When I was young, my father would call out from the bottom of the stairs.
“Are you up there?”
He always wanted to know we were safe.
He’s gone now.
Sometimes, at night, I look up at the sky and say, “Dad, are you up there?”
I know he is.
Susan Gale Wickes is a writer from Indiana. She enjoys writing short stories, greeting card verses, and the joy of cartoon captioning.
The story of the week for June 24 to 28 is…
Her Solution (a true story) by Trevor
Twenty-four hours from New York, all five in the car plus Sam. A night in Virginia, then “South of the Border” billboards signing us through Spanish moss and fragrant orange groves until, finally, that golden light. Our fishing camp in Florida, now washed away with my childhood pirate birthday parties.
Alison has decades of experience developing compelling marketing content for more than 100 clients in the U.S., Europe, and the Middle East. Now, at age 60, she is applying her skills to a second career in creative writing. Born and raised in New York City, Alison is a voracious reader, enthusiastic hostess, and passionate cook.
She cheated clocks, embezzling endless days from ticking hands. Distilled radiant decades in sky-coloured glass, stored for restorative sipping.
Spent stolen seasons flitting through hospitals, slipping away seconds before unexpected recoveries. Doctors puzzled over all those miraculous revivals, discarded azure bottles – and the timeless sparkle in their onetime patients’ eyes.
Deborah writes at an old desk surrounded by five hundred pet bugs.
Twinkling stars, somersaulting in white pyjamas. Soft grass landings, innocent giggles. Treacherous pirates, circumventing the world. Cardboard ships, constellation navigation. Young hearts ablaze under starlit decrees.
Now we sip red wine in the cool air, two miniature stars dancing in our back garden. Time turns, and the romance begins anew.
Kayla Lang is a small town Malaysian displaced in London.
I am weightless. Untethered. The world and my memory of it fades away, and though time no longer exists, I know that I am waiting for someone.
Fractals of brilliant color burst, and she is there, running towards me.
I bury my face in her fur. Good girl, I whisper.
K. L. Mill is a voice actor, another profession that revolves around words. Most recently her work has been published by Black Hare Press, Hungry Shadow Press, and Atomic Carnival.
It was May and she knew her mother was dying. She’d die in August. She was nineteen and very impressionable. Every summer since then, she’d go storm hunting. She’d find love in the twisted reflections in the rain puddles. She knew that when it was over, she’d be whole again.
Kapka Nilan currently lives in England where she writes, takes pictures of out-of-place things, and looks after an old spirit animal.
Daily, the elderly woman strolls by, occasionally stooping down as she walks. One day, I befriend her, walking with her to the corner. “This is my solution,” she says, as she bends down to pick up the crumpled wrapper, adding it to the small trash bag in her other hand.
Trevor’s fiction and non-fiction have appeared in print and digital publications since the 1970s. He’s a mononymous, multiple award-winning, full-time entertainer who likes hyphens.
I tell child services I’m happy, loved.
“Say different and your nose will grow,” my guardians threaten.
I feared and believed it once; now it’s just fear.
The inspectors gone, truth returns: no real boy, I’m a puppet, cloned organs for some billionaire’s sick son.
Tomorrow, my strings get cut.
William Mitchell lives in East Sussex in the South of England. He is an award-winning author, having had early success with various Horror and Science Fiction publications before winning the Writers of the Future contest in 2012. His first novel, CREATIONS, came out in 2014 with John Hunt Publishing.
You can feel the walls closing in around you. Clear the drawers, grab your gun, pack one bag, leave under the cover of nightfall. Tell no one you are leaving. Come morning you will be halfway to Boston. Don’t write. Don’t give into nostalgia. Forget that life and start anew.
HNK is working on his debut novel, The Musings of Two Men. Check out his writing on prayaboutus.net