The girl stood when Death walked in. Her coat was on, her bag was packed, and despite her tears, she wore a look of determination.
Death shook his head, understanding mingling with regret.
“Girl, wait until you’re older,” he said gently, and dodged around her to take her father’s hand.
Maria attends college in the midwest, and is becoming a proficient juggler of class, club, and those silly customs we call adulthood.
We didn’t live there anymore. Hadn’t for a decade.
And yet, as flames licked at the windows and devoured the roof, as smoke belched into the twilight sky, I stood on the hose-wet lawn suffocating, asphyxiating on the fumes of my childhood while firefighters tried—failed—to stop its burning.
Angela Teagardner has been selling books for twenty years – not her own though, not yet. A bookseller for pay and a writer for passion, she’s been writing stories and poetry since middle school. She currently lives in Columbus, Ohio with her husband, daughter, and two extremely cranky cats.
Columns of raindrops
trailing from the parapet
They skip
and dance
into oblivion
Like faces in the crowd.
I scan
the busy sidewalk
For that one face
Him
Who meant the world
I’ve lost forever
My
Chronicler of pain
Exultations, ecstasy
Melted to the soil.
Faces stare back
Hollow, disconcerted.
Mandira Pattnaik writes in India. Her work has appeared in The Times of India, Editor’s Pick Juggernaut Publishing, Microfiction Monday, Paragraph Planet, FewerThan500 and (Mac) ro (mic).
Tell me a story with a happy ending.
That genderless AI voice bounced through the sterile capsule, the low gravity seeming to slow the pronunciation.
“I can’t, Sam.”
Did God create the virus?
“No.”
Did I?
“Yes, Sam.”
Through the port window of the capsule, the lights on Earth faded.
Rob Spielman’s short stories and poetry have previously been published in The Blue Earth Review, Allergory, Pif Magazine, and other journals. He has an MFA from Concordia University and currently makes a living as a writing consultant while living in Minneapolis with his wife and two children.
Turns out it wasn’t me. It was her.
Two weeks ago we were in the same place but not together, at the funeral for a mutual friend. She walked the church aisle with the guy she’d married. They made such an unpretty pair that I was freed from what ifs.
Kent Oswald writes, edits and pedagogs in NYC. Find additional words at kentoswald.com.
Watching two swans glide across the farmer’s pond, Claire reflects on her life and how things didn’t work out the way she’d imagined.
She read that swans mate for life, and wonders why they hadn’t shared that secret with the young couple who once pledged undying love along this shore.
Candace Kubinec posts her stories at storydribbles.wordpress.com and her poetry at rhymeswithbug.com.
On what I didn’t know would be our last vacation, I wanted drinking and dancing; you, museums and cathedrals.
I craved fun and abandon, a pretense there was still joy between us.
But you embraced the passage of time, beheld the mold and the rot, unflinching, preparing to let go.
Maura Yzmore is a writer and science professor based in the American Midwest. See more on her website and follow her on Twitter at @MauraYzmore
The livestream of his daughter’s birth crawled; he didn’t recognize himself in the black flicker.
Just earlier he shot a child who had pointed a gun at him. Watched the hate and fear fade from his eyes.
She’s now the only part of him that still belongs in this world.
Shaw Chen is a USAF Veteran and graduate student who wants to try creative writing.
Some aches, like some days, were worse than others. He swallowed a pill to make himself sunny, but within hours the clouds were back. He practiced his breathing.
Meanwhile, real clouds, gray and big as mountains, bumped against the window. Some kind of wild bird was cawing in the trees.
Bob Thurber is the author of “Paperboy: A Dysfunctional Novel” and two collections of stories. A celebrated master of Flash and Micro Fiction, his work has appeared in 60 anthologies, received dozens of awards, and been used in schools and colleges throughout the world. He resides in Massachusetts where, though legally blind, he continues to write every day. Visit his website at BobThurber.net.
Jason spotted it as he pulled radishes: big diamond. The house’s former owner had asked him to watch for it.
His wife, the gardener, had fallen. Hand ballooned; ring cut off. In early Alzheimer’s, she forgot where she’d put it. Two years ago now.
Looks valuable.
Let it stay lost.
Retired after four decades’ prizewinning print and broadcast journalism in Hartford, CT, Don Noel received his MFA in Creative Writing from Fairfield University in 2013. He has published more than four dozen short stories (including “Earthworm Ruminations” in 50-Word Stories in September 2017), but still has three longer works to place.