“Bless you,” the stranger said.
“Take it back!” was my response, as I sniffed and wiped my nose on my sleeve.
Her eyes widened. “What? Why?” Her disgust and disapproval at my rudeness danced in her eyes and voice.
“It burns,” was all I could say.
Then I sneezed again.
Chad Bunch writes speculative fiction from the suburbs of Saint Louis. He is currently trying his darnedest to publish two novels and several short stories.
Every tick of the clock reverberated throughout the vast lecture hall. The biology students stared blankly as the lecture dragged on—monotonous drivel about clinical study results.
Post hoc, ad hoc, quid pro quo…
Twenty minutes in, only the snores made sense, and the rumbling from my stomach.
“Class dismissed.”
Christa is a medical writer with a passion for creative expression. She has had her poetry and short stories featured in several publications, including River Poets Journal, Tanka / Haiku Journal, Rune Bear, and Every Day Fiction. Currently she resides in South Jersey with her five feline muses.
At the park, my daughter whines. Too hot, icky sunscreen, more juice. “Four-year-olds,” I say.
“Not mine,” another mom says, her face smug. “We parent like gravity.”
“Gravity?”
Her daughter screams, dangling by one foot off the monkey bars. “You’re fine!” the mom yells.
Never-whining girl faceplants into the woodchips.
Hadley Leggett is a writer and stay-at-home mom in Seattle, WA. When she’s not chasing after children, she’s working on the second draft of her first novel.
We lie around the pool, melting, burning, toasting, marinating.
Nobody speaks, except for one woman berating her husband for not using sunscreen.
Later the waiter tells us they’ve been coming to this same hotel for twenty years. Well, twenty-three if you count the years since he died of skin cancer.
Tom O’Brien is an Irishman living in London. He’s been published in numerous places across the web and has short stories printed in Blood & Bourbon, Blink-Ink, and DEFY! Anthologies. His novella Straw Gods was shortlisted by Ellipsis Magazine in their publication competition.
The first time the beast came to the village was by accident. He had simply lost his way.
However, once he learned the townspeople were willing to feed him one of their own each year, gradually incorporating more festivities and rituals into his visits, the beast vowed to keep returning.
Ran Walker is the award-winning author of seventeen books. He teaches creative writing at Hampton University in Virginia.
As the clock struck midnight, ushering in my fiftieth birthday, the friends I’d been playing D&D with since middle school learned I was no longer the same person.
To be fair, one of them wasn’t surprised. I absorbed him first, while the others thought we were still playing a game.
When last I saw them, they were down by the river. They were holding hands. No surprise there; she’d always been possessive.
On this occasion, she seemed especially reluctant to let go. She professed to love his mind and body, while her rival’s interest was strictly physical…
The crocodile prevailed.
John H. Dromey has a 10-word story, “Paranormal Household Survey,” on the Potato Soup Journal website.
Mark had waited sixty years for revenge.
Searching the retirement home, he found Ben snoozing, feeble. But Mark felt no sympathy for his old enemy.
“For what you did to me at that party,” Mark sneered.
He raised a magic marker, and marred Ben’s face with a moustache and glasses.
G.B. Burgess is a graphic designer. She is occasionally commissioned at parties to create moustaches and glasses.
Word was out that there would be animal abuse and drinking. Definitely drinking. Children would be welcome.
Cars started arriving with little ones spilling out. Smiles, hugs, and greetings abounded. Despite the predictions, everyone was happy. A stout stick was issued to the children.
Time to swing at the piñata.
N.T. Franklin writes after his real job hoping one day to have it be his real job. He writes cozy mystery short stories, nostalgia short stories, and Flash Fiction. When not reading or writing short stories, you might find him fishing or solving crossword puzzles.
Sixty seconds into her presentation, Becky became dismally aware that no one was listening.
Sixty seconds further, her anger boiled over.
“I hope you all die in a plane crash!”
Now she had them.
“But in the event that you don’t, please leave personal belongings behind when exiting this aircraft.”
Derick Lengwenus is a stand-up comedian, writer, and family man originally from Canada and now living in Chicago, Illinois. He has appeared in the Just For Laughs Festival numerous times and can be heard regularly on XM Radio’s “Canada Laughs”.