We visited you today. I think she’s too young to understand. She asked me if you turned into a stone.
“Kind of,” I said.
“Why a gray stone?” she asked. “Why not blue or orange or purplegreen?”
I shrugged.
She thought you should have at least dressed up a little.
Sam van der Lugt is a writer and anthropologist based in Rotterdam, the Netherlands. He’s working on some short stories and a PhD thesis. Sometimes, he wonders what to do with all of this existence.
Bitter smoke clings to the rafters.
The corrugated shed is but a skeleton, creaking in the breeze.
Embers crackle hungrily in the paddocks, sending ashes dancing like butterflies in spring.
Beneath cracked soil, seeds awake.
Soon new life will sprout and the fire will linger only as a painful memory.
Collette Night is an Australian writer who crafts lyrical prose with bite, often circling themes of healing, memory, and the uncarved future. Her work seeks to take you elsewhere as you read—even if only for a moment. She has appeared in Starry Eyed Press and The Riot Collective, with forthcoming work in Trembling with Fear and Black Hare Press.
The story of the week for September 22 to 26 is…
Echoes by David Rae
and
The Last Apricot by Aisha Andrabi
Lucky I love the sound of my own voice. Echoing, Echoing, Echoing. Lucky I love the sound of my own voice. Echoing of bare walls. Echoing. Echoing. Echoing. Lucky I love the sound of my own voice. No one listening. Listening. Lucky I. Echoing. Echoing. Lucky me. Lucky
David loves the sound of his own voice, but also the voices of his wife, children and grandchildren.
I bite my lips: my father, bold, drank Jack in the yard, watered grass with his spit, bit heads off flowers he never planted, and loved those movies where the geezer’s still got a chance, but yet last week he still laughed—so that’s all I mutter: I don’t know.
The only thing that Mark Li (@markliterary) loves more than wandering museums is getting lost in one. However, he laments, the Mona Lisa doesn’t make very good conversation.
First day of school, jostling for position at the bus stop.
Rory’s acting cocky. Just back from Canada, he’s sporting a new puffa jacket. Superior filling, not the polyester of his peers.
The bus arrives and they swarm towards the open doors.
POP goes Rory’s jacket, and goose feathers fly.
Bryony Lorimer is a Scottish writer living in Edmonton, Alberta. Her work has appeared in Capital City Press Anthology (a project of the Edmonton Public Library) and is forthcoming in DarkWinter Literary Magazine.
Our favorite fall teas, elegant tin. I excitedly open this year’s edition, nostalgia steeping strongly.
Spiced orange warms when we’re chilly, sleepy herbal for cozy nights in. Mystery blend which always intrigues us, berry green with hearty meals.
Robust Irish black, his daily favorite. Even on his very last day.
Sara Kate Egan is a travel writer by trade, turned fiction crafter plus secret poet on the side, most often inspired by Mother Nature’s grand magic. She finds that observing how these four elements relate and intertwine is a fun fascination all in itself.
He hated living in her songs. Each lyric cut too deep, making his life a chorus for strangers.
She called it love.
And then, as if the weight finally reached her hands, the guitar slipped out of tune.
Complete silence.
Perhaps she finally understood love wasn’t meant to be performed.
Ran Walker is the author of over 40 books, the most recent of which is Fragments of the Afroverse, releasing on October 1st. He teaches creative writing at Hampton University and lives with his wife and daughter in Virginia.
To cast this spell
ink the wrinkled skin
of a virgin centenarian
making these markings
a ritualistic sigil
utilising quills
plucked from a specific fallen angel
whose once white feathers
are dyed eggshell blue
in psychedelic tribute
to a sky they once knew
and the time that they once flew.
Steven Holding lives in the United Kingdom. His story SMUDGE appears in the collection TREMBLING WITH FEAR MORE TALES FROM THE TREE VOLUME 5. You can follow his work at stevenholding.co.uk.
After bouts with vertigo, I step onto the ferry and pause; the floor shimmers with waves. Saints and witches walk on water, but I am dizzy on a boat. There is an anxious line of sightseers behind me, though. I take a desperate breath of air and begin to swim.
Colleen Addison completed a PhD in health information. She then promptly got sick herself. She now lives and heals on a small island, writing stories of various length about her life.