A day after the funeral the murderer sat smirking, counting his profits from the killing after finding refuge. The perfect crime, he thought. No one will ever come after me.
Then the doorbell rang. Moments later his accomplice ran in, his face pale.
“Is he armed?”
“Y-yes… H-he’s a… Zombie!”
Jason Huynh is a bored student who worries about accidental plagiarism.
I wonder how many hearts you have broken.
I want to show you mine. A sparrow with a broken neck. I flew into your life like a bird into a window.
You told me I should have expected it.
You exit without remorse. I have enough for both of us.
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, and Nailpolish Stories and have appeared at lots of places that take whatever you send in.
My parents never believed me that I had an evil clown living in my closet until they met him one day.
“Stop telling tall tales,” mom would say, and dad would chime in, too. “Don’t be ridiculous.”
It took me days to remove my parents’ bloodstains from the carpet.
Doug has contributed to the popular horror anthology Demonic Visions 50 Horror Tales. Doug’s poetry is also featured in Poetry Quarterly and was an editor’s choice in a New England poetry publication.
“I wasn’t really expecting it to work.”
The door hangs off its broken hinges.
“I thought that she’d be so grateful.”
Elixir soaks into the discarded bandages.
“Why do women always leave me?”
The gilded sarcophagus is empty.
Tears are streaming down his face.
The professor really misses his mummy.
Deborah thinks: least said, soonest mended. Find her on her blog: Deborah Walker’s Bibliography.
Her breath comes in gasps, followed by the irregular cadence of her exhalations. I hold her close, sensing the sharpness of her bones beneath her fur.
As I switch off the lamp, she nestles into the crook of my arm. I bring the covers over us both and whisper, “Goodnight.”
Kalyanii is a counselor and meditation instructor who enjoys wiling away her freetime manifesting her culinary inspirations and reveling amid the magnificence of nature.
Everything he lost came back,
even a bit extra.
The Fates restored
what was snatched away,
with interest paid—
a practical apology.
He climbed out of a bottle,
walked home from the railroad trestle.
His wallet anonymously returned,
jammed full; the sainted
truck-chasing dog—alive again;
his woman re-enchanted, forgiving.
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, Dunes Review and Eunoia Review.
Music flowed through the room. In her mind, she pirouetted and sashayed across the stage, her tutu flouncing. The audience applauded in appreciation.
Then she opened her eyes, grabbed the pole and twirled. Her wispy black hair danced over her bare torso.
The audience showered her feet with dollar bills.
AJ Joseph is a bookaholic, semi-insomniac, unsuccessful recovering javaholic, but most importantly a writer. She is currently in the process of reinventing her life around her first love: words.
I like sitting up here in the dark and quiet. Below it’s all noise, light and a smell of confined humanity which makes me nauseous.
I used to go right up and look outside, watch the storms roil in the sky. Now I have to make do with the memories.
Stuart is absent without leave from the majority of life and finds that writing helps him remain that way. He occasionally blogs a story at diamondsanddross.blogspot.com.
I feel my mother within me.
Father and brother watch for signs, indications of affliction, keeping their distance.
Mother loathes me seeing a female version of father and brother: perfect Christian, tormentor, captor.
I am tenuous middle ground, like all but unique. Neither pious nor pitiful, both sinner and saint.
PM Drummond is a full-time writer at heart who works 40 plus hours a week as an IT project manager for a large university. She has two short stories published and is currently working on a six book paranormal series.
Sebastian went to the circus yearly. His grandfather would take him each birthday.
One year, Sebastian lost himself in the crowd. Instead of crying, he climbed.
The Ringmaster saw a child fearlessly scaling the trapeze pole. Impressed, he asked Sebastian, “Would you like a job?”
“I just want my grandpa…”
Stephen Ruh is a 22-year-old student at the University of Kentucky studying Secondary English Education. He loves the art of storytelling, and is always trying to better himself in that medium. He enjoys comedy, poetry, classics, and more. He can dunk a basketball. He auditioned to be in the new Star Wars movies, and received one call back.