As I was peeling potatoes one got away and hit the floor. It disappeared.
Einstein says when one object strikes another there is an infinitesimally small chance the vibrations of each will cause them to pass right through each other.
I checked, but the potato wasn’t in the basement either.
Ginny Giraudi is a science writer living in Mississauga.
The sky was radiant blue and waves were lapping on the shore. The warmth of the sun touched his face. He could see boats and dolphins.
Beautiful. He was content.
The warden slid open the hatch and looked in on the prisoner. He looked happy; the meds had kicked in.
Steve Coverdale is an Englishman living in Nova Scotia. He keeps trying to write short stories with a happy ending but keeps on getting dragged back to the dark side.
The ninja kicks in a door, slays bad guys, kicks in a second, slays a few more.
Inside door three, it’s a room full of cats, a circus clown who smiles, honks a horn.
The ninja turns around slowly, removes his mask and says, “I gotta go back to school.”
Michael Marino hails from Santa Barbara, CA and received his MFA in Creative Writing – Fiction from Antioch University, Los Angeles. His short fiction has appeared in the Flint Hills Review and he has contributed as editor to Lunch Ticket, AULA’s literary journal.
I picked my son up.
As I drove home, I peered at him. He looked like my son but he smelled different, talked different, and his smile was so wrong.
As we sat at traffic lights, I received a text: Dad, where are you?
That was how the world ended.
Steve Coverdale is an Englishman living in Nova Scotia. He keeps trying to write short stories with a happy ending but keeps on getting dragged back to the dark side.
He squinted at first, but then shielded his eyes when the light proved too overpowering.
“Why me?” he bellowed in the direction of the source. “Surely there are better specimens for you to abduct.”
Move your hand, came the reply, unspoken and foreign, yet understood. We can’t see your face.
Eldar is currently wondering (1) what achievements are considered noteworthy enough to include in a bio, and (2) whether perhaps a blurb highlighting failures is more telling and useful. He figures that some governing body has already addressed and decided on this issue.
Inflation hit everybody hard, Santa included.
Carrot prices had skyrocketed, and hungry reindeer could hardly pull a sleigh.
Santa emptied his sack into the reindeer pen, ignoring the crunch of tooth on bone. Rudolph emerged, snout matted with fresh, red blood.
Freddy’s bad behaviour would never be a problem again.
Guy is twenty-four years old, and still afraid of being on Santa’s naughty list. This is his sixth 50-word story.
Marco found a magic pencil only he could use. Everything he wrote happened—to others. Broke and desperate, he started a nightclub act, scribbling audience members’ desires.
“A million dollars!”
“Diamonds!”
“Make me beautiful!”
Greedy people. They didn’t deserve any of it.
Gripping the pencil, Marco wrote, “The audience disappears.”
Joanne R. Fritz lives in West Chester, PA. Her short fiction and poetry have appeared in various magazines. She blogs at My Brain on Books.
As the present world came to an end, things did fall apart.
Masses of now-believers were loosed on the streets. Some wept, some prayed, some turned to the Beast… and some held up signs to the heavens pleading, “Take me!”
God yawned, and chose the ones with the biggest signs.
Alison is not as much of a cynic as this story would insinuate, but rather was influenced by a vivid dream, and the famous Yeats poem “The Second Coming.” She is currently busy working on her sign.
The moon had been eaten again.
People glanced through the bullet-proof glass of their homes in the stratosphere, realised the time of the month. None of them worried.
The creature would regurgitate it again soon, bit by bit, its surface shining with saliva.
Perhaps one day it would admit defeat.
William Shaw is a student, blogger, and amateur journalist. He is slightly obsessed with the moon. You can find him on Tumblr, where he writes haiku poetry about Doctor Who.
By 10:00 Max knew she wouldn’t show. He finished another drink, recognizing a tinge of curiosity, something normally fed with an internet search.
But he was out.
Max paid the bill, then left. It was twelve blocks to her apartment, but he had already crossed countless streets of innocent speculation.
Matthew Gregory is a writer and filmmaker surviving in South Florida. Some of his work can be found at geronimatt.tumblr.com.