TOM O’BRIEN: Death and the Newborn

Artistic, Submissions, , , , , ,

Death heard the newborn’s cry and began his inevitable journey.

Sometimes he can save them early, but too often the path is arduous and slow. He weeps when he reaches them in old age: by then they have suffered a life too long, in all its illusion and false hope.

Tom O’Brien is an Irishman living in London. He’s been published in numerous places across the web and has been anthologised in Blood & Bourbon, Blink-Ink, DEFY! and twice in the Uncommon print collections. He’s on Twitter at @tomwrote and his website is tomobrien.co.uk.

C CHRISTINE FAIR: Mother Always Asked Uncle Art to Babysit

Artistic, Submissions, Top Stories, , , , , ,

Art’s avuncular fingers plunged deep into my girlish flesh,
plowed furrows,
planted seeds of rage that grew into Sequoias that stretched upward
to scratch his deeds into the very sky
beckoning Mom’s eyes,
demanding that she countenance his crimes.

Then, having at last seen, she might beg me for absolution.

C. Christine Fair is an associate professor within the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University. She has published poetry in the Dime Show Review and The Bark and has pieces forthcoming in Clementine Unbound and Badlands Literary Journal. She also published a short story in New Reader Magazine. Her scholarly website is christinefair.net; her blog is shortbustoparadise.wordpress.com. She tweets at cchristinefair where, for some reason, she has some 42,600 followers.

JULIET WILSON: Running Out of Time

Artistic, Submissions, , ,

We’re getting older. We’re running out of time to do all the things we wanted. We planned to cruise the coast of Scandinavia and dance under the Aurora Borealis. But things keep getting in the way.

The ice sheets are melting. The Arctic is burning.

We’re running out of time.

Juliet is an adult education tutor, crafter, and conservation volunteer based in Edinburgh, UK. She blogs at craftygreenpoet.blogspot.com and tweets at @craftygeenpoet.

JERI QUINZIO: Subway Sightings

Amusing, Odd, Submissions, , , , ,

The sign says “If you see something, say something.”

Today, on the subway in Boston, I saw a man wearing a black sombrero with a live parrot sitting quietly on his shoulder. No one paid the slightest attention to either one of them.

How I love living in the city.

Jeri Quinzio is the author of Dessert: A Tale of Happy Endings.

GRAHAM ROBERT SCOTT: Last Licks

Amusing, Submissions, , ,

Three blocks away, someone asks how much for the Czech wolfdog.

Strangers have inquired before, but this is the first she stops to think it over. Four years pet-minding, and his owner refused to write her a reference.

“Ten bucks,” she says.

The chocolate brownie gelato is cool and sweet.

Graham Robert Scott’s stories have appeared or are forthcoming in Barrelhouse, Nature, Blink-Ink, and Pulp Literature. See more at hemicyon.wordpress.com.

ROBERT HOEKMAN JR: Super, Dad

Submissions, Top Stories, Touching, , , , , , ,

He had so many abilities to bestow, my dad. He could tie shoes, tell time, build tables, fix carburetors, throw, catch, hit. But for all his superhuman powers, he contained almost nothing else, and he withheld most of it.

And stoicism, I’ve since learned, is far less heroic than advertised.

Robert Hoekman Jr. is a writer and editor, and part of the Litmus Collective. His nonfiction work has been featured by Fast Company, WIRED, Huckberry, and many others.

BOB THURBER: Early Morning Hike (Another Misadventure of the Broken Boys)

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On the slope to the river a deer leapt across their path. Barely ten feet in front. Everyone froze. A big buck. Graceful, nimble, terrifyingly quick.

Some of the boys lost their breath. They had all seen. Yet nearly half didn’t believe.

Very often the forest dreamed its own dreams.

Bob Thurber is the author of “Paperboy: A Dysfunctional Novel” and two collections of stories. A celebrated master of Flash and Micro Fiction, his work has appeared in 60 anthologies, received dozens of awards, and been used in schools and colleges throughout the world. He resides in Massachusetts where, though legally blind, he continues to write every day. Visit his website at BobThurber.net.

ED N WHITE: The Message

Adventure, Amusing, Submissions, , ,

The bottle was half-buried in the sand, its neck protruding at an angle, a cylinder of clouded and pitted sea glass.

The cork stopper had a thick wax overlay, showing its age.

The message inside was disturbing:

If you found this bottle, I know who you are. Be very afraid.

Ed N. White is a writer of Mysteries. A teller of Tales. A graduate of the University of Iowa with an M.A. from the University of Rhode Island, and a former faculty member there. A New Englander trapped on the Suncoast of Florida hoping for some snow.

ESZTER MOLNAR: I Thought This Day Would Never Come

Artistic, Submissions, , , ,

She looks just as good as she did back in school. Slick. Smart.

I glance at my worn trainers as the bus lurches forward. She hasn’t seen me.

I can still hear her vicious words, feel her pulling my hair.

I tap on her shoulder. She turns around.

“Remember me?”

Eszter Molnar is a former teacher who lives by the windswept British seaside with her partner and two children. She has been published in one of the UK’s biggest subscription magazines for children. By day she cleans up after preschoolers; by night she writes picture books and Middle Grade fiction.