SETH PILEVSKY: Immortal Moments

Submissions, Top Stories, Touching, , , ,

“Daddy loves you,” I say, placing my daughter in her crib with a fresh diaper.

I notice the crease in each elbow as she shakes her toy at me and laughs.

I linger.

If I don’t survive the surgery tomorrow, I pray that I can take this memory with me.

Seth Pilevsky lives in New York with his wife and five kids, trying to tuck away those precious moments for a rainy day. His work has been published in the Long Island Literary Journal, Literally Stories, Memoir Magazine, Stinkwave’s Magazine and in the YA anthology What Doesn’t Kill You. Sign up for blog updates at spilevsky.com.

ROB SPIELMAN: First Cause

Artistic, Submissions, , , ,

Tell me a story with a happy ending.

That genderless AI voice bounced through the sterile capsule, the low gravity seeming to slow the pronunciation.

“I can’t, Sam.”

Did God create the virus?

“No.”

Did I?

“Yes, Sam.”

Through the port window of the capsule, the lights on Earth faded.

Rob Spielman’s short stories and poetry have previously been published in The Blue Earth Review, Allergory, Pif Magazine, and other journals. He has an MFA from Concordia University and currently makes a living as a writing consultant while living in Minneapolis with his wife and two children.

CONNELL WAYNE REGNER: Modern Dating

Amusing, Submissions, , ,

“What’s wrong?”

“I don’t know. Everything was fine and then nothing, no calls, no messages. She’s ghosted me.”

“You must have done something to upset her.”

“Well, she didn’t like me driving fast.”

“That must be it.”

“Anyway, I’m going out.” Then he walked through the walls to the street.

Connell still writes a bit from time to time.

BEN TOOVEY: What a way to make a living

Amusing, Submissions, , , ,

Dolly squinted up, stolen from her busy holopad by the boisterous burst of blue-hued starlight. Her pupils adjusted. She caught her breath.

“Oh!”

Her Comet-class space train, cantering along the networked velocity gates, weaved a shimmering silver thread through the dense asteroid cloud.

“…I’ll need celery for soup,” she remembered.

Ben Toovey is a Brit living in Germany, and a keen procrastinator.

SUSAN GALE WICKES: Framed

Amusing, Submissions, , , , ,

Margo used to wonder about her friend Ellen’s strange requests.

“Would you mind picking up some industrial-sized trash bags?”

“Can I borrow your duct tape?”

“Wanna hold my new pistol?”

“Just take my phone.”

Now, sitting here in prison, it all made perfect sense.

Ellen wasn’t her friend after all.

Susan Gale Wickes is a writer from Indiana. She claims nobody was harmed in the writing of this story.

ROBIN ANDERSON: Power Down

Artistic, Submissions, , ,

Tonight I write by candlelight. A scheduled outage, they said. No light, no heat, no electronic hum, but in the shadows story pours from my pen. Stream of consciousness, words flow like water or wine or my own blood.

Now I know I should have contrived a blackout long ago.

Robin writes in the odd corners of the day and night and often about birds. See more at thenightmail.com.

LAURA BESLEY: Eat My Dust

Artistic, Submissions, , , ,

I arrive at school hot, sweaty. I want to run like Usain Bolt. He runs as fast as a car. My teacher says it’s not possible to keep up that speed for long, but she’s wrong. She has to be.

When I can, I’ll be gone. From he-who-hits and she-who-ignores.

Laura Besley writes short fiction in the precious moments that her children are asleep. Her fiction has appeared online, in print and in various anthologies. She tweets at @laurabesley.

LISA ALLETSON: Decay

Artistic, Submissions, Top Stories, , , , ,

The house began to eat itself. It had no other choice, having grown sluggish and depressed from the family secrets rotting inside its crevices.

Help would’ve come if anyone asked, but no one recognized its deep decay. It had been staged for sale, appearing in peak condition from the outside.

Lisa Alletson is an emerging writer whose work has been published in The Globe and Mail, Ginosko Literary Journal, and The Write Launch. She was born in South Africa and lives in Toronto, Canada. Follow her on Twitter at @LisaAlletson.

CF CARTER: Soft Shoulders

Artistic, Submissions, ,

She combs the soft shoulders of highways for lost garments fossilized in the sun-baked gravel.

By moonlight, she sews her scarecrow children and poses them on the slouching swing set in her yard. She tells herself it’s only kitsch, like bathtub Jesus, but catches herself watching from the kitchen window.

C.F. Carter is a Canadian publisher and writer. His microfiction has been published in Microfiction Monday Magazine and Postcard Shorts.