magazine and over one-hundred-fifty other venues.
The sign says “If you see something, say something.”
Today, on the subway in Boston, I saw a man wearing a black sombrero with a live parrot sitting quietly on his shoulder. No one paid the slightest attention to either one of them.
How I love living in the city.
Jeri Quinzio is the author of Dessert: A Tale of Happy Endings.
Three blocks away, someone asks how much for the Czech wolfdog.
Strangers have inquired before, but this is the first she stops to think it over. Four years pet-minding, and his owner refused to write her a reference.
“Ten bucks,” she says.
The chocolate brownie gelato is cool and sweet.
Graham Robert Scott’s stories have appeared or are forthcoming in Barrelhouse, Nature, Blink-Ink, and Pulp Literature. See more at hemicyon.wordpress.com.
The bottle was half-buried in the sand, its neck protruding at an angle, a cylinder of clouded and pitted sea glass.
The cork stopper had a thick wax overlay, showing its age.
The message inside was disturbing:
If you found this bottle, I know who you are. Be very afraid.
Ed N. White is a writer of Mysteries. A teller of Tales. A graduate of the University of Iowa with an M.A. from the University of Rhode Island, and a former faculty member there. A New Englander trapped on the Suncoast of Florida hoping for some snow.
He was quite sure they’d met before. Her smile, though noncommittal, seemed at least familiar, and somewhat welcoming.
It faded, though, as he approached her and sat down beside her on the subway.
He knew that he’d mistaken her as soon as she pressed the button on the Mace canister.
Ron. Lavalette has been widely published in both print and pixel forms. His first chapbook, Fallen Away, is now available from Finishing Line Press, and a reasonable sample of his work can be found at Eggs Over Tokyo.
In the event of:
1. Flood – Assemble food and first aid kit. Be ready to evacuate.
2. Fire – Leave immediately. Once out, call emergency services.
3. Earthquake – Stay indoors. Prepare for cracks to appear in foundations. Do not involve passers-by. Subsidence is inevitable.
4. Marriage – Follow procedure in step 3.
Jo Withers writes micros, flash, and poetry from her home in South Australia. Recent work has appeared in Molotov Cocktail, Ellipsis Zine, Flashback Fiction, Spelk, 24 Unread Messages, and Mythic Picnic.
“What’s wrong?”
“I don’t know. Everything was fine and then nothing, no calls, no messages. She’s ghosted me.”
“You must have done something to upset her.”
“Well, she didn’t like me driving fast.”
“That must be it.”
“Anyway, I’m going out.” Then he walked through the walls to the street.
Connell still writes a bit from time to time.