Step one, turn on the lights. Two, install ceiling.
Three, make something to stand on; add plants.
Four, hang some twinkle lights; five, fill fish tank.
Six, create humanity—no wait.
Crap, this isn’t gonna work.
PROGRAM RESET.
Maybe a horde of giant lizards is the way to go here.
Occasionally EO wonders if God is ever tempted to wail on the reset button.
My aunt called, said her brother was dead and I should help pay for his funeral since he jumped from his hotel window the week after we met. You likely said something to cause it, she said.
I figured out what, but I never told my aunt or sent money.
Paul’s new collection of Flash & Micro, “Kiss Kiss” from Truth Serum Press, will be out in March.
They called me to the principal’s office. Thought I won the essay contest.
I felt good. They seemed worried.
“Was everything you wrote about your uncle true?”
Lying would save us. So I did.
“No, it wasn’t true. Just fiction.”
I hadn’t won. I stopped believing in right or wrong.
K. Joffré is a married gay latino living in New York. He is a Slate contributor and has had fiction published in ContemporaryQueer.com. Slide into his DMs at @meanhood.
I’ve thought of you so very often these past thirty years or more. In my head, I still hear your gentle tone and I feel the touch of your warm embrace.
Good memories last a lifetime. I’m coming to see you soon.
You never let me down.
You won’t now.
Jean lives in a village near Bath in the UK. She refuses to believe this is all there is.
It could’ve been a sofa ad. “Second-hand, some surface wear, but generally in good shape.”
It made Keith chuckle, like Ann used to, before they got sunk by two kids, twenty years, and brutal familiarity.
***
Waiting, twisting her napkin, Ann wished he hadn’t picked this restaurant. It was Keith’s favourite.
Tamsin isn’t even sure that lonely hearts ads still exist, but would like to think that they haven’t been killed off by Tinder.
His muscles ached. His bones, too. Years of building railroads did that.
“Got something lined up?” asked the officer.
He merely nodded. The word “innocent” mattered less now.
Minutes later, he got out of his truck where rails gleamed in the sun. A man waved. “So, you’re our new foreman?”
Joey doesn’t like being railroaded, even if it’s nothing to do with jail. He can be found at joeytoey.com.
IN FOUR HUNDRED YARDS, TURN RIGHT.
“Oo, nonsense! Not that way. Go up Nover’s Hill. That’s Mrs Rathbone’s house. She just died of oldtimers. BUS! This car needs a good clean… Turn left, I mean right. Oo, you’ve missed it! We’ll be late. VAN!”
Unfortunately, there’s no turning off SatNan.
Viv Burgess is not a back seat driver herself, but is usually ranting at her own satnav.
Abroad, learning the language, culture, history. At the memorial, it’s hard to breathe. They couldn’t either.
A tower of names. Clocks. It is 11:02 forever.
Sugoi is Japanese—something amazing or awful.
Where are you from? They know their own.
I’m American, but those words, here, are hard to say.
Gwendolyn Joyce Mintz is a writer and photographer. She is the author of two fiction chapbooks, “Mother Love” and “Where I’ll Be If I’m Not There.” She reads, gardens, and sews teddy bears for fun. See more at wwwonewriter.blogspot.com.
We heard muffled crying before we spotted him, hidden in a gap between houses. He was lying on the ground, swaddled head-to-toe in a blanket. He cried steadily, without stopping, like an all-day rain. He cried freely, without shame—the way one cries when alone.
Gray cocoon, trembling with life.
Mary Lane Potter is the author of the novel A Woman of Salt (Counterpoint Press, a 2001 Barnes and Noble Discover Great New Writers selection) and Strangers and Sojourners: Stories from the Lowcountry (Counterpoint Press), as well as books and essays on feminist and liberation theologies. Her creative nonfiction essays, short stories, and flash fictions have appeared in Beloit Fiction Journal, North American Review, Tampa Review, Flash Fiction Magazine, SUFI Journal, Spiritus, and others. She’s been awarded writing residencies at MacDowell, Hedgebrook, and Caldera, as well as a Washington State Arts Commission/Artist Trust Fellowship. Potter lives in Seattle and teaches writing at Hugo House, the Collegeville Institute for Ecumenical and Cultural Studies, and The Loft Literary Center (online). Visit her author website.
The story of the week for January 22 to 26 is…
Chill to Serve by Anna Ascott