Standing on the sidewalk in a downpour, I struggled with the umbrella as the wind whipped it inside out.
A passing woman shouted, “Turn and face the wind. Face the wind!”
I did, and the straining ribs collapsed, hidden again under the black webbing.
Face the wind: pass it on.
Paul Lamar lives with his husband, Mark, in Albany, NY, where he teaches, reviews theater for a local paper, and conducts a chorus.
The story of the week for July 12 to 16 is…
Takiwatanga by Deirdre Smith
When he selects vanilla, you realise that you knew this about him. You pause, before ordering as you always do: a cup, two scoops, chocolate ice cream and lemon sorbet.
Clarity comes as the decadent sweetness is punctuated by a bitter acid tang.
You knew this about all of them.
Laura is taking the first tentative steps towards sharing her work. This is her second 50-word story.
Numbness spread through him as the years passed, undoing the wishes they made throwing pennies into Fontaine des Mers while strolling the Place de la Concorde. Now, a lifetime later and too old for dreams, he tossed pocket change in a jam jar next to their bed before falling asleep.
C. Jean Downer is a writer of creative words; these are just a few. She lives in Surrey, British Columbia. You can find her at cjeandowner.com and on Twitter at @cjeandowner.
She sits on the couch immersed in a book. Across the room, he watches TV from his recliner. Headphones on, to avoid disturbing her. A perfect picture of empty-nesters, apparently.
Kids, the bridge connecting the two islands, gone. An ocean tosses between them. Of silence. Words would raise a tsunami.
Preeti is notorious for shirking duties when engrossed in reading literary fiction, writing short stories and designing graphics. A former journalist, she now works as a marketing professional in Southern California. She digs her annual gig as a publicist for a film festival.
The room was so small, he couldn’t fathom how he had ever enjoyed living here. He had a feeling he was no longer welcome anyway, and now the landlord was practically begging him to leave. He was glad to oblige, until his tiny body met the frigid delivery room air.
Julianna is a tax attorney, but asks that you please not hold it against her. She is new to flash fiction and loves the challenge of the format.
One room, drowsy as honeysuckle, has The Best of Nancy Drew. The other has a tattered copy of Frankenstein. August presses against leaded glass. Behind each latched door a shush of turning pages. Where to go, how to disappear. Can a room survive without its walls? Neither tells the other.
Jackie Craven is the author of Secret Formulas & Techniques of the Masters (Brick Road Poetry Press, 2018) and a chapbook, Our Lives Became Unmanageable (Omnidawn, 2016), winner of the Omnidawn Fabulist Fiction Award. She has recent poems in AGNI, The Massachusetts Review, Ploughshares, and other journals. A longer version of this story appeared in Pleiades. See more at JackieCraven.com.
Are you listening, Father? The difference is dosage.
Milligrams, it’s medicine. Grams, it’s snake venom. If your memory were better, you’d remember how much you’ve had today.
No, I’m not going to tell you. That’s my little secret.
A pill lies before you. Is it your first or your twentieth?
Graham Robert Scott’s stories have appeared or are forthcoming in Hobart, Pulp Literature, Barrelhouse, X-R-A-Y, and others.
He pushes his darkly scarred fingers into his ears. He spends most of the day like this.
He walks through the world inside his head.
He listens intently, to what or to whom we long to know,
but the fly on the wall of his mind will be trapped forever.
Deirdre Smith has dabbled in writing for as long as she can remember. She has recently started back to work as a teacher and Guidance Counsellor after a decade of being a stay-at-home mom to her three young children. She resides in St. John’s, Newfoundland.
That you asked the same question already four times today.
That your weakened heart may stop beating at any moment.
That you go to sleep each evening expecting not to wake.
That I know about Jennifer from the office.
That I stopped loving you twelve years and three days ago.
Alison is intrigued by how much goes unsaid in relationships.