“I’m pregnant,” she said.
Her expression showed doubt over his reaction, but also hope.
He smiled, pulled her close, three heartbeats sharing that intimate space.
He remembered his superior’s words: “These are dangerous radicals. Maintain your cover at all costs.”
He understood then that he would never know his child.
Bill lives in Aberdeen, Scotland. See more of his work at northeastnotesblog.wordpress.com
The story of the week for June 3 to 7 is…
At the Bottom of the Lake by Everhart Deckard
and
Panhandler by Alan Kemister
She rests a heavy rock on her stomach and sinks into the sand.
Through the shimmery layer between lake and sky, the blue expanse above looks beautiful enough to plant a seed of doubt.
Her lungs spark and burn.
She shoves the weight off, slowly floating up to the clouds.
Lauren is an aspiring author studying Creative Writing at Emerson College.
There is no cost. The supply is endless and always at our disposal. No boundaries, no rules. They are, however, a double-edged sword. They create us just as we create others.
If they could speak on their own, they would not always approve of our careless abuse of their power.
Charlotte McElroy is an 80-year-old retired teacher. She is finally following her dream: writing!
“Don’t you think it’s time you finish this project up?”
“I’ll get to it, don’t worry.”
“Well the smell is taking hold of the whole house. I’d do it myself, but I worry a piece will come off if I try to move it.”
“It’s just a dead body, Ma.”
Born in Germany, Kerri was raised on the Eastern plains of Colorado. She currently lives in Utah. Although new to short story writing, she has been writing for many years. She mentored her daughter’s writing groups in both middle school and high school years.
Raymond shifted uncomfortably in his armchair as Suzanne raged at him.
“I don’t know why I bother here. I asked you to do one thing, and you forgot. You’re pathetic!”
She left the room, slamming the door.
Raymond shifted uncomfortably in his armchair and switched his hearing aid back on.
David McTigue lives in Liverpool UK, and enjoys reading, crosswords, music, concert going, cooking, and of course writing. Several of his short stories, poems, and crosswords have been published in various magazines and anthologies.
With my back to the steel slabs, I resisted the urge to count the bullets left in my gun. Judging from the force of the blows on the barricaded door, it wasn’t anywhere near enough.
I resigned myself: A morgue was as appropriate of a place to die as any.
A graduate of the Master of Professional Writing program at the University of Southern California, Chad Greene experiments with Twitter fiction at @TheShortCourse.
A writer daydreams of outlandish worlds, in which man can fly: in which space is no longer off-limits.
Then, having signed another imaginative story, he slowly gets to his feet, snuffs out his candle, and lays down his quill, while the sound of a horse-drawn carriage fades into the distance.
Maico Morellini was born in 1977. In 2010 he won the Urania Award with the sci-fi novel “Il re nero”, published in 2011 by Mondadori. In 2014, for Delos Digital, he penned the sci-fi series “I Necronauti”. In May 2016 he published his second sci-fi novel, “La terza memoria”, out from Mondadori. In December 2016, his sci-fi anthology “Voci della Polis” was published by Vincent Book Editore. His novel Il diario dell’estinzione (Watson Edizioni, November 2018) won this year’s prestigious Premio Italia for best Fantasy novel. His Sci-Fi, Horror, and Weird short stories have featured in numerous anthologies.
This story was translated from Italian by Sarah Jane Webb.
The scruffy young panhandler sat on the busy sidewalk suckling a fractious infant. When I dropped a coin in her pot, the baby reached for my fingers. Distracted by the tiny hand and abandoned breast, I lingered for a moment too long.
“Alan?” she said as I tried to leave.
Alan Kemister is a retired scientist experimenting with more fictitious writing. See the gory details at alankemisterauthor.wordpress.com.
“How’d you find your runaway goat?”
“We simply followed his spoor.”
“How’d you know it was his?”
“Before he left, Billy ate a magazine with one of your stories in it.”
“How’d that help?”
“Billy found some of your prose was indigestible. You could say he left a toilet-paper trail.”
John H. Dromey has some hundred-word stories (four new, one reprint) in WORLDS: A Science Fiction Microfiction Anthology (Dark Drabbles Book 1) (Black Hare Press, 2019).