The note on my door said I had passed away yesterday and my memorial service was tomorrow.
“What is going on?” I wondered. My neighbor had passed me without speaking.
I opened my door and the house smelled of roses. Everyone knew I loved roses.
I sat down and cried.
Linda’s dream is to do nothing but write but she has to eat so there goes the dream.
My chest pounded as I stared at the bed. There lay floral sheets, closed eyes, and my mother’s frail fingers still warm in my hand.
“Let go,” she had said.
“No,” I had told her.
When the fingers grew cold I heard her voice again. That’s when I let go.
Gwendolyn Jacob is rediscovering her fictional roots and has several works in progress.
Alice bunks off school. Going home is safe with parents at work. Entering the hall, she hears something upstairs.
“Mum? Dad?”
Venturing up, Alice opens the bedroom door.
A strange woman looks back, shocked. She wears too much makeup.
“Who are you?”
“Alice…” the woman says.
It’s her father’s voice.
Viv Burgess worries about the characters she has pushed into the deep end.
I wanted to buy a necklace for my wife as a Christmas gift.
Unfortunately, I really didn’t know what size fit her. Therefore, I decided to measure her neck size when she was asleep.
However, as I was putting a rope on her neck to measure size, she woke up.
Cloris Cui a student at Shenzhen Academy of International Education who wants to learn directing in university.
It’s that level where you’re trapped
and they pour through a window
and I just zapped a bazillion suckers
and I’m like, bring it on
when a hand clamps on my neck
and blood oozes down my arm
and I guess this is what getting your brains eaten feels like.
Christina Dalcher is a linguist, novelist, and flash fiction addict from the Land of Styron and Barbecue. She’d like to raise awareness of the dangers of video game addiction. And zombies. Find her at christinadalcher.com or @CVDalcher.
How is it some words seem to hang in the air? Once spoken, they develop a life of their own, their presence growing from a secret pondering to an ominous being, larger than anything else in the room.
I know what sustains them: the very breath sucked from shocked lungs.
Cathy is a temporarily out of work bookkeeper, taking a little time off to play in the fields of words and exercise the other half of her brain.
She used to wish on snowflakes for a man like him.
Glancing over, she thought, I wouldn’t mind Christmas mornings with you.
Giving her heart to him like a gift-wrapped present, she watched him open it.
Then realized that it was Halloween and he had been wearing a mask.
Lauren Layfield is a senior Multi-Platform Journalism major at Sam Houston State University. She is the former Assistant Campus Culture editor at The Houstonian, SHSU’s independent student newspaper.
Ben loved his wife as much as he loved to travel. He spent two months in Bali and another month in Fiji.
When he came back, his keys didn’t work but he was at the right house. Through the right window he saw the right woman with the wrong man.
Samantha Lucchetta is an aspiring writer who’s hoping to achieve something biography-worthy one day.
Josie couldn’t stop thinking about the trunk. Her grandpa had freaked and chased her from the room when she saw it under the bed.
Luckily, it was his bridge night.
Josie crept towards the bed, knelt, and pulled it out.
The lid creaked. She screamed when she saw the body.
Courtney Casteel lives in Baton Rouge with her partner and their three cats: the fluffy one, the fat one, and the one whose tail is out to get it. When she isn’t writing or reading, Courtney cooks, makes things out of yarn, and does circus stunts.
While shopping, I saw a Marilyn-Manson-like Goth kid. I thought he was trouble.
After leaving the store, I lost my wallet. I searched to no avail.
Ironically, I heard that kid yell, “You dropped this!”
He returned my wallet. I offered him money.
He replied, “No thanks. Pay it forward.”
Bob McNeil is a writer, spoken-word artist, and illustrator of some modest renown. Influenced by the Imagists and the Beat Movement, he attempts to address the needs of our human mosaic.