“I get frightened when you go to work,” Coe tells Larry. “I stand at the front door holding the baby, and when you walk across the yard and reach for the truck door, I don’t feel you see us anymore. It’s almost as if we are gone.”
Paul Levine lives in Venice, Florida where the cleanup still goes on from hurricane ian. The Venice Literary Review, his book of about getting older and moving to Florida, is found on Amazon.
My neighborhood is littered with the silken corpses of deflated Halloween decorations and giant cotton spiderwebs.
The dead have come and gone. One night of merriment and then, shedding last year’s skins across the lawn, they slithered back beyond the Veil.
I wonder: on whose life blood have they fed?
Casey Laine comes from a long line of talkative women. She parlays this abundance of words into many writings: journals, poetry, and of course several novels in progress. In her spare time, she chases butterflies with her camera, or – short of butterflies – creates vignettes out of odds and ends.
Ever since I’ve passed
My ghost has been quite busy
He travels up and down the world
He haunts this very city
I know not his intentions
He has no care for mine
We couldn’t be more different
He’s taken all my time
Occasionally, I’ll wake and take my turn
Titus Grimm lives and works and Dallas, Tx and is continuing to seek ways to express himself and love others.
The haunted pencil wrote in elegant Victorian script the true identity of Jack the Ripper, the details of his crimes, and how he escaped justice.
A teenager found the pages, couldn’t bother deciphering them, and threw them out.
Ignorance triumphs once again.
Kit Irwin lives on Cape Cod. Her work has appeared in places such as The Kenyon Review, SmokeLong Quarterly, and Flash Fiction Forward.
You shouldn’t be here. Your desire for sweetness drew you to my unlit porch. You—the bullied, the outsider—avoid the other children who visit houses adorned with welcome balloons. You’ll find no candy here, but I have what you need. Come and choose one of my black cat’s kittens.
Fiona lives in Western Australia on Noongar Boodja. She is revising her first novel and is too easily distracted by flash and micro.
The story of the week for October 24 to 28 is…
Fear of the Dark by Jacek Wilkos
Every night she pulled the curtains, covering the windows tightly. She put a blanket under the door so not even the dimmest light could get in. She slept in complete blackness.
She wasn’t afraid of the dark, but of the thin line between light and shadow, which spawned eerie shapes.
Jacek Wilkos is an engineer from Poland. He lives with his wife and two daughters in a beautiful city of Cracow. He is addicted to buying books, he loves black coffee, dark ambient music and anything spooky. His fiction in Polish was published in Szortal, Drabble na niedzielę, Niedobre literki, Horror Online. In 2019 he started to translate his writing to English, and so far it was published in Drablr, Rune Bear, Sirens Call eZine, Trembling With Fear, and in numerous anthologies by Black Hare Press, Black Ink Fiction, Alien Buddha Press, Eerie River Publishing, Insignia Stories, Fantasia Divinity, Reanimated Writers Press, Iron Faerie Publishing, KJK publishing. You can find more about his writing at https://www.facebook.com/Jacek.W.Wilkos/.
The old novelist was poised to write his next masterpiece,
completely composed and waiting in his brilliantly creative mind.
Ready before him were his trusty typewriter, carbons, white-out and eraser.
Then his adoring fans surprised him with a computer,
laser printer, scanner, and writing software.
His complete recovery is uncertain.
Gene Newman is a retired old guy (90 yrs) and former New Jersey journalist and columnist. Read more at GeneNewmanImagineThat.com.
Decrepit friendless house
Groaned in despair
Its ochre regal frame forgotten
Haunted by fiends
Passing travelers pitied the neglect
Encouraged its repair
By All Hallows Eve
The house brightened from villagers’ care
Compassion renewed this house
Grand parties are given where
Villagers and haunts dance merrily
Making haunts happy there
Hazel Ann Lee is a Black American author of published works on science fiction and fantasy, education and science. Her book of original science poems and science fiction short stories is titled The Astronaut’s Window: Collection of Poems and Short Stories Celebrating Nature. Her poem, Sunrise on Loran, was published in 50-Word Stories. Her poetry has also appeared in Star*Line, Utopia and Frost Zone Zine. Her short story was also published in Frost Zone Zine.
Second-hand car, cash, few clothes, fake IDs… The basics for a quick escape. She would’ve turned herself in but for the stowaway in her belly.
Here’s a neat trick: her actions have had consequences on my actions. For no good man lets a pregnant woman flee a crime by herself.
Shruti is enrolled in a technology course that she hates and would much rather pursue a Masters in Modern Literature and Culture. She likes creatively expressing herself through words and screaming into a pillow from time to time.