The story of the week for August 14 to 18 is…
Bluebottle by Wayne Garry Fife
INDIGO SAPPHIRE MOON: Moon and Stars
The traffic, the voices, all too much. I cover my ears and imagine myself somewhere else. There you were, holding the moon and stars in your hands, your eyes glazed wet. I wish you’d cradled me this way, offered me hope that we could know each other. I guess not.
Indigo is a freelance writer, artist, activist, and curator. She founded Creative Being, a platform where creativity amplifies positive change.
LARINA WARNOCK: Vigilance
When my car breaks down, my mother reminds me that bad things come in threes. “Be extra careful,” she says. She means, Fate’s watching you.
“How will being careful help?” I ask. I mean, If we can’t change our fate.
I buy a new canister of mace, just in case.
Larina Warnock works at a large school district in Southern Oregon helping young people prepare for work or college. She enjoys writing for 50-Word Stories while tossing a squeaky for her fetch-obsessed Boston terrier.
ALEXA DONLEY: Selkie
A breath.
A wave rolls in, pulls out, digs furrows beneath my heels that drag towards the sea. That’s the direction I go. Always, always, to the sea.
“Marie!” Mom calls. “You know better than to listen to the waves. Come on.”
My coat, shiny gray, drapes in her hand.
Alexa Donley is a speculative fiction writer from Federal Way, Washington. When not writing, she enjoys traveling and walking in storms.
TIM BOITEAU: Music from the Heart
The jilted woman carved open a cavity in her chest and reached inside, her fingers spidering along over the web of strings. Bemused, she plucked them.
Adagio.
Lamentoso.
The music filled the air, played at a pitch no one could hear, but resonating at the frequency of heartstrings everywhere—spreading misery.
Tim Boiteau is a Writers of the Future winner currently based in Michigan. Find him at @timboiteau.
PAUL LATHAM: Three short, three long, three short
Our coruscating beacon flashes like a yellow star among the dark, silent trees. The mystified humans in orbit will speed down to investigate their ancestral signal. We know more about them than they could imagine, having monitored their transmissions and archives.
What we can’t (yet) know is how they taste.
Paul Latham is a writer from Tennessee with a fondness for short fiction & poetry.
WAYNE GARRY FIFE: Bluebottle
If a bluebottle fly buzzes around your head, then settles onto your right hand, so you decide to call him Charlie, and he takes off again, flying straight into a windowpane, knocking himself out, and you accidentally step on him when getting up to investigate, has your pet just died?
Wayne Garry Fife is an anthropologist and writer who lives in St. John’s on the island of Newfoundland in Canada. He writes micro fiction, flash fiction, short stories, memoir, novels, and non-fiction. His latest book, published by Palgrave Macmillan, is entitled Imaginary Worlds (Invitation to an Argument).
STORY OF THE MONTH: July 2023
The Story of the Month is chosen from the Story of the Week winners announced from the past month.
The finalists for July were:
The Buddy Bench by Miranda Keskes
Shadow Dreams (Another Misadventure of the Broken Boys) by Bob Thurber
Let Me Mourn by Chidi Young
I watch the bones sink to the bottom by J.C. Pillard
The Healer by Beatrice Rao
I Wish You Hadn’t by Hannah Bub
The winner of the July 2023 Story of the Month, and the $10 prize, is…
I watch the bones sink to the bottom
CHRISTA PLANKO: Words of Wisdom
Growing up on Main Street, her life revolved around traffic. Avoiding the thick of it, not getting hit, moving in the right direction.
Her Mother said, “Look both ways before crossing.”
Her Father said, “Stand at the crossroads and look… Ask where the good way is and walk in it.”
Christa Planko, MA, is a professional writer with a passion for creative expression. She has had her poetry and short stories featured in several publications, including River Poets Journal, Tanka and Haiku Journal, Poetry Quarterly, and Every Day Fiction. Her story, “The Olde-Tyme Village,” won the 2021 WordCrafter Short Fiction Contest. Christa resides in South Jersey with her feline muses.
STEVE SAULSBURY: Learning to Dance for the 8th Grade Cotillion
That generation had skills. Dad could whittle, ink calligraphy. My uncle sang in Oklahoma.
I had a tarnished blade, lumbering larynx.
Refrigerator humming, Mom grasped at my skittish hands.
“Come on,” she said.
“I can’t.”
Until 10th grade, dark gym, my head buzzing, when the girl said, “You can so.”
Steve Saulsbury resides on Maryland’s Eastern Shore. His flash fiction has appeared in The Yard, Press 53, Loch Raven Review, South Florida Poetry Journal, and recently, Cosmorama. Steve works for the YMCA, also volunteering with Rock Steady Boxing for Parkinson’s.