Two boys inspected their giftwrapped present.
“I think it’s a puppy. I can hear it scratching.”
“It’s a zombie,” his brother said.
“How do you know?”
“No air holes.”
They were both wrong. A considerate Santa’s helper had put batteries in a mechanical toy and forgot to switch it off.
John H. Dromey has had flash fiction published in a number of anthologies (print and electronic), as well as online at The Fast-Forward Festival, Liquid Imagination, three minute plastic, and elsewhere.
He shook Emma side to side to wake her up.
“Wake up, it’s Christmas! Wake up. It’s another day for growing old!”
She was colder than ever.
He melted a tablet of cocoa and wore pleated pants.
Holding a cup of chocolate, he realized he needed to grow old alone.
Alex Alvarez wants to be a writer and not just someone who writes. She’s now slaving away in the field of science. More of her works at http://alexandralvarez.wordpress.com/
She cleared her throat, he emitted a small cough, and both focused their eyes anywhere but on the ham they were each having trouble chewing.
It rested on a platter, unnaturally shiny: the kind of shiny borne not of glaze, but an aged cook neglecting to remove the plastic wrap.
Jennifer Hrovat was inspired to get back into writing when she won some free socks in a Haiku contest last year. When not trying to score accessories through the written word, she works as a counselor and spends her free time running, reading murder mysteries, and making a giant tasty mess of her kitchen.
Editor: You may wish to read this article for context!
Silent Night — The Temptations
Start Me Up — The Rolling Stones
Little Red Riding Hood — Nine Nine Nine
Jump — Van Halen
Push — Matchbox 20
Boom Boom Pow — The Black Eyed Peas
Take Me Away — Avril Lavigne
Please Forgive Me — Bryan Adams
On the Road Again — Willie Nelson
Third Time Lucky — Foghat
Carly Berg’s stories have been published in several dozen journals and anthologies–including PANK, Word Riot, and Bartleby Snopes–as well as nominated for a Pushcart prize. She has never tackled a pope.
Stretched at a fire with crackling log
Brimful saucers of creamy eggnog
Treats under the table
Perhaps a catnip mouse
Joy and laughter fill up the house
Coloured ribbons for me to chase
Beaming smiles on every face
Fur-stroking pats
From hands old and new
Yes, cats love Christmas too
Mia Yow is a writer, artist and animal lover (especially cats). Her present cat was a stray which arrived at her door on Boxing Day (The Feast of St Stephen) many years ago.
Santa came on Christmas. I was four years old. He put a stuffed Cookie Monster in my stocking.
A week later, I returned to school. I kept getting yelled at by an authority figure.
The next year, I politely asked Santa for a monster that would eat my Kindergarten teacher.
John has interests that range from guitars to the Incredible Hulk. He was born and raised in St. Louis, Missouri and still lives there to this day. You can hear him on the weekly podcast at www.comicbookshowdown.com.
Tom retired to Florida to play hopeless golf with wife Trish marking his scorecard.
In the Christmas tournament Tom swung and missed.
He swung again and the ball smacked into a tree then bounced back into the hole.
“What was that?” queried Trish.
“A par, Trish, and a pear tree.”
John B Sinclair is a much-travelled Scot who has now returned to Scotland, where he enjoys freelance writing on a variety of subjects.
Maddie had gone absolutely overboard. He couldn’t tell her that the baked noodles studded with candied fruit, “Fruitcake Kugel,” was a nightmare. The pile of potato cakes laid horizontal, covered in gravy to form a Latke Yule Log, was beyond inedible.
Instead, he feigned illness for the boss’s Chrismukkah potluck.
Jennifer Hrovat is an Ohioan who once majored in English in the hopes of becoming a best-selling novelist, but became a counselor instead. She enjoys running long distances, cooking, and reading about murder. Her cat stepped on the keyboard twelve times as she was trying to write this, so it was more difficult than the average submission.
“Only half a world away,” she mused. “He said he wants to see me.”
Ignoring every germ of doubt, barely even daring to breathe, she sat in the metallic cylinder that carried her through the skies to the place where he lived.
Twenty-four hours later, her phone refused to sing.
Deepa is a full-time writer who occasionally gets to write for herself.
Today is Tuesday, and you are cold. I curl up behind you and nuzzle your ear. I remember when we were young and stupid and immortal, before the doctors, before the sentencing. In the sunlight your skin feels alive. I breathe, smell your scent.
Please don’t leave me here alone.
Rio Santisteban is a college student living in New York City. She writes because she can’t possibly do anything else.