No more? That’s what you said last time.
Let’s face it, you depend on me now. I help you laugh. I help you feel alive. I help you get through your week of 9-5 job.
Come on, have one more and I’ll even help you not remember her name tomorrow.
Yassi is a novice writer. She is thoroughly enjoying her exploration of short sagas.
My mom said I was being ridiculous, but she hadn’t seen us gather the leaves and bones and words for our spell.
Our incantation was precise and perfect.
All of us feigned surprised when Annie Taylor was hit by a car after her summer of tormenting my sisters and me.
Ani King is a pen stealer, notebook hoarder, unreliable knitter, and obsessive reader.
Her eyes water as she searches for her son among the wreckage. There are floating ashes. Smoke.
When she blinks she sees the meadow they wandered in yesterday. Floating pollen was airborne, but it was his wide-eyed wonderment that made her eyes water.
She’s found him. He’s in the meadow.
Jason Huynh finds himself not writing what he knows, for he has realized that he knows very little in the world of experience. Jason should prioritize better and finish his homework first…
I was sitting playing music in a bar at a Folk Festival.
Positioned next to me were two pairs of hands, both neatly manicured, both painted the same colour. Both pairs of forearms were pale, hairless, and of a similar size. They were wearing identical wedding rings: his and hers.
Anne Lever is recently retired and is a mature student at ChristChurch University in Canterbury.
My father always claimed he had a baseball signed by Babe Ruth.
After he died, we searched through his stuff. I found a baseball, but it wasn’t signed by Babe Ruth. It was signed by someone named George Herman Ruth, so we sold it at the garage sale for $4.
Harry Demarest has retired after careers encompassing scientific research, teaching at a university, software development, web application development, and voter database compilation and distribution. He is now spending his time with his grandchildren and writing memoirs and short stories.
Editor’s Note: Don’t get it? Read here.
A pianist’s hands are extremely sensitive, able to detect minuscule changes in touch, response, key drop, even moisture and temperature.
Sobbing, Thomas wished deeply that his hands weren’t quite so sensitive, as he waited for the next wave, the gritty ashes of his beautiful 10-year-old son cupped in his hands.
Michael Coolen is a pianist, composer, actor, performance artist, and writer who lives in Corvallis, Oregon.
White petals came down with each gust of wind. Under the blossoming cherry we couldn’t tell if he was a pup or a boy. Pink. Squirmed in my palms.
My husband finished the hole. “Demon seed.” He gestured to throw him in.
By next spring my heart will stop hurting.
Dana Mazur teaches theater therapy and works on her second novel.
When they introduced the new vice president of marketing, Frank was amazed no one else noticed. Why didn’t they recoil at the sight of his bulging proboscis and webbed, leathery wings?
The new exec scanned the room. When his gaze fell on Frank, he smiled and gave him a wink.
Jeffrey Lehrberg is a Ph.D. student at UC Irvine where he studies limb regeneration in salamanders. Before he became a scientist, Jeffrey was an underwater photographer for the Navy. Jeff enjoys snowboarding and looking at animals, especially bulldogs.
He asked, “What kind of music do you like?”
She thought, Well, there’s Duke, Dizzy, and Miles. Can’t forget Errol and Oscar. Bop, Modern, and Cool. Maybe I should just say:
“Jazz.”
He said, “I like jazz too. I actually just got a new Kenny G. CD.”
She said, “Oh.”
Robert Iulo’s work has been published or is forthcoming in Epiphany, Culinate, Deep South, Museum of Americana, Story Teller, Gastronomica and others. He’s had a special feature published in The Mississippi Sun Herald about his volunteer work on the Mississippi Coast after Katrina.
The watchers are watching the watchers.
I watch from my bedroom window. Alpha watchers are being watched by Bravo watchers. I don’t see anyone else watching Bravo so I must be the Charlie watcher. That means there’s a Delta likely watching me.
Why? How could they possibly have found out?
Paul Beckman has kids and grandkids. He’s been published in The Raleigh Review, Boston Literary Review, The Brooklyner, Web Del So, Pure Slush, Playboy, Soundzine, 5 Trope, Word Riot, and other wonderful venues in print, online, and via audio and photography. He has stories upcoming in Ascent Aspirations, Pure Slush, Full of Crow Quarterly, Metazen, and The Boston Literary Magazine.