Breakfast out. No kids, no Margie. Juice, toast, eggs, bacon popping on the griddle.
Phone rings. My buddy, Jack: “Doc says bad ticker, Charlie. Six months, maybe less.”
“That’s horrible. We need to talk. I’ll call you back in one hour.”
“Margie, let me take the kids to school today.”
Tony Covatta wrote this story.
Her mother’s squawking police scanner on the kitchen counter, 24/7. Her sister Connie’s stereo blasting The Doors. The shouting.
The clack-clack-clacking printing presses for 32 years, the baby cries, the shouting, the haranguing phone calls, the subway trains all night along the El.
Now the monitor’s constant beep beep beep…
Paul Lamar has a poem forthcoming in San Pedro River Review and an essay in riddlebird magazine.
Seeded in the gloaming darkness beneath a Nepalese mountain lies an age-old woman. She is a colossus who cannot move. The weight of rock bears down on every piece of her. Sometimes she calls for help, but the little people in Nepal hear only a rumbling mountain and grow frightened.
Santosh Kalwar is author of several books. For more info, please visit http://kalwar.com.np.
Glancing over her room, Itsumi wondered if it was too late. Her entire life, fifty-three years, fit into sixteen midsized cardboard boxes. She didn’t believe her life would have been better with more boxes; she merely noticed that no one was there to help carry them to the donation center.
Toshihisa Nikaido worked on popular video game series such as Resident Evil, Pokémon, and The Legend of Zelda. Toshihisa more recently joined Japan’s space exploration agency for a completely new challenge while using various forms of writing as a creative outlet and has since been published in several literary journals.
You wait for them to smile, as you wait for sleep through the night.
You wait for first words, as you wait for them to walk.
You wait for preschool, college, graduation, job.
All that waiting takes its toll.
Until you look about one morning and realise that they’ve gone.
Henry is a poet from Somerset in the UK. His work has appeared previously in 50WS.
For decades only one ring adorned her fingers, a symbol of their commitment.
At some point she decided to wear an additional ring on the opposite hand, a simple band.
Then, another, gaudier…
Nowadays he scans her hands as if trying to pick out a familiar face from a crowd.
Dave Myers (he/him) lives and teaches in Bend, Oregon.
She’d been able to fly for quite some time now. She no longer needed to run before take off and didn’t require props like capes either. Still, she kept this secret to herself. Her boyfriend was already insecure that she made more money than he. This certainly wouldn’t help matters.
Ran Walker is the author of 26 books, the most recent of which is BLACK MARKER: A Novel in 100-Word Stories. He teaches at Hampton University in Virginia.
we stay up
discussing wendy darling
’til our mouths go soft;
outside, the moon presses
against the windowpane
like a rib, mid-exhale.
“was adulthood
ever a choice?”
we dot a spine of stars
from our overhang
to the clouds–
the second star hangs
to the right, blinking
like a satellite.
Emma Sloan is a Canadian poet, flash fiction writer, and journalist. Her works have been featured in publications such as The Huffington Post and The Good Men Project. Head to weewriter.ca for writing updates and news.
The stories of the week for August 1 to 5 were…
The Enormity of Small Things by Jennifer L. Freed
and
Baggage by Amy Turner
Searchlights slash through the darkness creating shards of black. Somewhere unseen it approaches, that familiar sputtering sound in the sky.
Then the quiet, that horrid time of waiting. Time stands still as death approaches.
An explosion is seen in the distance.
You cheated death. This time.
Wayne is a retired videogame developer of 35 years. He’s written the gameplay and screenplays for many popular games as well as programmed them. His first big title was “Duke Nukem” in the early 1990s. Since retiring, he writes fictional short stories, has finished one book, and is currently writing another.