He admired her longingly from across the room. Just the two of them. Summoning his nerve, heart pounding, he approached.
His beloved wife… Hair freshly styled, makeup applied just so, hands neatly folded. Those blue eyes that once saw only him, now surveying Heaven’s expanse.
“You’re home, Angel. Rest well.”
Lisa Chambers is a Texas girl who enjoys writing.
Puddles and poo everywhere.
Mom had no business getting a puppy. Now she’s gone, and the vet says her tiny guardian’s kidneys are packing up.
Princess is only three years old. Did she have some heavenly contract to fulfill? Is she released from responsibility, to fade back into the ether?
Kimberly Parish Davis directs Madville Publishing, and across genres. Her work can be found in various literary journals, both online and off, including The Helix, Flare: The Flagler Review, époque press, Jerry Jazz Musician, and Flar. See more at kpdavis.com.
In the years after Luke left, Daisy’s recollections of their relationship fragmented. Like dandelion seeds caught in the breeze, superfluous memories were whisked away, leaving her just a lone stem to examine. His essence. Had he been the person she thought she knew?
She wondered how she’d been so blind.
David Lowis is a fledgling writer from Surrey, England.
It wasn’t the diagnosis of strangled bowel, nor the low survival chance to vital surgery that tore at his heart.
It wasn’t the palpable frailty of his hero, his mother, hooked up to machines, though these things were traumatic.
No, it was those five words: Can I come home now?
Absorbing the Donegal hills from distance only now, Perry McDaid’s creativity subsists on nature’s palette and scents. Unfortunately this sometimes involves silage.
It had been two years since Olivia’s world fell apart.
Two years since she mailed Adam the letter.
Two years of waiting for a reply.
Then, one day, the letter simply reappeared in her mailbox…
“INSUFFICIENT POSTAGE”
Sadly, she placed it on the desk, right next to Adam’s wedding invitation.
Susan Gale Wickes is from Indiana. She enjoys writing short stories and cartoon captions, but she rarely writes a letter.
I know I need to talk about the way I miss you so. Yet I keep the words within me and say I’m in control. I tell myself I’ve dealt with all of the demons in my soul but 10 years on and despite myself, I cannot let you go.
Tommy Johnson is new to writing, having recently discovered the wonder of fifty-word stories. Now living in the North East of England, he has previously lived in Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, and Australia.
Every day after school, we go to the park.
Every day, the man on the bench admires the acers in the Japanese gardens.
Every day, he smiles and asks my daughter how she is.
But today he isn’t here. She whispers that maybe this is his first day in Heaven.
Henry appreciates nature, and spending time in the park admiring the trees seems like a pretty good way to use your time.
Nick feels shame buying TV dinners. Stroganoff. Salisbury steak.
Others buy steaks, corn. Things that connote family. Families who move about, laughing, sharing secrets, brushing past Nick.
He picks up a steak, marvels at its robustness. Drops in the cart.
Nick imagines a wife smiling across a table.
He smiles.
Yash Seyedbagheri is a graduate of Colorado State University’s MFA program in fiction. His work has been published or is forthcoming in Literally Stories, 101 Words, (mac)ro (mic), and Ariel Chart.
At first I was numb.
I began to notice them two weeks later:
The hole across the morning breakfast table;
The hole in the recliner facing the television;
The hole on the left side of our bed at night.
I wanted to fall in.
Years later, they sometimes still appear.
Alison hates holes.
The ends of the umbrella flap irregularly in the wind like an injured bird. Stones jab my ribs and spine as the Atlantic splashes between my thighs. Mom’s been gone two years, yet I am here, on her favorite beach, surrounded by people who will never mean anything to me.
Alyssa Minaker lives in North Africa with her husband.