My cellphone buzzed unnaturally loud in the quiet cabin, making several boys stir. Grasping blindly, I muted it and held my breath until the room slowly returned to silence.
The next three hours crawled until reveille, when I could finally return my mother’s call and confirm my father had died.
A recovering lawyer, Liam MacDonald has written for decades. He finds some stories easier than others.
“Did you know fireflies only live three days?” I asked.
He dragged the last of his cigarette and dropped the butt, grinding it with his shoe. “No.”
“Two years as larva, three days with wings. What would you do with only three days?”
“Well, I wouldn’t be talking to you.”
Katelyn Simpson lives with her family in Cincinnati, Ohio. She has worked in many fields, from theater technical directing to expediter advertising. She enjoys reading, writing, crafting, traveling, and fine dining.
I excitedly opened the envelope. At last, my senior citizen train pass was in my hands! I can ride for free anywhere in the city. All those years commuting and paying for that privilege are over. As a retiree, I ride for myself now.
But I have nowhere to go.
Bob is retired and writes when he is not busy with retirement. The past two years of semi-isolation have not been kind. Bob is looking forward to a better and more productive 2022.
The vagrant discovered the lake house at the end of a gravel road. A fridge inside a shed gifted him a single beer, and an untethered canoe took him into the lake, where he opened the beer and drank—living the life of another and waiting for something to end.
Travis D. Roberson grew up in Central Florida, where he spent most of his youth throwing rocks at snakes and reading comic books. He spent his late teens entrenched in Orlando’s local punk scene before leaving the sunshine state and bouncing around the world as a flight attendant at a major airline. Now settled in Queens, NY, he lives with his wife and his dog, who wakes him up far too early every morning. He spends most of his time yammering about the genius of Jim Jarmusch and The Clash to anyone that will pretend to listen. His work has appeared in a number of places, including Hypnos, The Arcanist, and Coffin Bell.
It is 2003. The year of SARS. I tell my husband that my face mask is for his protection.
“Protection from what?” he asks with a shocked look on his face.
“My mouth. It is now off limits for fourteen days,” I reply. “But it will be worth the wait.”
Marjan Sierhuis has learned there is a first time for everything.
We’re having a proper snowstorm—wind blowing sideways, schools cancelled, roads unplowed.
We’ve been expecting it, yet we are surprised and take inventory of our supply of bread, milk, and toilet paper.
All the while, there is a stirring of Spring bulbs, waiting to erupt in a blaze of ego.
Candace Kubinec posts her stories at storydribbles.wordpress.com and her poetry at rhymeswithbug.com.
Alone, finally, in the kitchen, she silences the kettle and settles in the chair. The children sleep. The darkened windows reverberate calm.
He will return soon. The gravel drive will first crinkle and then crunch. The car door will bang; his boots will stamp the porch.
But for now, peace.
Melody Leming-Wilson teaches and writes in Portland, Oregon. Her poetry has recently appeared in Windfall, Poeming Pigeon, and Mojave He[art]. She’s just learning to write 50-Word Stories and finding it therapeutic.