I’m picking at the callous on my hands while he talks. He says he’s been crying for the last few nights. He tells me he’s missed work. I dig deeper with my nails, peeling off thick layers of white crust, as if I’ll find helpful words underneath the hardened skin.
Joseph Lewis is a monkey at a typewriter who occasionally produces work coherent enough to be considered fiction. Currently he is making peanuts while he studies and works as an online English language and literature tutor.
We’re freezing in our slit trenches waiting
for the menacing Migs to fly back to North Korea.
Another sleepless night for the Comm. Squadron.
Later I will provide a comforting elixir, a fifth of something soothing,
secretly added to our 50-gallon medicated water bag
when TopKick McGlumphy is prowling elsewhere.
Gene Newman was a USAF cryptologist during the Korean War and is a retired engineer and journalist, including stringing for the N.Y. Times and being a crossword puzzle creator for the New York Times and USA Today.
Note from the author: I was a cryptographer at a Kunsan, Korea USAF base during the Korean War. My buddy Bob and I did improve the Lister bag’s contents with a 5th or two of Kentucky’s finest one dark night. Morale improved noticeably the next day, but we denied involvement!
Mother read that story with the crumbs and the kids. So when she sent me into the forest, she gave me some bread.
I’d have crumbled it if there were witches, or bartered with wolves. But because my monster was the one sending me out, I ate it up instead.
Chelsea Utecht is an American abroad in Tbilisi, Georgia where she teaches literature and writing. A recent participant in the renowned Iowa Writers’ Workshop, she has been previously published in Fifty-Word Stories and her work is forthcoming in Shooter Literary Magazine.
“Which one of you kids drank all the milk?” your mother screams.
Children scatter like flies from the dead echidna you found by the road. You hope she doesn’t look up. If this gumtree was tall enough to touch the sky, you could mount a passing cloud and fly away.
Fiona H Evans is a ballerina who dances on dictionaries. She lives in Perth, Western Australia, on Noongar Boodja with a dog, a cat and a few bantams.
The story of the week for November 20 to 24 is…
Anniversary by Cheryl Snell
My sister is in pieces under a stone flower vase. She has missed three years and is no older than she was before. Three years of blinking wrists, numbers on radios and ovens, and she is still the thing that’s absent. How brazen time is, proceeding this blithely without her.
Cheryl Snell’s books include poetry and fiction.
She thought that love was hidden in a shot glass, the shattered squares of disco balls or 3am cab rides. Purple and explosive, always that belly-churning, gut-wrenching need.
Turns out love is stepping out of parties, into the November air that kisses your bare skin, reminding you how to breathe.
Rachel Canwell wrote this story.
“Would you like to make a colorful turkey for our Thanksgiving decoration?” the mom asks.
“Yes!” her young daughter responds. She rushes to fetch paper and crayons and gets busy.
“It’s done!” She proudly holds up her drawing of a beautiful golden-brown turkey—with a fork embedded in its drumstick.
Cindy Harum’s publications include winning six Hallmark greeting card competitions, in which her cards were sold in stores and online, an honorable mention in a Writer’s Digest magazine contest, and an appearance in 50-Word Stories.
For the third time that night, the girl’s mother made a show of checking the room: the cupboard, the corners, beneath the bed. The light flicked off, and the door closed.
Her fears assuaged, the girl drifted slowly into the dark, and all the things waiting in her dreams smiled.
Callachan McNulty is a student and writer from Ontario. He loves speculative fiction of all kinds, as well as tea and rainy days.
I no longer care that you forget to put your coffee cup in the dishwasher or squeegee the shower.
What truly matters is hearing your soft breathing beside me and your hand next to mine, warm and constant in the night, when I wake with fears of what lies ahead.
Margie Nairn is a writer in Corvallis OR, struggling with surrendering gracefully to the challenges of aging.