The story of the week for September 2 to 6 is…
Raked History by Yash Seyedbagheri
CAROL REEVES: Real Pets
Mom was allergic to “fur-throwing” animals. Bright yellow canaries sang us through an otherwise ideal childhood. My children will have Real Pets, I resolved—dogs, cats and hamsters. And they did. Curiously, when the nest was empty, I got Tickles, a sweet pink canary, and it’s he whose memory lingers.
A prolific writer, Carol Reeves is loving the freedom and challenge of Flash Fiction. She is frequently published in Flash Fiction Magazine and 50 Word Stories. Her memoir, “All the Little Miracles,” was published in 2022.
DAVID McCAHAN: Dusk
I heard leaves and branches singing to the sun
I watched the trees singing as one
Grace for the day
Prayer for tomorrow
A daily prayer for one hundred years
A daily prayer answered
Until today
Whirring of encroaching engines portends the end
Of one last sunset
And no dawn
David is a St. Louis-based writer who enjoys all forms of writing from microfiction to novels.
WILLIAM MITCHELL: Monster
Upturned glass wavering, I carry terror incarnate.
Every instinct screams, “Kill it! Squash it! Obliterate it!” I resist; outdoors, its freedom awaits.
Now it sits, in its newly spun web, remembering the warm, dry bedroom it once inhabited. It watches, and slowly and surely, it draws its plans against me.
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.
DEB DiTOMASO: Boxspring Gambler
When mom passed, we joked over boxes deemed for the dumpster about her catchwords of somedays and one-days and soons. We never had much growing up, but we had each other. We finally moved her old bed, only to discover a thick mat of lottery somedays and one-days and soons.
Deb DiTomaso lives in Connecticut with her husband, a dog, and a bunch of chickens. She’s a career nurse with a lifelong passion for crafting stories. Her work has placed as a finalist in CT Tassy Walden Awards for New Voices in Children’s Literature.
YASH SEYEDBAGHERI: Raked History
I love to rake. There’s a power in drawing leaves, clearing muck and nature’s chaos. It keeps me outside musk-filled rooms, much too big. For a moment, I smile; then I remember malaise, arguments, slammed doors. I tear my rake into earth and emptiness and whisper sorrow. More leaves tumble.
Yash Seyedbagheri is a graduate of Colorado State University’s MFA fiction program. His stories, “Soon,” “How To Be A Good Episcopalian,” “Tales From A Communion Line,” and “Community Time,” have been nominated for Pushcarts. Yash’s work has been published in SmokeLong Quarterly, The Journal of Compressed Creative Arts, Write City Magazine, and Ariel Chart, among others.
JOHN H. DROMEY: For the Birds
At the police station, rollcall was over and the evening shift was getting underway.
“I’m wiring this rookie for his first undercover assignment. Hand me the goose tape, will ya, somebody, please?”
“Don’t you mean duct tape?” the rookie asked.
“Not for where your hidden microphone battery pack is going.”
John H. Dromey has micro-fiction, flash fiction, and short stories published in about 220 venues.
AUDREY LEE: Dear Abby: Can Your Mother Haunt You in Death as She Did in Life?
Say you own a thimble. It was your mother’s, it outlived her. You hated your mother.
You threw it out your bedroom window, awoke with it inches away from your nose. You tossed it out of your car, it immediately dropped onto the passenger’s seat.
Do you believe in ghosts?
Audrey Lee is a student from New Jersey. She enjoys writing flash fiction and poetry.
GENE NEWMAN: The Freedom Event
The warden thought his track meet event
would be a morale booster,
But a guard reported on Event Day
that the pole vault team had escaped.
The good news was the 100-yard dash team
was overtaken 200 yards from the gate
and the sumo wrestlers were wedged in their tunnel.
Gene Newman was a USAF cryptologist during the Korean War and is a retired engineer and journalist, including stringing for the N.Y. Times and being a crossword puzzle creator for the New York Times and USA Today.
RÂNA CAMPBELL: Taken to the Grave
“Come here, little sugar pillow,” my husband used to say, enfolding me in his arms on our sleep-in Saturday mornings. He died before I mastered his native Icelandic and learned he’d been using the literal translation of “marshmallow.” I still glance at my love handles, wondering just what he’d meant.
Râna had a beautiful decade of living in the northwest of Iceland interrupted by the pandemic, and she’s now preparing for the zombie apocalypse in her hometown of Montreal.