Category Archives: Odd

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.

KENT OSWALD: Color Him Unimpressed

Amusing, Odd, Submissions, , ,

She farted the color yellow. She perspired the color blue. Her most angry thoughts created a greenish aura around her head, while both her lusty imaginings and lightning-like pangs of envy created an orange fog around her feet.

Her tinder date was color-blind. It might have worked.

It did not.

There are no answers at kentoswald.com about why it is evolutionarily preferable that males are more likely to be color blind, but there are additional words.

GRETCHEN IVERS: Hey

Artistic, Odd, Submissions, , ,

When I saw him the other day, I felt the strangest urge to strike up a conversation. Most peculiar, seeing as we’ve hardly been close. But the moment passed and I saw it wasn’t him, remembered it couldn’t be so.

A curiosity indeed that we’re always friendlier towards the dead.

Gretchen wants to make being out of place her comfort zone, so she’s going to keep on sharing her thoughts.

JERI QUINZIO: Subway Sightings

Amusing, Odd, Submissions, , , , ,

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.

TIM BOITEAU: The Diligent Son

Odd, Submissions, , ,

Started sewing today.
And again today.
And again today.

Mr. MacKelvie came knocking. Wondered is mom home.
Back to sewing.

I think today I really can’t continue.

Mr. MacKelvie came round again. The yard smells.

Today finished the ears.
Today finished the mouth.
Today got the eyes done. Shut permanent.

Tim Boiteau lives near Detroit with wife and son. He is a recent
winner of the Writers of the Future Contest. Follow him at @timboiteau.

AJ JOSEPH: Guardian

Artistic, Odd, Submissions, , ,

It protects me while I sleep.

From the eight-legged reptile under my bed.

From the violent poltergeist in my kitchen.

From the woman in white with midnight hair down to her feet, who waits among the banana trees in my garden.

It protects me, the strange being in my wardrobe.

AJ Joseph occasionally writes at Words from Sonobe.

EVAN McMURRY: After the Water

Adventure, Odd, Submissions, Top Stories, , , ,

The man used to chastise the dog for drinking from scummy puddles beside the road.

That extra-hard leash-yank was what returned to him after the water was gone, when he and the dog both lapped at rare graces of liquid, the man’s knees muddied.

Eventually, the dog had to go.

Evan McMurry’s fiction has been published in more than one dozen journals, including Post Road, Euphony, Arcturus, Oddville Press, Lotus-Eater Magazine, Palaver, Mulberry Fork Review, and more. His story “Nothing Kinky” won the New Millennium Fiction Prize, and his story “Nixon in Heaven” won Exposition Review’s Flash Fiction contest. “The Fall of Rabbi Gold” was selected as a finalist for the Al-Simāk Award for Fiction from the Chicago Review of Books.

CHAD BUNCH: Haunting

Artistic, Odd, Submissions, , ,

She won’t stop haunting me.

I can see her wavy hair. I can hear her sweet voice. I can smell her soap and fragrance. I can taste her red lips. I can still sense her as I walk over the ground where I buried her.

She won’t stop haunting me.

Chad Bunch writes speculative fiction from the suburbs of Saint Louis. He is currently trying to publish the first of many novels.

AVRA MARGARITI: What Happens in the Woods Behind Your Children’s School

Adventure, Odd, Submissions, , , ,

The students had dug a grave.

The children had sharpened their knives.

The cult had sacrificed a deer.

“Do you think bad luck will chase us?” someone asked Yanni, the leader.

“This isn’t Ancient Greek class.”

Something watched from the thicket, something of the woods, dark and ancient.

It smiled.

Avra Margariti is a Social Work undergrad from Greece. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Daily Science Fiction, The Forge Literary, The Journal of Compressed Creative Arts, and other venues. You can find her on Twitter at @avramargariti.

KARIN AURINO: Daisy

Adventure, Amusing, Odd, Submissions, , , ,

She loves me… She loves me not.

I visited her at the cemetery, laid daisies at the base of her headstone. Last time I saw her she was across a meadow wearing a sundress. She was within range.

No need to mind the restraining order now.

She loved me not.

Karin Aurino is currently working on poetry, short fiction, and a first novel, which draws on an early career as a fashion model. She got her start in the talent department at ICM and enjoyed a career as a Longform and Series Television Producer. Her fiction has appeared or is forthcoming in Literary Orphans, r.kv.r.y. quarterly, Agnes and True, and Bacopa Literary Review, and has received recognition from Glimmer Train. Aurino lives in Los Angeles with her husband, two children, and their dog, George. Follow her on Twitter and Instagram.