Lying down on the grass, feeling comfortable, I close my eyes and start to drift away.
A warm feeling enters my hair then flows onto my body. My whole body is filled with warmth.
A cold breeze interrupts my dream.
My brother shouts, “Dude! That’s my brother you’re peeing on!”
Richard Phan is currently a senior attending Cerritos High School. He is both passionate and enthusiastic about everything he does and his work is guaranteed to make you a Phan.
Dave expected her to acknowledge his fearless and effective confrontation of the dangerous street gang in the front yard. Praise, awe, even an exceptionally enthusiastic hug came to mind.
What came, though, was silence. No recognition. No accolades. No big hug. He didn’t understand.
Hadn’t he done as he should?
Rock Conner writes stories In Atlanta.
“Sarah, love becomes a habit, like putting on socks before sneakers.”
“Well?” I looked down at my cold, untouched coffee. God, separating our stuff would take forever.
“Like resisting sleep after an all-nighter.”
Was this cup mine? Or would he pack it up too? “Cut the analogy crap.”
“We’re over.”
Colleen Colkitt is a freelance writer of fiction and poetry. She lives in Buffalo, New York with her family. She will graduate from SUNY Brockport with degrees in Creative Writing and Communications. Her work has recently been published in Bare Hands Poetry, Muddy River Poetry Review, and Poetry Bulawayo. Look for Ms. Colkitt in Daily Love, as she will be featured on the site in February.
LeBeef and Rochambeau, walking along the bayou, found two bombs.
“Rochambeau, we’d best take these to the high sheriff,” said LeBeef.
“What if one go off, LeBeef?”
“Rochambeau, sometimes you are so dumb as dirt.”
“What ‘chu mean?”
“Listen fool, one goes off, we don’t tell ’em we found two.”
Gary Clifton, forty years a cop, has over sixty short fiction pieces published or pending with online sites. He has an M.S. from Abilene Christian University.
Wind blowing through my ears. Finally, I’m free!
“Get back here!”
I can eat real food and be away from the horrid lady.
“Let me dress you up and make you beautiful for all to see again!”
Oh crap, she’s so crazy! Wait, no!
“Hello, Kitty.”
Ah rats, caught again.
From Cerritos, CA, Julio Rosales is a high school student in creative writing. Quick, simple, and to the point, he’ll delighte any willing candidate. Writing outside of his comfort zone, he continues to improve with each piece of work.
Dort awoke naked in a clearing. Snow burned her cuts and bruises as she rose to her hands and knees. She had neither muzzle nor fur, only pale skin and weak muscles.
She sniffed the air and recognized her pack nearby, but they were all human, too.
Cursed and doomed.
Kay Lesgo has worked as a journalist and radio personality, but now makes actual money at an office job. Kay is currently working on her first novel and several short stories and still wants to be a writer when she grows up.
We sixty-three stomped in en masse to tidy up the graves. Hundreds of Canada geese already grooming the grounds lifted as one into the air, circled, scolded.
We finished in record time, dried wreaths, wilted flowers piled by the curbs.
Eighty thousand graves freshened ’til Memorial Day. Rest in peace.
rJo Herman dreams of writing one perfect tale her grandchildren will pass down to their grandchildren. She lives with her grey-striped companion, Emil Catt, I, in the Colorado high desert.
Editor’s Note: Martin Luther King day was on January 21. I apologize for seeing this story too late to post it on that date…
Pet World was eerily quiet that morning.
The opened hamster cage doors hung limp and broken, the aquarium fished of all within, bird seed scattered and spotted feathers dotted upon the floor. All quiet, but for the contented purr of Pancho the puma, recent, felonious escapee of the nearby zoo.
Alex Sinclair was born in the winter of 1973 in Nottingham, England, and, on the cusp of his 40th birthday, is still trapped there. He longs for a looser, more liberal society where his own shaky morality and absurd beliefs could find succor and praise. Until that day, he bides his time, waiting to pounce like a graying and jaded ocelot. To amuse him and occupy all available time for the next 40 years of his life, he has just become father to twins, who, though but 3 months old, are acutely aware that daddy may not be quite right in the head. This small matter is overlooked as he can expertly and lovingly feed, burp, and nappy change each baby in just 15 minutes, whilst also attend to cooking duties downstairs with good humour. He lives with his long-suffering partner Shona, and cats David and Mogwai.
Clear starlit sky above the frozen snow, we sit unmoving, eyes scanning the fields ahead, praying for the next attack so that we can move, life sought in another’s blood.
Our breath freezing our eyes, but hands too heavy to lift, behind the eyes the mind slips into eternal vigilance.
Craig MacDonald lives in Scotland, where he has worked as a hypnotherapist and computer consultant. He loves trying new and interesting things and meeting new people.
He once admired her quiet efficiency.
But now she moves cheerfully through her task and he knows that he will never look her in the eye again.
“There you go, all clean.”
He arranges his face into a smile as his wife tucks the clean sheets around his failing body.
Delancey Stewart is a fiction writer living in Southern Maryland. When no indulging her imagination, she works for the man as a tech writer and tends two small boys who, her husband assures her, are hers. Find her at delanceystewart.wordpress.com.