My eyes snapped open. Where was I? Taking a few paces forward, I felt twigs snapping under my feet like bones of an old corpse. Looking down, I suddenly realised that there were no twigs, only bones and flesh.
Letting out a petrified scream, I knew my time was up…
Xander Armstrong is 11 years old and enjoys swimming and playing chess, cricket and rounders. He loves correcting teachers’ spelling! His favourite authors are Roald Dahl, J.K Rowling, Jeff Kinney, and David Walliams.
I told him about the son who I was raising alone. I explained about my son’s great love of baseball and how well he was doing in school. I told him everything I could think of.
At long last, he took the pistol from my head and returned my life.
Matthew is a retired computer systems programmer who has produced over 200 books for Project Gutenberg.
His eyes were glued to her as she moved gracefully across the dance floor.
As graceful as was possible with the fourteen stone man’s eyeballs stuck to her.
The drag quite honestly made a frightful mess of his trousers.
He tried to recover his composure.
She needed access to acetone.
Jon is a local government employee with a Newspaper Journalism background. He’s new to writing shorts. They’ve never really fit.
In John’s bedroom were dozens of photos of a girl I knew, but he didn’t. She and I played together often as children.
I had a good idea of what he did with those pictures.
Back home, I destroyed every photo of her I’d ever cut out of the newspaper.
Brian Burmeister is Program Chair of English and Communication at Ashford University. He co-wrote the non-fiction play Farmscape: The Changing Rural Environment, published by Ice Cube Press.
Gonna lay away my fishin’ pole today. Life’s a dream and death an awakenin’, they say.
Well she’s gone and it’s too hot and I’m awake, alone here in these mosquitoes and weeds. This’s a quiet spot, but quiet don’t meet my needs.
Gonna lay away my fishin’ pole today.
Christian Linville is a native Oklahoman living in the western desert. His other work has appeared in Corium Magazine.
Then there’s the parallel universe entirely identical to our own, with two exceptions.
Firstly, racism doesn’t exist. Race and heritage are not commented on at all; the world is one big melting pot.
The second exception: cannibalism is a normal way of life.
We all look the same when cooked.
George Hopkin puts words and spaces together and hopes like heck they entertain or inform. If they both entertain and inform, he thinks that’d be just fantastic, thank you very much.
Thirst consumed me, more desire, anticipation, than need.
“Last one,” I convinced myself, hastily ripping into the flesh. The red spatter on the wall? Unnoticed, darkening over time.
The odd sweetness finally danced along my tongue. Sated, I dropped the empty peel into the trash.
The season’s last blood orange.
Anastasia Pena loves crafts. And blood oranges. But not crafts using blood oranges. She creates the items that pop into her head and runs Anastasia’s Artifacts from South Texas. She also tries to put words on paper from time to time, somewhat successfully…
“Bring me his head!” yelled the Queen. So they packaged it up in paper and string and delivered it to her on a cracked white plate.
She unwrapped it with care, then asked for the body. At night she put him back together on her bed and watched him dream.
Mark Farley lives in Swindon, UK, dividing his time between web page development, opera singing, and occasionally using the Oxford comma. He blogs his random attempts at creative writing at mumbletoes.blogspot.co.uk.
The scented treasure of the park tempered his confusion as he followed the path. Sammy used to know every species of tree. Now they were just comforting presences. Sammy used to know his way back home. Now there was just the terror of loss…
And the invitation of the pond.
Irish writer Perry McDaid lives in Derry close to the Donegal hills. His diverse writing disciplines and genres appear in international multimedia, recently with entropy2, Amsterdam Quarterly, Plotters Ink, Alfie Dog, and 50-Word Stories among others. He has one imaginary cat, Stinky, who is mostly nailed to a board above an allegorical scat-ruined flower bed.
The story of the week for May 25 to 29 is…
The Writer’s Son by Guy Preston
Great ambiance, great character building, and excellent emotion. Good job, Guy!