It was the first time I’d worn a suit in years.
Nervously, I feigned nonchalance. Made small talk. Nodded to people, surprisingly youthful, who didn’t nod back.
Now, seated near the back of the room, punch in hand, reality began to set in.
I was at the wrong class reunion.
Susan Gale Wickes lives in Indiana. She enjoys writing short stories and poetry and looks for inspiration in lots of strange places.
I would stutter if I spoke or vomit if I ate.
My kid’s getting an MRI.
“It could be nothing, or…” they tell me. Something unmentionable. Unthinkable.
The answer will either defrost my brain and untangle my guts or kill me dead.
I’m just not strong enough to bear it.
Seth Pilevsky lives in New York with his wife and five kids. His work has been published in the Long Island Literary Journal, Literally Stories, Memoir Magazine, Stinkwave’s Magazine and in the YA Anthology entitled What Doesn’t Kill You. See more at spilevsky.com.
The story of the week for December 31 to January 4 is…
Hunting Nightmares by Ran Walker
Their mud hut was shaded by thick plantain and banana trees.
It was still raining heavily. There were no mosquitoes so the windows were open; free air-conditioning.
She slept soundly on her bamboo mattress.
The town crier’s talking drum was muffled, so she didn’t hear she was the new widow.
Una Nina Nine plays life with her husband and family in Nigeria but is yet to meet “that” prince.
Two unexpected things happened after Timmy killed the monster under his bed: (1) he ate it (and rather enjoyed it), and (2) he took to hunting the monsters under the beds of other neighborhood kids. After all, someone had to do it—and he’d already developed a rather insatiable appetite.
Ran Walker is the author of sixteen books. He serves on the creative writing faculty of Hampton University in Virginia.
Green eyes, curly red hair, Southern dialects and harried husbands.
Between casting calls for cougar roles, Dawn practices her craft at Oklahoma’s small town taverns. Bartenders comp her drinks as bouncers keep lookout for the wives.
“Everyone has a backstory, Sugar. And the night’s just getting started.”
The show begins.
Kim Favors lives on California’s coast with dogchild Jesse.
Her boys play outside with an old Nerf ball. As she leads him to the broken furnace, he sees her tiny house has a cross, but no gifts, no tree. He sympathizes; he’s had a rough year, too.
She sees him glancing and is grateful they have nothing to steal.
Graham Robert Scott teaches writing at a university in north Texas. His stories have appeared in Barrelhouse Online, Nature, and Blink-Ink. See more at hemicyon.wordpress.com.
She was a memorist, holding onto the collective experiences of an entire generation.
We all depended on her for our memories—faces in scrapbooks, grandma’s favourite recipes, names of distant relatives.
On the day she died, all she remembered faded away and her family was left with only a void.
Candace Kubinec posts her stories at storydribbles.wordpress.com and her poetry at rhymeswithbug.com.
They’d only been married since the weekend, but she could readily identify his writer’s block.
She suggested that he might at least try to write something short, perhaps about a convicted criminal in his cell, awaiting the executioner’s call.
“Nah,” he replied. “I’ve never really been that much into autobiography.”
Ron. Lavalette has been widely published in both print and pixel forms. His first chapbook is now available from Finishing Line Press, and a reasonable sample of his published works can be found at EGGS OVER TOKYO.
Grandpa Al radioed coordinates in the Korean War.
He was quiet, loved his Yankees, and sipped O’Doul’s in the summertime.
He had a fake leg and owned a ukulele, too—
a sweet, beautiful instrument boxed up in his basement.
I can see him now.
He’s smiling. Sipping. Strumming and plucking.
Justin Deming lives and teaches in the Hudson Valley region of New York.