“Did you see?” Rose asked.
“Hush,” her mother said. Her sisters gave her the eye.
“That was daddy,” Rose said. He’d been out in the field, standing there. Watching.
Her mother hissed: “Rose, your daddy was buried today…”
But Rose seen him, watching. She said: “Did you hear them crows?”
Victor Kreuiter lives in the midwest.
“I see things.” Her words send a shiver down my spine. “Mama’s red hair. Papa’s scowl.”
“Liv…”
Memories flicker in her eyes. Endless nights of quilt-cover armour and tears.
“I’m afraid they’re back.”
I glance into the hallway, where our parents’ silhouettes hover. I can’t tell her they never left.
Anna Sanderson writes about the world as she sees it (with the odd twist and turn). You can follow her story on Twitter at @annasanderson86.
“Here’s the thing,” she said.
We all leaned in as she stood up, put her hands in her pockets, and examined us over the top of her glasses.
She pulled out a paper clip and tossed it onto the table, nodding as she watched it land. Then she walked away.
Leia Zvya does many things. She is better at some than she is at others, but she tries to find the joy in all of them. This is her first attempt at microfiction.
She’d kept her books in the fridge, Risa discovered when her mother died. Where most stored milk, her mother put Woolf. She found Stein in the salad draw.
Risa took them home and went one better, placing them side by side in her freezer.
The pages gradually turned to Frost.
Mariah is a writer and reviewer living in London. She writes short fiction and has a particular love for translated literature and strange tales.
Elbowing open the back door, he shouted his daily love letter to his wife: “Cuppa tea?”
A brazen wind from the garden stole his words away. He glanced around to mime instead, but found no audience.
The kettle whistled urgently.
He turned back inside, shrugging. “She’ll be in soon enough.”
Lucy lives in England and tries to write and read as much as life allows. Sometimes she wishes the wind would blow her away, too.
Every Friday the thirteenth, just at midnight, our world and the mirror world go out of sync. Mirror Me mouths silently to me, “I killed my husband.”
I am shocked, and can actually feel the blood drain from my face. “Me too,” I say, smiling back.
Ed Walker is a civil engineer and writer who lives in the Seattle area. His work has appeared extensively in concrete, but not often in print.
Jeremy didn’t realize they’d changed menus when he ordered his usual #5.
The bag sagged. The cashier handed him tongs and a chamois.
As Jeremy drove off, the bag moved in the passenger seat.
The screech jolted him.
Jeremy crushed his brakes. Walked home. Went to bed hungry.
But alive.
John Frain should be working on his debut novel. If you see him out and about, point him back to his office. Only then can you visit him at JohnDavisFrain.com.
I speak to the crow.
Every day, its tapping becomes more eloquent. The world outside is locked; I haven’t been anywhere in months: I take its word on what it’s like.
Tap, tap, against the windowpane.
Oh, an ocean. The crow saw seals diving, and a boy with a mandolin.
Andrin Albrecht was born in 1995 in Switzerland and holds a Master of Arts in English Literature from the University of Zurich. He spends his time writing, playing the guitar, and looking at the sky. His poetry and short fiction have appeared, among others, in “The Foundationalist”, “Down in the Dirt Magazine”, and “The CMU Literary Review”.
Outside a fierce wind blows as the temperature plummets inside the drafty old house. Grandma sits in her rocking chair as Emily lovingly wraps a shawl around her skeletal shoulders.
Sipping a cup of tea, Emily turns to her grandmother and says, “Tell me again, Grandma. How did you die?”
Peggy Gerber is a poet and short story writer from New Jersey. Her stories have appeared in many publications including Terror House Magazine, Daily Science Fiction, and many others.
The lovebot learned to love by watching her creator, studying his responses to his wife’s tearful pleas.
When the creator finally commanded the lovebot to adore him, she mirrored his demonstrations by cocking back her steel-boned fist. One strike was all it took to reveal the depths of her love.
Josef Lemoine is a Filipino-American writer living in Southern California with his wife, son, and daughter. In a past life, his work could be found in Word Riot, RipRap, The Legendary, and Boston Literary Magazine. His writing can still be found in Dogzplot, Bending Genres, and Medium. A poem of his will soon be published in **** Men Say to Me: A Poetry Anthology in Response to Toxic Masculinity from Moon Tide Press. Follow him at instagram.com/joseflemoine