In the jungle, a Jaguar spotted a frog.
He was ready to pounce when the frog said “I’m a poisonous frog. Eat me and we both die!”
Then a bulldozer crashed through the undergrowth, killing them both.
The moral? In the twenty-first century, fables ain’t what they used to be!
Bill Lives in Aberdeen, Scotland. His New Year’s resolution was to go vegan, but he found that it didn’t fit in with his cannibal lifestyle.
The story of the week for March 11 to 15 is…
Anniversary by Susan Gale Wickes
She prepared her coffee, added her favorite creamer, carried it to her sitting place, placed her coffee, picked up her chosen pen and journal.
Nesting into her tranquil spot, she turned to the blank page.
Suddenly, the phone rang.
“Hello.”
“Is this Kate Morgan?”
“Yes.”
“We hate to inform you…”
Anne Logan is a consultant, author, and lecturer. She self-published three books including Why Heal Your Mind, Body, and Spirit? Sleuthing Ways to Love, which can be found on Amazon for Kindle and in paperback. See more at gpsanne.com.
She’d always been the good girl, the dutiful daughter, even-tempered wife and loving, supportive mother.
A woman with endless reservoirs of patience and good intentions, which made her popular with those far from home.
She’d folded her passion away in a place no one would ever look.
Until that day.
SG has a vivid imagination and lives in Brisbane, Australia.
Moments wasted in anger:
55 hours arguing over finances,
6 months “discussing” our exes,
8 weeks agreeing to disagree,
18 frosty Sunday breakfasts after you came in late,
3 weeks not speaking over small things,
1 year, 7 months detesting your illness.
Moments missing you:
24 hours, 7 days, always.
Jo Withers needs to remember to make every moment matter. She spends them writing shorts, poetry, and flash fiction from her home in South Australia. She is also author of the middle-grade adventure 5 Simple Steps to Saving Planet Earth. You can follow Jo on Twitter.
“He died in Tanganyika,” she said, pouring herself another chotapeg. “Mauled to death by a lioness. That’s what he called it. Never Tanzania. Native nonsense, he used to say. He’d insulted his bearer, you see. He frequently insulted people. The shotgun the bearer handed him hadn’t been loaded.”
Nicolas Ridley lives in London and Bath (UK) where he writes fiction, non-fiction, scripts, and stage plays. A prize-winner and Pushcart Prize nominee, his short stories have been widely published in the UK, Ireland, Canada and the USA. See more at nicolasridley.co.uk.
“Whipped!” we used to shout, mocking him, all those times he couldn’t join on bar nights.
When he could, she’d always call him home early.
Those phone calls cracked us up. We made women’s voices, and passionately screamed his name while he shushed us.
“Hanged,” police told us one day.
David Derey wrote this story.
Shortly after Greg woke to discover his vertebrae had permanently fused with his wife’s while they’d slept, he became curious if she had been complaining to her friends about him behind his back.
When she awoke screaming, desperate to pull away from him, he smiled, realizing it didn’t matter anymore.
Ran Walker is burrowing himself beneath a growing pile of words–and enjoying every minute of it.
When I was 62,
I ordered a pizza to go.
“Ready in fifteen minutes,” the teenaged server mumbled.
Returning to pay, I remembered I forgot
To request the reduced price for elders.
“Is it too late to ask for the senior discount?”
“I already gave it to you,” he said.
Miriam Stein is a social worker, writer, and the author of Make Your Voice Matter With Lawmakers: No Experience Necessary. See more at makeyourvoicematter.com.
When Jerry arrived home, he realized he’d left his life at the office.
This wasn’t the first time he’d realized this, but the realization was more poignant at the moment as he read the note on the refrigerator:
“Took kids with me to mother’s. See you again sometime, I imagine.”
Jeffrey Zable is a teacher and conga drummer who plays Afro Cuban Folkloric music for dance classes and Rumbas around the San Francisco Bay Area. His poetry, fiction, and non-fiction have appeared in hundreds of literary magazines and anthologies. Recent writing in Red Eft, Ink In Thirds, Alba, Corvus, Tower Journal, Uppagus, After the Pause, Spelk, Chrome Baby, Former Cactus and many others. In 2017 he was nominated for both The Best of the Net and the Pushcart Prize.