The story of the week for April 10 to 14 is…
Window Shopper by Susan Gale Wickes
BELLA REN: Unpredictable Life
If I hadn’t woken up late. If the guy hadn’t spilled his coffee. If I hadn’t had to go back and change. If I hadn’t missed my train. If life wasn’t so unpredictable…
I wouldn’t have met you. You wouldn’t have noticed me. We would never have fallen in love.
Bella Ren is an English student from Brazil. She loves writing and reading English short stories and poetry.
VIV BURGESS: Resurrection
Grandpa’s pain stops with his heart. Amid brilliant white light and the fury of a whirlwind, he is lifted and flies rejoicing to God.
He wakes joyously. “Lord, I’m saved!”
His angel smiles. “Only just. It’s a miracle you got to hospital in time. We had to send a helicopter.”
Viv Burgess says her inspiration has been absent without leave, and she is not a-mused.
ANITA REYNOLDS: Daughter
Her tiny fingers, entwined in mine. Soft. Delicate.
Her nod, a whisper, “It’s time.”
A click as the switch is turned off. Then…?
Darkness. No light, no tunnel, no welcome home.
Terror envelops me; tears begin to fall.
Just a fading whisper: “They never would have believed you, anyway, Mommy.”
Anita Reynolds is a writer and artist, wife and mom in the rural reaches of Tennessee. Her work is inspired by the strangeness of life, from the mundane to the magical.
JACKIE ASCRIZZI: The Kayak Solution to Love
In the canoe, he always took the back to steer, so I was in the front. I couldn’t do anything right; he’d shout at me, Paddle harder! On the left! Left! Feather it!
When we switched to individual kayaks, our relationship improved immensely, moving together, each our own way.
Jackie Ascrizzi live in Montville, Maine, where she spends time observing beavers and cooking Indian food.
JENNIFER HAMBRICK: #HathNoFury
She’s going to burn him for the affair.
So she disguises herself and hides in the back corner of the swanky bar where her friend saw them together that one time. And then she takes pictures of them pawing at each other at the bar and tweets them. With tags.
A Pushcart Prize nominee, Jennifer Hambrick was a winner in the 2017 international Golden Haiku Competition (Washington, D.C.) and received the Merit Award in the 2017 Montenegrin International Haiku Competition (English). Her chapbook of free verse poems, Unscathed (NightBallet Press), was nominated for the Ohioana Book Award, and she has received many awards for her work, which has appeared in Santa Clara Review, Third Wednesday, Mad River Review, Muddy River Poetry Review, River River, Modern Haiku, World Haiku Review, The Heron’s Nest, Bones, Sonic Boom, Eucalypt, Haibun Today, the major Japanese newspaper The Asahi Shimbun (The Morning Sun), and in dozens of other journals and anthologies worldwide, in English and in translation. Jennifer Hambrick’s blog, Inner Voices, is at jenniferhambrick.com.
ROBBIE GAMBLE: Bing-Bong
Death came to call, and I quivered on the threshold, until I realized he wasn’t menacing me, just lost and asking for directions, his hood askew, with Mrs. Death sitting in their van, tapping the wheel.
Relieved, I sent them away down an unpopulated road and eventually out of town.
Robbie Gamble identifies primarily as a poet. When not obsessing about image and line breaks, he works as a nurse practitioner caring for homeless people in Boston, Massachusetts.
MATTHEW EICHENLAUB: The Old Coon Cat
Nor’easter outside
been going on and on about itself.
Ahab wants out.
Cracking the door,
he is blasted. Crouching,
ears flattened, he retreats.
Sitting Buddha-like now, licking his wounded pride,
he pauses to bring his puffy tail about, and lay it by his side.
Like a monk adjusting his robe.
Matthew lives in Maine.
CRAIG W STEELE: You’ll Be Next
My two great aunts, Laura and Judy, loved to sidle up to me at weddings, poke me in the ribs and shout, “Don’t worry, you’ll be next … someday.” Then they’d shuffle off, cackling crazily.
They stopped after I did the same thing to them at my Grandma Minnie’s funeral.
Craig W. Steele lives in the lake-effect snow belt of northwestern Pennsylvania where, by day, he’s a university biology professor. He enjoys writing both short fiction and poetry and dreams of becoming a widely-read unknown author.
SUSAN GALE WICKES: Window Shopper
It was her first blind date.
“Sit at the table near the window,” he’d said. “Wear yellow.”
Now, at the table near the window, she waited. Their eyes met briefly as he passed. She anticipated the cold rush of air, but the door never opened. She still felt the chill.
Susan Gale Wickes wrote this story. She rarely window shops and never wears yellow.