The eggheads cracked it, opened a door to the afterlife. Come and go as you please. They chose me, figuring I had plenty of questions for the Big Guy. They didn’t know I’d need an appointment. Didn’t know I would have blown Him off if I had one.
“Hey, kiddo.”
Andrew Walo is a freelance writer and a hunter of wild paragraphs and domesticated monsters. He resides in Norfolk, Virginia, but he lives for jacket-weather. More work can be found at AndrewWalo.com.
I shouldn’t be here, he thought.
But the physicians marveled at him. “Ship broke in atmo?” “How many procedures?” “The team outdid themselves.”
No one asked the marvel whether he wanted saving—without legs, arms, jaw, or sight. So, the marvel sat in his case—talked at, rotated for sores.
It rained the day I was born. Momma says the angels were crying because I left them.
Daddy laughs and says I poked a hole in the clouds on my way down.
Momma and I just smile. She winks at me and tucks a stray feather back under my sweater.
Candace Kubinec wrote this story.
He crossed the finish line well ahead of the other athletes. The crowd cheered, a distant roar, but he didn’t stop.
In his mind, her voice was pleading, begging: “Don’t let me die here!”
Muscles pumping, heart racing, he sprinted on, the ghosts of his past hard on his heels.
Bill lives in Aberdeen, Scotland, which will become the capital of his world empire when he completes his anti-matter bomb. But first lunch.
“I wish your father all the best with his new wife and baby,” said Harriet. “He’s a decent man and he deserves happiness.”
And there’s my plug for divorced mother of the year, she thought.
Turning, she pulled a long knife from the wooden block and began to sharpen it.
Susan Wackerbarth teaches creative writing at the University of Hawaii Hilo. At home, she shares space with goats, chickens and the occasional mongoose.
Her palate was broader than her father’s. On her thirteenth birthday she ate the entire cake. But she’d still not spoken. Too much sky up here?
I led her to the nearest cave and she clattered inside with a thunderous, visceral bellow. I feared it was the sound of hope.
Tamsin and Mark Farley decided to write sequels to each other’s most recent 50-word stories. This is a sequel to Fostering the Minotaur’s Daughter.
New strings, a polished case, and it was only then she discovered her uncle’s spirit lived on in the violin. The instrument wept tears of resin when she told it of her aunt’s death. That night the strings carved melody from raindrops, sliced moonlight into splinters, whispered chords of regret.
Mark Farley was only too happy to join in with Tamsin Seymour’s lovely idea of writing sequels to each other’s stories. This story is a follow-up to Lost Chords.
The story of the week for September 25 to 29 is…
Beneath Layers by R.R. Bastek
Cemetery boss said, “Check out the old homeless Vets’ activity. The hole dug yesterday’s been disturbed. Make sure the casket’ll fit.” A gravestone was erected: “Herbert Sendall 1932-2017.” Later inscribed: “Also Henry.”
He heard a Vet say, “We put old Henry down. Free of all the hullabaloo.” He saluted sharply.
Tom Sheehan wrote this story.
Alone in the office at night a slow madness overtakes me. It begins with a paperclip chain. It ends when the cleaner finds me, the Emperor of the Paper Cup People, berating the massed ranks of my subjects, my nudity covered only by yellow sticky notes. The horror! The horror!
Bill lives in Aberdeen, Scotland, where he works as a professional haggis hunter.