The story of the week for May 29 to June 2 is…
The Librarian and the Time Machine by Chelsea Allen
CLAUDIA WEIR: She’s Said Their Names Out Loud
A woman stands on the sidewalk. She’s thinking about everything that gets snatched from the world every day: dignity, agency, lives.
Injustice festers in her stomach like stagnant air. It rises and reaches her mouth, escaping in a guttural roar.
Her scream dies. The rage—hot and sharp—does not.
Claudia Wair is a Virginia-based writer and editor. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Astrolabe, The Centifictionist, JMWW, Writers Resist, and elsewhere. You can read more at claudiawair.com, or find her on Twitter at @CWTellsTales.
NICK YOUNG: Impermanence
From early light, when the sun’s first rays caught the jewelled dew on each gossamer thread, she spun. But come the afternoon, beneath a bank of onrushing thunderheads, a gale blew fierce, destroying her intricate weave. Still, once the storm died away, with neither sorrow nor rancor, she began anew.
Nick Young is a retired award-winning CBS News Correspondent. In addition to 50-Word Stories, his writing has appeared in more than two dozen publications including the Pennsylvania Literary Journal, The Garfield Lake Review, Fiction on the Web, Bookends Review, Sandpiper, the San Antonio Review, The Best of CaféLit 11 and Vols. I and II of the Writer Shed Stories anthologies. He lives outside Chicago.
S GOVINDARAJ: Adieu Earth
AI notification, March 15, 2060:
Interplanetary Council proposes to auction planet Earth, having depleted natural resources, permanent water shortage, irreversibly altered climate. Views invited.
Responses:
Lunar Government – Not interested.
Venusian Government – Won’t bid.
Mars Administration – Just what we need; a place to dump our waste. Will bid throwaway price.
S. Govindaraj wrote this story.
CHRISTOPHER FRUGE: Despite All Efforts
“What happened to the seedlings, Daddy?”
“They didn’t work out.” A tear ran down Dan’s face. “Sometimes that happens.”
“Can we try again?”
“Maybe. Let’s see what went wrong.” He dumped the seedling tray into the garbage, covering a deflated pink Mylar balloon. “First, let’s get Mommy from the hospital.”
Christopher “Chris” Fruge is an emerging writer working in computer security by day and writing microfiction and poetry by night. He can be found on Twitter and Instagram.
BRYANT PHILLIPS: Watcher
A look of death. Soulless eyes watching me through my window. Voyeurism? No, just a lawn nazi. What did I do? Everything bad. There is no privacy. Windows are walls made weak, transparencies in my insular foundation. The watcher doesn’t blink. Squirrel knows all that transpires here, chattering, accusing, judging.
Bryant Phillips is the author of Lost At L3 and The Bomb Squad, both sci-fi comedies. If you like his brand of humor, please visit bryantsbullpen.wixsite.com/bryantsbooks!
STEVEN HOLDING: Somnambulist
Some BS name. Sleepwalker’s easier. I’d stir. He’d have disappeared, down to the backdoor, eyes closed, trying to get out.
One night, I left it open. Come morning, he’d gone.
I wonder if he woke up, or if he’s still asleep. Still dreaming, looking for that exit.
Just like me.
Steven Holding lives in the United Kingdom. Most recently, his stories have appeared in the collections ANNIHILATION from Black Ink Fiction and DARK MOMENTS YEAR FOUR from Black Hare Press. You can follow his work at www.stevenholding.co.uk.
KARLIE TAYLOR: Ability of the Flesh
The rugged stone face sneers overhead, eyes fixed on a distant point, perhaps a different time. Covered in cracks, its chipped body dwarfs me and in a sense, it is mighty, but no mightier than I. My flesh is living, breathing, uncracked. Able to turn and go, I do.
Karlie Taylor is a recent graduate of the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. She holds a bachelor’s in English and currently works as a substitute teacher.
CHELSEA ALLEN: The Librarian and the Time Machine
She dozes at her desk as they hustle about, with handfuls of calculations and headfuls of complications, in the secrecy of the after-hours.
Today is a big day for them. She, their first subject, smiles back, waving, as if it were the first time she is stepping into a time machine.
Chelsea Allen often finds herself wandering in the fields of writing and pâtisserie.
LINDA BRISKIN: The Ws
Whispering is the wind in the treetops, the murmuring of discarded clothes in the attic, the sharing of sisterly secrets late at night. Worship and whirl sound like whisper. And wasted and whimsical, worthy and wizard. She imagines all the Ws dancing and twirling, loving each other like long-lost relatives.
Linda Briskin is a writer and fine art photographer. she is drawn to writing about whimsy, fleeting moments, and the small secrets of interior lives. Her writing has appeared in numerous literary journals. As a photographer, she is intrigued by the permeability between the remembered and the imagined, and the ambiguities in what we choose to see. See more at lindabriskinphotography.com