Waving good morning at a colleague, Shelly drops her bag on the table. Smiling, she opens her laptop and punches the flashing button on her desk phone, ready to begin. “Who knew one retirement would make such a difference around here?” she thinks. “I should have fired him years ago.”
Edith is an uprooted southerner living in the midwestern US, where people talk too quickly and rivers move too slowly, but otherwise it’s a nice place to live.
The gate swung easily. The elderly couple on the porch chatting quietly. He glanced around. A perfect lawn. No weeds anywhere. Roses blooming everywhere. The house looked immaculate. Who called social services? Quick check and I’ll be gone.
“Excuse me, can we talk?”
The couple turned. Glowing crimson eyes glared.
Bob is retired and busy caring for his 5 dogs. After retiring, he began bartending but has since switched to writing. It may not yet be as financially rewarding but there’s a lot to be said about sitting and writing with a good cocktail! Bob is a big sports fan that lives outside Philly. A website is coming.
There’s something oddly beautiful about a piece of crumpled up paper. The words lose their meaning and take on texture, melding with other fragments of folded sentences. The words, the one thing you thought still had meaning, are now denatured enzymes—useless. But didn’t you used to love beautiful destruction?
AnnaLise Sandrich lives in California, where she writes for the Redwood Bark. Her work has been published in Short Fiction Break and will soon appear in 101 Words.
The story of the week for October 19 to 23 is…
A feather and a boy by Anne Catherine Vassallo
Sam can be so stubborn… most recently, his refusal to wear a mask.
I begged him. He scoffed, said it was silly, too confining.
“It’s not all about you!” I snapped. “Think of our friends. It’s expected, after all.”
Grumbling, he finally relented.
He’ll make a great Yoda this Halloween.
Lisa Chambers is a Texas girl who loves writing (and reading) short stories.
Editor: But actually though: wear a mask!
He painted her better than real, caught her in magic hour light, at an angle implying dimension. Mindful of the power of the unknown, he draped her with shadows to keep her secrets in. When he offered her a glass of wine, she reached through the canvas to accept it.
Pippa Phillips is a recovering academic whose words have appeared in Failed Haiku, Paragraph Planet, the Drabble, Pink Plastic Houses, and forthcoming in The Tide Rises, The Tide Falls, Akitsu Quarterly, and the Asahi Shimbun. You can follow her at @IpsaHerself.
This morning, the winter rain hammers away external stains.
Yesterday, after the incident, my friends walked me home, and we built a pillow fort. They currently lay beside me, asleep and dreaming. I snuggle under the covers, warm in their company, and wait for the delivery of a new day.
Robin Bissett is a Teaching Artist and Writer from Central Texas. She enjoys absorbing and sharing stories and strengthening her surrounding literary communities.
Hamed Manouchehri was the middle child for 18 years. He became the last child after his older brother avenged their father’s honor.
Mathematics.
“Do the math, sir,” lawyer said. “You can forgive your daughter’s blood, but the boy’s family wants compensation or retribution.”
Hamed’s mother is lost in this equation.
Mohammad Hamed Manouchehri lives in a small town in Iran. He is a veterinarian and an award-winning photographer though his first love is reading and writing. Also, he is a two-time sharia law champion.
Barbecues were hardest.
“When are you two going to start a family?” they always asked.
“When the time is right,” she would reply, smiling.
“Don’t wait forever or it’ll be too late.”
She would nod politely, before returning home to an empty nursery and calendars red with a thousand crosses.
Miya Yamanouchi is a journalist in South Eastern Europe. Her poetry has been published in Poets and War and her fiction writing in Friday Flash Fiction.
We were disoriented when some blue objects miraculously turned green and various green items inexplicably turned blue. We weren’t able to differentiate blue from bleen and green from grue before that happened so what else are we misinterpreting? We can only wait in trepidation for the next shoe to drop.
Don Nigroni has a Bachelor’s Degree in Economics from Saint Joseph’s University and a Master’s Degree in Philosophy from Notre Dame and worked as an economist for the US Bureau of Labor Statistics.