She approaches me slowly.
Since our marriage ended, we meet once a year. I confess that I’m still in love with her, although I know she has already married to another man.
She’s next to me, and I can see her crying while she places a rose on my grave.
Sergio is a 32-year-old English student.
Janet heard her friend’s response and gasped.
“Hate is such a strong word, Linda! And he’s still missing! His poor wife must be frantic after finding all that blood!”
Linda giggled. “You misheard me,” she said, her eyes dancing. “I didn’t say I hate him. I said I ate him.”
George Hopkin puts words and spaces together and hopes they entertain or inform. If they both entertain and inform, he thinks that’d be just fantastic, thank you very much.
Once again faced with this arduous task.
Peering down, I stretch, reaching for these two serpentine vines. All hope rests in my result.
I grasp them, one in each hand, straining to remember which to cross and which to loop.
Angst, then failure, then success: finally my shoe is tied.
Ronald Chilcutt is a 44-year-old High School Special Education Math Teacher who lives in the greater Chicago area. He lives with the love of his life, their two kids and a dog. Ronald has always believed that there is a great American novel buried in him somewhere, but has not found the right shovel to dig it out.
All rights reserved. And I mean all.
No part of this text may be read,
browsed, skimmed or glanced upon
without express written consent from the author,
who, quite frankly, is a scamp and a scallywag,
a man willing to dedicate enormous energy
to flushing out careless lawbreakers like you.
Over the years Bob Thurber’s work has received a long list of awards and prizes. His most recent book is a collection of brief stories titled “Nothing But Trouble”. Visit BobThurber.net.
The house had been eerily quiet. She wanted to talk to someone other than her mind.
She found him seated in the rocking chair by the window. Sitting down on the floor beside him, she leaned her head gently against the chair.
The empty chair rocked slightly at her contact.
Divya is an IT nerd by day and a blogger by night. She’s also a coffee junkie and a Cancerian. She lives in India.
They fed the talking lawn gnome Burger King in the backseat, heads swirling. Half-hour later the radio announced an amber alert—missing two-year-old girl taken while playing in front yard. They stared at the odd being and wondered, isn’t it strange how she ate all those fries? Isn’t it strange?
Caitlin McGill is the 2014 winner of the Rafael Torch Nonfiction Literary Award, and her work has appeared or is forthcoming in 48, Crab Orchard Review, The Cypress Dome, Digital Americana, Prairie Margins, The Southeast Review, Solstice, Sphere International, and Spry Literary Journal. She is also a writing instructor at Emerson College, where her students continually remind her of the power of language.
I’ve lived over twelve thousand years.
Or I’ve never lived a day. It’s just a question of semantics.
The humans who built me called me a soulless monstrosity, but I’ve outlasted all of them.
Now, alone on an empty planet, I wait for…
…anything.
But still, I’m alive.
Or not.
Chris Fries is a still-developing writer, slowly working to hone his craft. He is an engineer by vocation, a guitarist by avocation, and a writer by compulsion. So far, his blog has been his primary outlet for his quasi-creative meanderings.
“Well, did you see the ghostly, grieving fireman hanging from the ceiling rose last night?” the old B&B landlady teased.
I smiled. “You had me going. I dreamt of two young girls in period nighties whispering ‘Forgive!'”
She paled, and pushed a framed sepia photograph across the table. “My sisters?”
Derry-born author Perry McDaid is internationally published. His poems, stories, reviews, and articles have appeared in diverse magazines, anthologies, and websites. A prize-winner with short stories, poetry, and articles, the Irishman’s work can be found both in hardcopy and online. Recent publications include fifty-word stories at entropy2, fiftywordstories.com, and Beeched in AlfieDog’s Romance anthology By My Side. He has a SF story accepted for publication with Stupefying Stories and his latest indie personal anthology of short stories is String o’ Misery.
I have discovered a rare species in the faraway land of Tallahassee, Florida.
Seventy-two hours ago we were strangers.
Now we lay in his bed, smiling and giggling and exchanging nonsense.
A breakthrough like never before.
But it’s just for now.
I will only ever see him again through binoculars.
Victoria currently resides in Ohio as a sophomore in college. She spends her days dreaming, watching Netflix, and complaining about how cold it is.
“Tell me,” she pleads for seemingly the umpteenth time.
“What?” I pretend not to know.
“Tell me!” Her voice begins to shake.
I could rebel. Tease. Start a fight. Suggest a doctor. Prescribe a Prozac. Instead, I acquiesce and recite the magic words: “Everything will be all right.”
“…Thank you.”
Frank Solomon retired from the University of Kentucky after 30 years of writing utilitarian stories for a cybernetic audience. Now he attempts to entertain an audience that lives and breathes.