The story of the week for August 12 to 16 is…
Breathing Space by Dini Armstrong
JO WITHERS: Friends Have Stopped Asking If I Can Go Out
Wake kids,
Make breakfast,
Dress kids,
Walk to school,
Home from school,
Help with homework,
Make the dinner,
Run their baths,
Bedtime story,
Goodnight kisses,
Collect laundry,
Clean clothes,
Tidy kitchen,
Wash dishes,
Polish table,
Mop the floor,
Wake up Mother,
Bring her bottle,
Avoid eye contact,
Make no sound.
Jo Withers is author of the middle-grade science-fiction adventure 5 Simple Steps to Saving Planet Earth. Her recent shorter fiction can be found in Spelk, Molotov Cocktail, Ellipsis Zine and Flashback Fiction.
PERRY McDAID: Patricia’s Shell
The face was there, but the rosy cheeks and twinkling eyes were absent, absconded along with ready smile and gleeful giggles, lost in memories.
She wore civvies, not the nun’s habit she had hiked up a little to play football with us as children.
The coffin also took her voice.
Perry McDaid is a writer of prose and poetry who has developed a taste for pastels. They’re a tad chalky but provide roughage.
KRISTYN MASS: Sleep Tight
He wraps the pillow around is head, diving deep beneath the covers.
The yelling always keeps him awake. Mother checks he is asleep.
His door closes softly, then a loud pop comes from downstairs.
Mother checks on him again. The yelling has finally stopped.
He drifts off to sleep.
Kristyn Mass lives in Iowa with her husband and three cats. She is a professional voice actor and aspiring writer.
EVAN McMURRY: Overturned
“Overturned!” cried the judges. “You’re free!”
Our first tram ride home in years echoed with their warning that we remember this mercy should we ever catapult into power.
We didn’t. After the coup, we scorched our enemies out of dirt and mind.
Of course, the judges had to go, too.
Evan McMurry’s fiction has been published in more than one dozen journals, including Post Road, Euphony, Arcturus, Oddville Press, Lotus-Eater Magazine, Palaver, Mulberry Fork Review and more. His story “Nothing Kinky” won the New Millennium Fiction Prize, and his story “Nixon in Heaven” won Exposition Review’s Flash Fiction contest. “The Fall of Rabbi Gold” was selected as a finalist for the Al-Simāk Award for Fiction from the Chicago Review of Books.
BILL DIAMOND: Modern Wedding Vows
Stacy and Jake were in a loving relationship. They were committed and decided to marry.
They were also aware of today’s realities. Thus, Jake was not surprised when Stacy suggested they change one word in the traditional wedding vows:
“Do you take Jake… so long as you both shall love?”
Bill Diamond lives in the Rocky Mountains and writes to try and figure it all out.
JULIET WILSON: Friend / Unfriend
We used to talk for hours about films and art, but now you just deliver monologues about your boring job, your arthritic toe, and the awful weather.
I’m shocked by how quickly you changed closeness into carefully manipulated distance.
Now you’ve unfriended me. I only wish I’d got there first.
Juliet is an adult education tutor, crafter, and conservation volunteer based in Edinburgh, UK. She blogs at craftygreenpoet.blogspot.com and tweets at @craftygreenpoet.
CHIP HOUSER: Thing is, I’ve Changed
As the clock struck midnight, ushering in my fiftieth birthday, the friends I’d been playing D&D with since middle school learned I was no longer the same person.
To be fair, one of them wasn’t surprised. I absorbed him first, while the others thought we were still playing a game.
DINI ARMSTRONG: Breathing Space
My greasy hair is flowing upwards, blonde flames licking the stale air of the ISS. Exercise twice a day, followed by sponge baths only.
“I know, sweet pea, I know,” I whisper into the microphone. Her newborn cries inconsolably.
Twice a day I am only 220 miles away from her.
Dini Armstrong, now Scottish, has worked in journalism and psychology. She is currently completing an MA in Creative Writing. Her controversial style got her into trouble from age six, when, after writing a particularly enraging piece about a cat blowing up three boys, she had to promise to her stepdad never to write again. She lied.
GRAHAM ROBERT SCOTT: Nonverbal Communication
You’re the responsible one, his will said. I leave these to you.
She opens the albums. Carefully labeled photos; dates, names, genealogical charts, news clippings.
Also: many pictures of her brother, but none of her.
Out of respect for the dead, she waits six months before she burns it all.
Graham Robert Scott teaches writing at a university in north Texas. His stories have appeared in Barrelhouse Online, Nature, and X-R-A-Y Literary Magazine.