Category Archives: Odd

MICHELLE WILSON: Active Imagination

Adventure, Odd, Submissions, , ,

I think my neighbor’s a psychopath with his vacant, roving eyes. Amazon keeps leaving his packages at my door: wood planks, duct tape, a chainsaw. And then: doghouse instructions.

I call him over, laughing. (I’ve always had an active imagination.)

As he steps inside, I see the leash.

“All alone?”

Michelle Wilson graduated from Bennington College with a degree in literature and creative writing. Her words have appeared or are forthcoming in 101 Words, Literally Stories, Flash Fiction Magazine, Lost Magazine, Mr. Beller’s Neighborhood, Healthcare in America, and The Miami Herald. She lives in Miami Beach, Florida.

BOJANA STOJCIC: A Moon Child

Artistic, Odd, Submissions, Touching, , ,

Mom, why am I not like other kids? / Because you are special. / Are you special? / I am if you think I am. / Mom, what are you made of?
I felt for a pulse — but couldn’t find one. Wanted to say dead volcanoes and lava flows, bit my tongue, said cheese.

Bojana Stojcic writes prose and poetry, and has her words published here and there. If she could fly right now, or ever, she’d most likely head for the moon.

HARRIS COVERLEY: Medical Marvel

Amusing, Odd, Submissions, , ,

“I’ve never seen ovarian cysts in a man’s neck before,” said the doctor, snapping his gloves off.

“Pardon me,” I said, “but I came here about the rash on my hand.”

I held up the offending appendage.

He stared at it for a while and eventually declared: “…That’s athlete’s foot.”

Harris Coverley has fiction published or forthcoming in The Scribe, Trembling With Fear, and The J.J. Outre Review. He is also a Rhysling-nominated poet, with forthcoming verse in Spectral Realms, Corvus Review, The Oddville Press, and many others.

JOCELYNE GREGORY: Jellyfish

Amusing, Odd, Submissions, , , ,

I found a jellyfish washed up on the beach yesterday. It looked like an alien; a strange creature in a strange land. I got a shovel and helped it back into the water. It floated there before waving a tentacle and swam away. How strange to see one on Mars.

Jocelyne Gregory is an MFA creative writing student at the University of British Columbia. She is a graduate of Simon Fraser University’s The Writer’s Studio. She also reviews children’s books and graphic novels. She lives on the Sunshine Coast of British Columbia, Canada.

BEC LEWIS: Wrong Room

Amusing, Odd, Submissions, Top Stories, ,

I was making notes when the doom opened. A strangler entered.

“Have a seaweed,” the leader said. “We’re all frenzied here.”

After listing to us, the strangler spoke. “Er…”

“Yesterday?”

“I wanted Fantasy Language Class. I’m Dave, by the way.”

“Hello Dave,” the Auto Correct Fan Club chorused in unicorn.

Bec Lewis lives in Kent, England, and likes short stories, micro-fiction, and chocolate. See more at beclewisfiction.com.

HANNAH WHITEOAK: Side Effects

Artistic, Odd, Submissions, , , ,

“Side effects,” says the oncologist. The priest says angels have many forms.

In my garden, the unicorn eats my red roses, dripping petals like blood. “Am I dying?” I ask. She snorts, then gallops away.

Next summer, the roses bloom white. My hair grows back curly. The unicorn doesn’t return.

Hannah Whiteoak writes speculative fiction to escape the real world. She is working on an animal-themed flash collection. Follow @HannahWhiteoak or visit hannahwhiteoak.me.

KATLINA SOMMERBERG: A Toast to Immortality

Adventure, Odd, Submissions, , , ,

The aging butler placed twin goblets down, then left with a bow.

Melissa took one with a shaking hand. Her brother’s apparition took the other; they tapped glasses.

She downed the cup in one gulp.

The ghost twisted into flesh, wine splattering his skin.

Her cup clanked to the floor.

Katlina Sommerberg lives in San Francisco, where the summer nights are colder than the winter days of her childhood. She is a cog in the machine for Big Tech, where she writes software and loves to hate her company’s perks. Her work has previously appeared or is forthcoming in AntipodeanSF, 365tomorrows, and 101 Words.

RAN WALKER: Infinity

Amusing, Odd, Submissions, , ,

Attempting to be funny, Sherman asked our eccentric math professor what “infinity” was.

The professor smiled and took a piece of chalk and drew a line around the room fifty times, before dragging it past the classroom door, down the long corridor, to his car.

We never saw him again.

Ran Walker is the author of the forthcoming 50-word story collection THE STRANGE MUSEUM. He credits this site with inspiring him to write so many stories.

JOHN YOUNG: Gregor

Artistic, Odd, Submissions, , ,

Faded yellow letters on a flaking blue sign beside the door of a long-abandoned building read: Mrs M. Martindale, music lessons, top floor.

Gregor, a beggar, frail, toothless, and alone, spends his nights huddled by the front step. Sometimes he plays his tin whistle. Sometimes a distant piano accompanies him.

John Young is an old chap living in St. Andrews, Scotland, a ancient town with an ancient university, home of golf and, allegedly, many ghosts.

JOHN YOUNG: Bob

Odd, Submissions, Touching, , , ,

Disdainful of the traffic, Bob, my golden retriever, bounded across the road towards me. This is very strange, I thought. Bob was killed by a truck two years ago.

As he cavorted and joyfully yelped beside me, I noticed that people had clustered around someone stretched out on the pavement.

John Young is an old chap, 73, a retired Criminal Justice social work manager in Scotland (CJS roughly equivalent to English / US Probation Service) and then University Hon Lecturer lecturing in Social Work ethics. He grapples with themes of limits, longings, and the images that these create.