“You and Reese were too close,” Gary said. “That’s why you broke up. See that stone wall running down the middle of our property? Lisa and I mend it every spring.”
“Why in the world would you do that?”
“So we can stand on opposite sides when we need to.”
Wayne Scheer has been nominated for four Pushcart Prizes and a Best of the Net. He’s published stories, poems and essays in print and online, including Revealing Moments, a collection of flash stories.
The aliens came down from above. The locals screamed and ran for their lives.
“They’re monsters!” someone screamed as the military arrived and blew them to pieces.
Later…
Joyous celebrations erupted while, elsewhere, a small child picked up a burnt cloth from an alien uniform.
It read “United Earth Mission.”
Connell Wayne Regner enjoys ripping yarns and the variety of writing styles found in fiction. His other dabblings can be found at paragraphplanet and wtdmagazine.wordpress.com.
My mother won’t stop calling, and now she’s getting annoyed. It was easier for the others; they were all older and stronger than me. I don’t want to go, but I know I must.
So why do I hold back? It’s a long way down from this nestbox, you know.
Chris Redfern likes writing and wronging. Find him at www.aatwatchtower.com.
He’s long been vapor, drifting listless, confused.
Until tonight.
Something compels him to this apartment. A woman greets him, wipes pungent mugwort oil from her hands, and clicks on the local news.
…fight to remove 10 year coma patient from life support continues…
“I can wake you up,” she says.
L. M. Leffew dabbles in all manner of creative things. Sometimes she blogs about them.
Fabio stands by the punch bowl, the loud bass pounding in his ears. Lillian is on the other side of the room laughing loudly at Sebastian’s jokes. His heart twists with sadness. She will never notice him.
A silent tear slips down his cheek into the punch. Now it’s salty.
Jessica Larsen has been teaching Language Arts to middle school students for eight years. She met her husband while waiting in line at the post office. In her spare time, she loves to write stories, run, and go to movies by herself.
Days disappear into weeks. The weeks turn into months. Months become years.
Forgotten are the early mornings when I crawled into your bed. What was once yesterday, I breathed my secrets in your ear.
Dust has become of your bones. Flowers spring from your late beating heart. Here I wait.
Lynn Marie Lostumo spends her days doing dishes, laundry, and vacuuming. She’d rather be writing, knitting, and finishing her degree.
Before blacking out
I saw the school bus’s underside,
heard my car’s roof peel
from the door posts,
easy as a sardine can’s lid, much quicker.
I hunched low to the floor as possible,
but Delia didn’t think to.
I couldn’t look,
only thought
how many kids on there?
Blacked.
Todd Mercer won the Woodstock Writers Festival’s Flash Fiction contest and took 2nd and 3rd place of the Kent County Dyer-Ives Prizes in 2013. His chapbook Box of Echoes won the Michigan Writers Cooperative Press contest. Mercer’s poetry appears in Thema, Blue Collar Review, and Black Spring Review.
“Why don’t you go outside and play, Joey?”
“Stink hole,” he said, stubbornly shaking his head.
“The TV news scared you, didn’t it? Well, Joey, there’re no sinkholes in our backyard. Just watch me.”
Joey’s mom was stomping her way around the azaleas when she was ambushed by the skunk.
John H. Dromey has had short fiction published in Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, Gumshoe Review, Plasma Frequency Magazine, and elsewhere.
John sets up the packages and soon the work is done.
He heads over to find cover. After he takes a few steps, he is caught up in some old barbed wire mostly buried in the ground.
He can see the lighted dial on the timer: down to twelve seconds.
Denny E. Marshall has had art, poetry, and fiction published. His website is dennymarshall.com.
Her hand glances mine as she hands me the money.
Was it intentional? What was that look? What should I do next? “Eleven cents is your change.”
“Thank you,” she responds.
Was the eye contact just to be cordial? “Have a nice day.”
“You too.”
I meant it. Did you?
M.T. Nagel, a writer from the back woods of New Jersey, is fueled by tea and the great unknown.