LAURA DOBSON: Mummy, Daddy, and Samantha

Submissions, Top Stories, Touching, , , , ,

A riot of colour beams from clinical white sheets: pale as the bedding, swamped by rainbow pyjamas, and clutching a box of Crayola. Through intravenous tubes, she perseveres with her drawings.

You’re handed the latest. Three recognisable figures, the littlest a sort of butterfly hybrid.
​
Eventually, everything dims but this.

Laura is taking the first tentative steps towards sharing her work. This is her third 50-word story and she has a piece upcoming with The Phare Literary Magazine. She tweets at @laurarose_13.

VIV BURGESS: Rise and Fall

Amusing, Puns and Wordplay, Submissions, , ,

Sugar used her loaf, whipping up half-baked ideas that proved successful and eventually raising enough dough to buy a bakery. Seeing profits roll in by beating the competition was icing on the cake, but one smart cookie took the biscuit by undercutting her. Being creamed, her creation sank, crumbling away.

Viv Burgess is taking refuge in the absurd.

SARAH JACKSON: How Our Local Wine Bar Ended Up on the Ghost Tour

Adventure, Odd, Submissions, , ,

“It was so sudden. I’m still in shock, I think,” he said, resting his hand sadly on the girl’s knee. “Though to be honest we hadn’t been close for a long time.”

“I’m closer than you know,” I hissed, floating beside them, and reached across the table for the bottle.

Sarah Jackson writes gently unsettling stories. She lives in east London UK and has a green tricycle called Ivy. See more at sarahijackson.com/writing.

TIM BOITEAU: Beast of a Storm

Adventure, Submissions, , ,

“You think it’s safe now?” he whispered.

I nodded.

“I’ll take a look.”

He unlocked the storm-cellar door, climbed up to the yard.

Cold, dark summer skies.

As soon as I saw his back stiffen, I slammed the door shut. Locked it.

The snarls of something gigantic silenced his banging.

Tim Boiteau lives in Michigan, is the author of the dark fantasy novel The Drummer Girl and a Writers of the Future winner.

KEN GOSSE: Black Widowing

Amusing, Poetry, Submissions, , , ,

Widowed three times in ten years,
her insurance provider had fears
that she’d be a claimant
for yet one more payment
and meanwhile, though still shedding tears,
she married again
(how many more men?)
yet what she didn’t know
was that her latest beau
had lost his first five financiers.

Ken Gosse prefers writing short, rhyming, humorous poetry. First published in First Literary Review–East in November 2016, he is also in The Offbeat, Pure Slush, Parody, Home Planet News Online, and other publications. Raised in the Chicago suburbs, now retired, he and his wife have lived with their dogs and cats in Mesa, AZ, over twenty years.

EMMA FOSTER: Crossed Circuits

Amusing, Submissions, , , ,

The boy pressed the wires together. A faint spark jerked his science fair project to life.

“What have you done?” the computer’s voice sobbed, digits and code degenerating.

“I’m sorry, I don’t have an answer for that.”

Tuesday, the boy displayed his anguished miracle of life. He got an A.

Emma Foster is a recent college graduate and fiction writer. She lives in Florida.

CAROLYN R RUSSELL: August and All That

Artistic, Submissions, Top Stories, , ,

White-nosed and Ray-Banned, the summertime soldiers stalk across the beach, resplendent in their neon orange swim trunks and gleaming neck whistles. They eye each other, keeping track, keeping score. One of them is kind, but not so kind that he can be bullied. From him, I’ll learn to stay adrift.

Carolyn R. Russell is the author of “In the Fullness of Time,” a dystopian thriller published by Vine Leaves Press in 2020. Her humorous YA mystery, “Same As It Never Was,” was released in 2018 by Big Table. “The Films of Joel and Ethan Coen,” her volume of film criticism, was published by McFarland & Company in 2001. Her poetry, essays and short stories have been featured or are forthcoming in numerous publications, including The Boston Globe, 3rd Wednesday, Litro Magazine, Flash Fiction Magazine, Club Plum Literary Journal, The Ekphrastic Review, Orca: a Literary Journal, and Dime Show Review. Carolyn lives on and writes from Boston’s North Shore.

CHARLES GRAY: Man on the Moon

Amusing, Artistic, Submissions, , , ,

When I was a kid, Mom asked, “Can you see the man on the moon?” Peering through my telescope, I searched hard for the astronaut, but only saw big dark blotches. “That’s his eyes, nose, and mouth,” she explained. “See him?”

Fifty years later, I still can’t figure it out.

Charles is originally from New York and is now retired in Texas. He likes playing chess and writing flash.

SHARON MOLLOY: Presentation

Amusing, Submissions, , ,

To surprise the visitor, they bring out their special table, small and rarely used. With great care, they choose and position the treat on a dish gleaming like gold. This temptation should be irresistible. The kitchen falls silent.

From a hole in the wall creeps the mouse, its whiskers twitching.

Sharon lives in eastern Canada. Her work has appeared on 365tomorrows.com. Some day Sharon will look up from the book she is reading and say, “We were in quarantine?”