Then there’s the parallel universe entirely identical to our own, with two exceptions.
Firstly, racism doesn’t exist. Race and heritage are not commented on at all; the world is one big melting pot.
The second exception: cannibalism is a normal way of life.
We all look the same when cooked.
George Hopkin puts words and spaces together and hopes like heck they entertain or inform. If they both entertain and inform, he thinks that’d be just fantastic, thank you very much.
Thirst consumed me, more desire, anticipation, than need.
“Last one,” I convinced myself, hastily ripping into the flesh. The red spatter on the wall? Unnoticed, darkening over time.
The odd sweetness finally danced along my tongue. Sated, I dropped the empty peel into the trash.
The season’s last blood orange.
Anastasia Pena loves crafts. And blood oranges. But not crafts using blood oranges. She creates the items that pop into her head and runs Anastasia’s Artifacts from South Texas. She also tries to put words on paper from time to time, somewhat successfully…
“Bring me his head!” yelled the Queen. So they packaged it up in paper and string and delivered it to her on a cracked white plate.
She unwrapped it with care, then asked for the body. At night she put him back together on her bed and watched him dream.
Mark Farley lives in Swindon, UK, dividing his time between web page development, opera singing, and occasionally using the Oxford comma. He blogs his random attempts at creative writing at mumbletoes.blogspot.co.uk.
My friend Lisa is scared of mirrors. She heard that mirrors were gateways to evil, alternate worlds. She feared her evil self would pull her through, take her place and no one would ever know.
I hoped she would.
Lisa hadn’t noticed when I took her friend’s place, after all.
Robyn Smith is a young writer currently working on a series of novels while attending Charlottetown Rural High School.
When I lifted the pin, the doll flinched. Her X eyes squinted as if she were in pain. I unceremoniously stabbed the red pin into her chest.
My heart shrivelled to a black thing in my chest.
Had the doll switched the cursed lock of hair for one of mine?
Jade Freeman is currently living in Boston and working on her MFA at
Emerson College. Her work has appeared in The Rain, Party, and Disaster Society.
Again I hear our neighbor arguing with her husband. Some days she is more quiet, on others she screams and often cries. As a new resident in the old apartment, I wait a few months before reporting it to the landlord. “The poor widow,” he responds, “really misses her husband.”
Debbi Antebi (@debbisland) exhales oxygen while writing stories. Follow her at debbiantebi.wordpress.com.
Every year, on the anniversary of the last time he looked into her eyes, he wore the same outfit: a threadbare tweed suit and the ugly necktie she’d always hated. But then, corpses rarely change clothes.
Neither do prisoners, it turned out, because she always wore orange for the occasion.
Michael is a part-time lawyer and a full-time dad. You can read more of his creative writing at timintemecula.wordpress.com.
“I don’t like this alternate universe, Lucy.”
“Why not, Jerry?
“I’m afraid I’ll be bored to death. The only web browsers here are spiders.”
“You want excitement? Did you look closely at the steam-powered train?”
“What about it?”
“Forget cows and buffalo; the locomotive is equipped with a dinosaur catcher!”
John H. Dromey recently had short fiction published in Saturday Night Reader and a novella in Weird Western Yarns Vol. 3.
“I was down low, deep in the scorched bowels of the Earth. The swirling of the thick, greyish, mephitic air slowed my progression towards the doomed book of Alhazred.
“As I wrote those lines, I swear I saw it exhale, although I might have been deceived then.
“Read… and tell.”
Arnaud Moussart teaches English in a French University. He cannot read long books anymore. He writes songs for a rock band, LadyH, and short articles dealing with science fiction and the real world.
Blood worked in refining the ritual: I stopped aging!
However, I repent these sins.
Now the only life I take is my own, ensuring the ceremony dies with me. One virtuous short life is worth a hundred long lives of evil.
Goodbye, world I have known longer than anyone else.
Fr. Kevin Pentalow is an Orthodox Catholic priest and a published writer and poet. He contributes many articles to local papers, international blogs, and magazines. Through his writing he won the NPR short fiction award of 2002, among other accolades. Reverend Pentalow is also a high-level Scottish rite freemason and has written extensively for masonic publications. He is also a well-respected icon painter, a musician, known for his diverse music projects.