It was my turn to clean up. Everyone was so tense with the international standoff and all, so I was mopping under the launch control panel while everyone else went on lunch break. The special key was already inserted next to red switches, and I thought, “Oh heck, why not?”
Doug Mathewson writes and edits short fiction. He also builds stone walls and takes pictures of wild birds, and sleepy cats.
“How did you sprain your ankle, young man?”
“I was running from the shotgun.”
“Oh, a sports injury; you were playing football, right?”
“No, Doctor.”
“In that case you won’t be covered by your school insurance. How do you plan to pay for your medical treatment?”
“Will you accept watermelons?”
John H. Dromey has had short fiction published in Gumshoe Review, Liquid Imagination, MicroHorror and elsewhere.
All great jazz players stop here first in after-life: the Swansong Island Lounge. McCoy’s coming soon; the Steinway might not survive his hammer-handed tenure.
After it goes, no more instruments. Silence.
God installed these mechanisms,
walked away, and let be be.
West of the Moon, notes carrying over shoreline surf
Todd Mercer won the Woodstock Writers Festival’s Flash Fiction contest and took 2nd and 3rd place of the Kent County Dyer-Ives Prizes. His chapbook Box of Echoes won the Michigan Writers Cooperative Press contest. Mercer’s poetry and fiction appears in The Lake, Mobius: The Journal of Social Change, Thema, Blue Collar Review, Right Hand Pointing, Apocrypha & Abstractions, Cease, Cows, Dunes Review and Eunoia Review.f
On the path outside the Old Folks’ Home I bend and sniff winter jonquils. Inside, an old lady spots me and waves. She seems agitated. Wait! Maybe she’s raising the alarm.
I wave back and saunter off, looking extra casual. I admit it: I’m a brazen perfume thief, unrepentant, too.
Brenda’s fiction has appeared in Andromeda Spaceways, A cappella Zoo, Punchnel’s and Penumbra. She lives in Adelaide, South Australia.
Amidst hundreds, if not thousands, passing by, the mall bench is a lonely place.
Youngsters dreaming of where they are going. Seniors regretting the arrival of their destination. Others going nowhere.
They say we have a perfect match. Somewhere. I watch their faces. Eyes. No connection.
Perhaps a different mall.
Jeff Switt is a retired advertising agency guy who loves writing flash fiction—some days to curb his angst, other days to fuel it. His words have been featured at Dogzplot, Boston Literary Review, Flash Fiction World, Nailpolish Stories, 50-Word Stories, 100 Word Story, A Story in 100 Words, 101 Word Stories, and Shotgun Honey, and have appeared at lots of places that take whatever you send in.
Her gaze touched me in ways you cannot imagine but in ways I cannot forget.
Fixated on one another, our eyes met. In that moment, time became irrelevant and my longing heart became hopeful. Her presence touched my soul as quickly as she left my world.
An opportune love, lost.
Jimmy is an aspiring life coach who loves stories of all sorts.
“Hello, I’d like to borrow a book please.”
“Did you reserve it online, sir?”
“Sorry. No.”
“Have you got your Library Swipe Card?”
“Errr. No.”
“Tried our search engine?”
“No.”
“Touch screen app?”
“No.”
“Sorry sir, but I can’t help you. Next.”
“Hello, I’d like to borrow a book please.”
Chris Redfern’s short stories have been published within a variety of magazines and websites. Find out more at www.aatwatchtower.com.
“Jimmy, keep practicing that paradiddle, loud and in time.” It was up to the boy now. Dave lay back exhausted.
The boy banged that hollow log, eyes closed, finding comfort in the rhythm.
He played and played, his cheeks wet with tears.
The rescuers heard the call.
Was Dave alive?
Feeling optimistic after the success of her first submission, Anmari decided not to kill Dave off.
Hard up,
I rented a stairway landing.
Eight by six, the price was right.
Roped off a pedestrians’ passway.
Sold my etchings, then clothes,
next blood, one or two kidneys.
I shouldn’t have harvested
that poor man,
but once you buy the
chloroform
and surgical tools…
Pricing studio apartments
today.
Todd Mercer won the Woodstock Writers Festival’s Flash Fiction contest and took 2nd and 3rd place of the Kent County Dyer-Ives Prizes. His chapbook Box of Echoes won the Michigan Writers Cooperative Press contest. Mercer’s poetry and fiction appears in The Lake, Mobius: The Journal of Social Change, Thema, Blue Collar Review, Right Hand Pointing, Apocrypha & Abstractions, Cease, Cows, Dunes Review and Eunoia Review.
“Kill two birds with one stone,” Jenny had told me every day for a week. “Do it before it’s too late.” She grinned like a Cheshire cat when speaking these words on Saturday.
Unable to keep the secret any longer, I told her: “I already did. Took three stones, though.”
Anna is a fifteen-year-old writer, music lover, and high school student in New Orleans.