“I can’t make the pieces fit,” little Samantha said to her mother as they worked on the puzzle laid out on the table.
At that moment, her father entered the room: eyes tired and shoulders slumped, worn like the pages of an old book.
“I know, honey. Neither can I.”
Eldar Levin can currently be found taking residence in California.
Over starched white tablecloths and silver cutlery,
criticisms of local behaviour are discreetly whispered
by elegant, satisfied wives of corporate expatriates.
She sits silently, aching for inclusion,
but all too soon there is a flurry of air kisses
and she finds herself alone again,
walking slowly toward an empty apartment.
Lynette moves to a new country every two or three years and currently lives in Denmark, but calls the Mornington Peninsula in Australia and San Diego in the U.S. “home”. She has a Master of Arts (Writing and Literature) degree from Deakin University.
Bored,
he stops taking notes,
and stares at the pretty girl just in front of him.
With each stroke of her pen,
the fine downy hairs on her tanned forearm quiver,
almost imperceptibly.
And there,
just below her left earlobe,
on the side of her tanned neck,
one perfect freckle.
Matthew writes and takes classes in Maine. Sometimes he gets bored and looks around.
The story of the week for April 11 to 15 is…
The Shrimp Farmer by Alexandra Keister
This story makes me shudder a little, but I’m impressed the creativity, and the story’s ability to deliver an impact.
Karen spent every waking moment planning the perfect life. Her mind soaked up luxury, sun and freedom. She could almost taste her homemade spaghetti sauce simmering on the stove in her quiet apartment.
The putrid odor of another inmate slapped Karen back to reality.
Only nine thousand days to go.
Hillary blames the delicious aroma coming from her own kitchen and an article in the local newspaper for this story.
It’s clichéd but she’s beautiful: elegant white dress, straight blonde hair, and a modest bouquet in hand.
He remembers when they first met, how he’d imagined her just as she looks now, with that cute smile.
He sighs… She obviously picked another. Time to log out and close that window.
Joey is not on social media partly to avoid such revelations but you can find him at joeytoey.com.
“Put the tip of your knife in the silvery place where the soft-scaled belly meets tail. Press down. Draw the blade away, not toward. Cleave the meat, and fish out the gnarled black guts; smell the sour salt.”
“And if he tries to help?”
“Say no. This is most important.”
Post-MFA, Lora Rivera worked as a literary agent’s assistant, children’s biographer, e-learning developer, and crepe maker. She likes: rocks and climbing on them, words and chewing on them, people and connecting to them, and ferns because they are old and slow to evolve and so must be very wise. Find her on Twitter or at clippings.me/lroseriver.
My mother leans into my father and points at the elderly man at the far end of the nursing home dining room. My father sports a baseball cap; the old man wears a fedora.
Over the clatter, and behind the shield of her other hand, mother asks, “Is that you?”
Gail Louise Siegel’s work has appeared in many journals and anthologies from Ascent to Wigleaf. She is from Chicago.
The streetlight and trees conspire to turn my ceiling into a dance floor every night, a masquerade of ghouls and long-limbed shadowy dancers flailing arms and legs. His legs drape across me, stop me from floating to whirl with them, my bedsheet a bridal gown, the pillow my swelling belly.
Mohini Malhotra is from Nepal and lives in Washington, DC. She runs a social enterprise that promotes contemporary women artists from emerging markets and invests profits to better women’s and girls’ lives. She loves words, she loves flash, and she has had several stories published (in Blink-Ink and 50-Word Stories, amongst others) and several forthcoming.
“Are you a pawn or a player?”
“Huh?”
“Are you the big kahuna or strictly small fry?”
“What?”
“Are you the brains of the criminal operation or just a mindless minion?”
“Don’t ask me! I brought a fresh pot of coffee for the interrogation room. Do you want cream? Sugar?”
John H. Dromey has had short fiction published in Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, Betty Fedora, Crimson Streets, and elsewhere.