TIM BOITEAU: A Dendrologist’s Notes

Artistic, Odd, Submissions, , ,

Rhytidome porous, lacking typical woody odor.
Vascular cambium absent, xylem and phloem intermingling freely in byzantine beauty.
Phloem thin-walled, with aubergine coloring. Transported fluids carbon-dioxide rich, deficient in carbohydrates.
Xylem, conversely, a shocking, highly-oxygenated crimson.
The heartwood center is most singular of all: chambered, rubbery, precious to behold—and hold.

Tim Boiteau writes in Michigan. He is an Editor at Every Day Fiction, a Writer of the Future winner, and the author of two novels, with a third forthcoming. See more at timboiteau.wordpress.com.

DEB DiTOMASO: The Will

Artistic, Submissions, , , ,

He lumbered into O’Shea’s like a beaten horse. I tipped my glass. He declined. I thought of the irony, him girdling the trees as our dad lay dying to birdsong. I signed the waiver, allowing him to gut and rebuild what should be leveled and turned into a dog park.

Deb DiTomaso is a graduate of Sacred Heart University with a bachelor’s in science. She lives in Connecticut with her husband, a dog, and a bunch of chickens. Crafting stories is her passion. Her middle grade novel GRAM RIDDER placed as a finalist in CT Tassy Walden Awards for New Voices in Children’s Literature.

BILL COX: The Web of Life

Artistic, Odd, Submissions, , ,

Lionel woke up one day and realised he was made entirely of spiders.

“We’re all part of you,” the spiders said, “and you’re the sum total of us.”

Aghast, Lionel doused himself in bug spray. The spiders died and Lionel with them, for, without community, how can an individual survive?

Bill lives in Aberdeen, Scotland. Although the city has been his home for decades, his heart lies elsewhere – beating once a century, within a small, ornately carved wooden box, bound by dark magicks, guarded by an ancient order of warrior monks, in a hidden monastery deep within the Forbidden Forest that now covers the ruins of the Lost City of Lemuria. That place.

CEZAR LIMA: Epiphany

Artistic, Submissions, , , ,

I hadn’t known before that flowers could get fungus, but you made sure to teach me when you left that vase I gave you in the same corner for weeks. Back there, I was able to learn. Among spores, I realized that it wasn’t just the daisy that had died.

Cezar Lima is a Brazilian Electrical Engineering student at the University of São Paulo. He’s been into creating and developing ideas since he was young, always curious about how big the world can be.

BILLIE-LEIGH BURNS: Dead Batteries in the Smoke Detector at 3:15 AM

Artistic, Submissions, , ,

Crimson eye glowing on the square tiled ceiling, three left, four down – five east of the lampshade. Does it blink or wink? I wonder, while it paints the room maroon, making shadows crawl across the walls, illuminating your empty side of the bed.

At least one of us sleeps tonight.

Billie-Leigh Burns is a writer from Liverpool. Her work has been featured by 50 Word Stories, 101 Words, Funny Pearls, and The Mersey Review. She is also a bookkeeper, making her the only writer she knows who owns an ‘I Heart Spreadsheets’ mug.

JAMES WHITMAN: No Laughing Matter

Artistic, Submissions, , ,

“You laugh very easily,” Dot said.

And that’s how Tim met Dot. Before he could reply, she’d found the refreshments table.

Dot sat alone with her Rich Tea finger and tepid cuppa, watching Tim and Sandra laugh it up in the foyer.

You’ll learn, she thought, nibbling her dry biscuit.

James Whitman writes from Sunderland. He laughs easily, and his youngest son thinks it’s hilarious to buy him Rich Tea biscuits as presents.

ELIZABETH LEYLAND: In the 1950s

Artistic, Submissions, , ,

A streetlamp guides me, a blurred pool of light. My spine curves to the handlebars.

Yesterday my conceit ruled, and I left. Afterwards, I wrote to her: bungled, confused words about freedom.

I must reach her before the letter.

The lamppost’s swan-neck is thinned by fog, delicate as a nerve.

Elizabeth Leyland writes short and long fiction and lives in the UK. She has been published by 50-Word Stories, Paragraph Planet, Fairfield Scribes and CafeLit.

ERIKA NOEL JOHNSON: Redecorating

Artistic, Submissions, , , ,

He moved the couch.
Moved it again.

It felt right where it was before she bought the end table she didn’t take with her but the end table didn’t feel right anywhere else so he couldn’t move the couch back.

An inch to the left. Two inches forward.
Almost there.

Currently residing in the Rust Belt, Erika Noel Johnson enjoys tea, horror movies, and bad art. She’s figuring things out.

JOHN FOWLER: The Bridge of Deciding

Artistic, Submissions, , , ,

Greetings, gentle readers and fellow travelers.

By invitation or simple chance, today we are met on this bridge of deciding.

Behind us lies the immutable past.

The diverging way, with its many endings, stretches out before us.

But beware, there’s a troll lurking beneath our bridge, whose name is: choice!

John Fowler served twenty years in the US Air Force before retiring and starting a second career in the IT field. He is also a Lay Pastor serving a small church near his home in Texas. His hobbies include reading, golfing, writing, and now oil painting.