“Show, don’t tell,” you told me. “Use action to illustrate your point.”
Of course, you were right. I’d failed to get what I wanted to say across.
“I really do love you,” I said. Then I picked up my socks from the floor and put them in the wash basket.
David Rae wrote this story. See more at davidrae-stories.com.
Clare sits in her car, heater at full blast. She knows she should keep driving but the lights of the house, her home, have her mesmerized.
She looks longingly at her past. The deep snow makes it look as if nothing has changed, the SOLD sign buried beneath a drift.
Candace Kubinec posts her stories at storydribbles.wordpress.com and her poetry at rhymeswithbug.com.
The stars twinkle. I remember when you pointed at the one you wanted to go.
My tablet beeps. A message from “somewhere in Virgo,” you say. Sent fifteen years ago.
I wonder if I should I bother replying. It’ll take longer than fifteen years to…
Clutching the tablet, I type.
Joey doesn’t even have a tablet but he can be messaged at joeytoey.com.
“You are your Momma’s sweetest girl,” Janeen cooed as she changed her baby’s diaper and pulled a soft yellow onesie over the child’s shoulders.
“It’s time for your lunch, Momma,” Nancy said, helping Janeen to her feet and gently placing her gnarled hands on the walker.
“Don’t forget your babydoll.”
Traci Mullins has more than three decades of experience in coaching, editing, and collaborating on hundreds of non-fiction books. She is currently working on unearthing the girl who used to love stories.
We talked for hours, while making lists of people to call. Halfway to morning we went to bed. We were shattered. Before we fell asleep the wind picked up, gusting snow off the trees. As the branches lightened, they scratched against the windows, like something asking to be let in.
Author’s Note: For Sarah Kate 1980-2010
Bob Thurber is the author of “Paperboy: A Dysfunctional Novel” and two collections of stories. A celebrated master of Flash and Micro Fiction, his work has appeared in 60 anthologies, received dozens of awards, and been used in schools and colleges throughout the world. He resides in Massachusetts where, despite severe vision loss, he continues to write every day. Visit his website at BobThurber.net.
Spring in Paris was really happening. The penny-pinching and missed social outings were bearable because Paris was her dream.
Finally, shivering in her dress coat, Janet gazed upon a glowing Eiffel Tower. It was her shooting star: shutting her eyes tightly, she wished fervently for a life spent less alone.
Susan Schwenk wrote this story.
I named my dogs Verlaine and Rimbaud, both mutts who liked getting into other people’s garbage.
They weren’t well-mannered or well-kempt, but friendly in a panhandler sort of way, inseparable in their shakedowns. Yet those probing eyes… They were enough to turn even the most calloused soul into a poet.
Jim Doss lives with his wife and three children in Sykesville, Maryland, and earns his living as a software engineer. He has previously published two books of poems: Learning to Talk Again, and What Remains. In partnership with Werner Schmitt, he also published a book of German translations entitled The Last Gold of Expired Stars: The Complete Poems of Georg Trakl 1908 – 1914. In his spare time, he is an editor for the Loch Raven Review.
Fog surrounds our seaside home and fills my father’s mind. He doesn’t understand that I alone ward off the nursing home.
He tries to escape to his army camp. I follow his footprints to the water. A knot cramps my stomach.
Dropping to my knees, I think he’s calling me.
Ann Zimmerman lives with her wife and 2 cats in Colorado, where she writes, hikes, skis, golfs, enjoys photography and grandchildren. See more at annzimmermanblog.wordpress.com.
He had always dreamed of having a vegetable garden. A place where tomatoes, beans and corn could be kissed by the sun and caressed by the rains.
Meticulously, he weeded and watered, hoed and harvested, until the loudspeaker murdered his tellurian bliss: Inmate B18763… report to the Exercise Yard, immediately!
If killing plants was a crime, Melanie would have been incarcerated for the term of her natural life.
It’s a beautiful spring day, although perhaps a little too warm for the suit I picked out.
A bird sings from the branch of a nearby tree. I welcome the distraction.
She always loved birds, I think to myself, as I toss a handful of dirt onto the tiny coffin.
G. Allen Wilbanks is a member of the Horror Writers Association (HWA) and has published over 40 short stories in Deep Magic, Daily Science Fiction, The Talisman, and other venues. He has published two short story collections, and his first novel, When Darkness Comes, was released in October, 2017. For more information, visit gallenwilbanks.com.