A worried face stared back at me as I analysed myself. The subtle pin stripe in my suit turned the corners of my mouth skyward. I looked great! This was my moment. I was finally being me.
A voice bellowed down the hallway. “Take it off, you’re wearing a dress!”
Kelsy (she/her) is an Aussie who is living in Wales, UK. She spends her day as a project manager, but enjoys writing short fictional pieces in her spare time.
Disembodied, he plans
becomes something
he is not now.
Embodied, he quiets
finds in his body
where the sadness lies.
The regret and shame too.
He rests with them
and does not run.
Embracing sudden embodiment
of all he was and is, his body
and mind remember. He is home.
Matthew listens to stories told by his old cat, Mephistopheles, who has lived a very storied life. He ran away once for eight months, but returned as a powerful, self-sufficient hunter. Matthew intuits bits and pieces of that adventure during their discussions, but the full story may never be known.
When the doctor guided Josue into the world, his grandmother’s face crinkled in glee. “We’re fifteen now!” she squealed. The next month another doctor studied her tissue. When the pulley lowered her out of the world, bent faces crumpled in pain. “We’re fourteen now,” someone whispered while Josue squirmed guiltily.
Elizabeth is a former high school instructor and has been published in HuffPost, Intrepid Times, Burningword Literary Magazine and 101 Words. See more at thewriteprofile.com
We conquer flat screen TVs, while the Nutcracker march blasts.
At first, we think of children’s smiles, unfurled and new.
Then we think of outdoing neighbors. Fists fly. Hands tug.
Bodies sprawl. People shriek. Feet trample shrieks.
Shame tries to wave at us, but he’s trampled too.
We push harder.
Yash Seyedbagheri is a graduate of Colorado State University’s MFA fiction program. His stories “Soon,” “How To Be A Good Episcopalian,” “Tales From A Communion Line,” and “Community Time” have been nominated for Pushcarts. Yash’s work has been published in SmokeLong Quarterly, The Journal of Compressed Creative Arts, Write City Magazine, and Ariel Chart, among others.
The story of the week for November 28 to December 2 is…
Chronometrophobia by Tim Boiteau
Beauty’s in the eye of the beholder. I should know. It’s why I kept a close eye on you.
If thine eye offends thee, pluck it out. We’ve done that too.
So now you’ll be all eyes on me. Literally. Do you see?
No, of course you don’t.
Not anymore.
Steven Holding wrote this story.
The claw of the hammer backed each nail out by its neck. The moaning, shrieking, the stuttering—a bright relief from frowning nails twisted loose and falling underfoot as the narrow-shouldered girl walked from beam, to joist, to stud—undoing every nail her great grandfather had driven. Perhaps now, peace.
Jonathan enjoys playing out of tune solos on his daughter’s ukulele while she demands he stop. He enjoys writing very short fiction and very long fiction.
“Malfunction time,” thought he.
Remembers that clock, tick, tock, tick—maddening and convoluted.
Buttons, switches, gears. Crammed altogether.
“Reverse,” says one.
Depresses it.
Click and—
—and click.
It depresses.
One says, “Reverse.”
Altogether crammed. Gears, switches, buttons.
Convoluted and maddening—tick, tock, tick, clock that remembers.
He thought, “Time malfunction.”
Tim Boiteau lives in Michigan. He is a Writers of the Future winner and author of the forthcoming horror novel Iltday.
Bills swell in drawers. Not-so-friendly emails hum.
Only take-out this Thanksgiving.
News blasts more death. Fracas.
But dusk falls, deep purple and pink, mingling with tender, bare branches and snow.
I step outside, plop into vast whiteness.
Coldness and color whisper welcome. I feel traces of dirt beneath.
Thank you.
Yash Seyedbagheri is a graduate of Colorado State University’s MFA fiction program. His stories “Soon,” “How To Be A Good Episcopalian,” “Tales From A Communion Line,” and “Community Time,” have been nominated for Pushcarts. Yash’s work has been published in SmokeLong Quarterly, The Journal of Compressed Creative Arts, Write City Magazine, and Ariel Chart, among others.
He turned around on the steel barrier, threw his arms wide, leaning back, face to the sky. Lightning flashed and he howled with the violence all about him. Seventeen years old and he was never afraid. Had he toppled into the ocean right then, she would have followed him gladly.
Peter Li-ping is a writer who lives close to the sea. He is less afraid now than when he was seventeen.