Your estate, organized by spoons, sweaters, silver. I’ll finish the fusilli ($1) you planned on eating later. I’ll wear your motorcycle goggles ($10) while washing my new tea cups ($4), then hang a tile, painted with moon, stars, and love for you when I was six ($.50).
All good buys.
This is Alexandra’s tenth fifty-word story. She wishes death could always be preceded by goodbyes.
Alone on a sidewalk, a young girl dances slowly through the silent snowfall. She raises her arms, arcing them together, fingertips touching like beaks kissing. Warm grey flakes settle on her hands. She finishes with a pirouette, waiting for applause, but the world is silent.
Soon, she will start coughing.
Chip Houser’s short fiction has appeared in Daily Science Fiction, New Myths, Every Day Fiction, and elsewhere in print and online. He is a graduate of the Odyssey Writing Workshop and is currently pursuing an MFA in Creative Writing at the University of Missouri-St. Louis.
Muncie Singleton always sent the kids to school with a baked spud and three strips of thick-cut bacon. On their birthdays, Muncie replaced their usual hand-churned butter with store-bought.
When Muncie ran out of bacon, it took all day to restock. But the same errand eliminated one annual shopping trip.
boomer trujillo’s parents never sent him to school with homemade lunches. He’s sure that’s because they loved him. Check out his writing at boomert.info.
Grief, heavy like sticky syrup poured over pancakes, filled the room.
It coated the mourners, making it hard to move. Hard to speak. Hard to breathe.
I hardly knew him, but stopped to offer my condolences.
To hug and be hugged, as we remembered the days of this stranger’s life.
John Fowler served twenty years in the US Air Force before retiring and starting a second career in the IT field. He is also a Lay Pastor serving a small church near his home in Texas. His hobbies include reading, golfing, writing, and now oil painting.
My frog body sprouts into a prince thanks to the kiss. I kneel to lick a mosquito off her wrist.
“Come live in the palace!”
I squat in the royal garden.
The first sign of trouble. “It’s just not working out.”
I hop into the pond. Old habits die hard.
Caleb resides in Arkansas where he plays beach volleyball.
Floorboards creak as the man steals towards the sleeping girl.
Standing over her peaceful form, heart pounding against his ribs, he leans and sticks his hand under her pillow to replace the hand-stitched bag containing her incisor with a dollar. She stirs but does not wake.
“Goodnight, pumpkin,” he whispers.
Tasie E. George is a twenty-year old, as-of-yet unpublished writer, born, raised, and residing in Nigeria.
The dragon was expecting him. Huddled against a crag, silver scales blending perfectly with the mountainside, she watched his approach.
Her claws flexed.
A tongue of flame curled at the back of her throat…
When the knight dismounted, she swept in and grabbed his horse. “Enjoy the walk home, bozo!”
Mark Farley is writing about dragons again. Everything is better with dragons!
She’d saved her wedding whiskey for a special occasion.
Not for her honeymoon.
Not for her 25th anniversary.
Not even for her 50th anniversary.
Now he was on his deathbed.
She reached into the cupboard, pulled out the bottle, and cracked it open. “To happiness,” she said, raising her glass.
Linda writes for both children and adults. She blogs at lindaschueler.com
The story of the week for November 13 to 17 is…
Ghosts by Maura Yzmore
i lie
awake
my body on the crumpled, cream-colored sheets
my thoughts float
like an untied balloon
from a child’s outstretched palm
as they disappear into
nothingness
alongside millions of dreams
just as i
am unable
to grasp onto
your fading voice
that whispers in my ear
burning my skin
Lauren loves creative writing and can usually be found reading on the beach or writing in her room.