The oranges are bitter.
The hummus though, is sweet. Flat breads, falafels, and olives. The fruits of the irrigated deserts.
In the bunker we tell the children of our heroes. How they dug in, built walls and barbed wire fences.
How our neighbours grew into enemies.
Stephen Doherty wrote this story.
I looked up because an invisible spark went off in my head. With my two tired eyes, with the open book still in my hands, I watched a beautiful blue bird fly straight into my sliding glass door. I got up to check on it and found it frozen stone.
Sean is a 39-year-old writer who learned to write when he was diagnosed with schizophrenia when he was 20. He is a slow learner and wrote at least 12,000,000 words before he got the hang on this writing thing. It provides a solid foundation for a meaningful life.
Swetha gathered Raghu’s hands in hers, and joined the crowd dancing, chanting “We did it. We did it.” Raghu swayed with her, humming the same.
A man behind him tapped his shoulder, asked What?
No clue. Raghu whispered.
Okay. The man nodded, and joined the crowd dancing, chanting in trance.
Devayani Anvekar is an illustrator and cartoonist of social and domestic issues. She lives in Goa, India.
The trick is so simple – real musket, real gunpowder, real handcuffs, and my Sylvie, chained to that wheel, spinning like a dervish.
Every night I hit the lock dead centre, every night the crowd loves me.
Except today I found her letters.
Deceit changes things. Blood and screaming change everything.
William Mitchell lives in East Sussex in the South of England. He is an award-winning author, having had early success with various Horror and Science Fiction publications before winning the Writers of the Future contest in 2012. His first novel, CREATIONS, came out in 2014 with John Hunt Publishing.
The piano is upright, so it takes less space. You have to look inside to see the maker and year. A wire has snapped, yet the hammers hit true. There is magic here; Beethoven, Bach, Rachmaninoff. But our kids play chopsticks and mash away. And for me, this is everything.
Jeremy lives in Ottawa with his wife and two children.
The story of the week for October 14 to 18 is…
Crunchy Sensation in Every Bite by Leonie Gregory
I remember running behind the Foggyman’s truck, billowing DDT out the back. We covered our noses and mouths with wet handkerchiefs as we chased through the fog, out of breath from running and excitedly shrieking to find each other. Or is this actually a foreboding dream that keeps haunting me?
Stephen Tilden keeps a photo of that truck to remind him that it is just a memory.
The forgotten pumpkins are black with rot.
Dogberries squish and bleed underfoot.
The trees have been battered, standing half-naked and disheveled, robbed of their beauty.
Brown leaves scurry across the pavement, finding refuge together.
The smell of death and pumpkin spice lattes is in the air.
This is the end.
Deirdre Smith has dabbled in writing for as long as she can remember. She is a part-time Guidance Counsellor and a full-time mom. She resides in the always colorful St. John’s, Newfoundland.
We celebrated the four main religions here: Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, Christianity. Regularly we sang, danced, cooked. Painted. Learned truths about our history through fearless journalists, families’ testimonies, the war heroes the government erased from textbooks. Nobody hesitated joining the Monsoon Revolution, arms drenched and outstretched as bullets sped toward us.
Third-person bio: Sami Matin is a writer from Bangladesh. She holds degrees in English and Creative Writing from the University of Michigan and the University of Arizona. Their literary work is forthcoming or published in SmokeLong Quarterly, Hobart Pulp, and the Wingless Dreamer.
He never saw a corpse before. Grandpa lay in the casket, but it didn’t look like him. Was Grandpa still a ‘he’? An ‘it’?
The expression seemed wrong. The real Grandpa would never make that face.
The same nose hairs, though.
“Don’t touch,” an old woman scolded.
But why not?
Ken Zang loves observing the world around him almost as much as living in it. If Ken isn’t learning what makes something, or someone, tick, then he is usually trying to make family, or potential family, laugh.