“Right hand, left shoulder. Left hand, right shoulder. Squeeze.”
I hug myself using the instructions from your last phone call. For a year, these nine words are all I’ve had of you. Unable to face the world without your love, I let the tears fall and savor your words again.
Suzi Harris is a retired technical writer working on her first novel with the support of her crazy Canadian husband and two psychotic cats.
“I’ve broken it off.”
“What do you mean, you’ve broken it off? She was the best thing that ever happened to you. I loved her too, if the truth be known. You’re such an idiot! I have a mind to…”
“I mean I’ve broken the tip off my pen.”
“…Oh.”
Connell Wayne Regner had successfully avoided writing creatively since he wrote spontaneous lyrics to music some years ago. Although from a linguistic background, he has serendipitously succumbed to fiction. His other dabblings can be found at paragraphplanet and wtdmagazine.wordpress.com.
A male Jew and a female Muslim, both in their early twenties, were standing in a battle field holding guns against each other’s heads.
The Jew said, “If there were no religion, we might be dancing happily with each other right now.”
The Muslim replied, “In your club, or mine?”
Saeed Rezaee, from Iran, holds a B.A. in English Translation and shares his creative writing at teanglish.com.
The walls were white.
Poor Sophie was alone in this room, aside from a gargantuan bookshelf filled with thousands of individually shrink-wrapped books. She never opened them, in fear of ruining the plastic. She never dared to even touch the white walls, lest she chip or smudge them.
Until today.
Ariana Abad is an aspiring cultural anthropologist and loves to write during whatever free time she can find. She collects definitions of Love and is a bike-enthusiast, a daydreamer, and a wish-maker.
On some summer nights, Chicago is as hot and sweltering as Pontianak. The whole city seems to slide off its continental shelf towards Indonesia.
“Sayang, where you go?”
“Got to get to lake.”
“Wait!”
“Come on, then.”
Feet are in water. Waves rush up our thighs, backs, and shoulders… Ahhh!
Living in Chicago, L.S. Sharrow is a dancer, a good cook, and a writer of sometimes funny, sometimes not so funny fiction.
Rain and wicked wind pelted me, inverted my umbrella into a baptismal basin. Not once but three times.
The accumulated water spilled out each time with the weight of my sins. Metal ribbing could not be reshaped and the umbrella had to be thrown out.
I wasn’t blessed that day.
Krystyna Fedosejevs writes poetry and short stories. She has had several of her poems published, and has recently had flash fiction published online at Flash Fiction World.
“There I was, surrounded by the entire German army! Their tanks and infantry finally cornered me, and I had nowhere to…”
“Wow, Grandpa! Were you scared?”
“Terrified! You can’t even imagine the fear.”
“But Grandpa, how did you escape?”
Grandpa grinned as he replied, “I didn’t.” Then, he faded away.
Guy Church is a software developer centered near St. Louis, Mo. He’s spent 6 years in the Air Force doing the same, and has since moved on to the private sector. He has a wife and 2 children, and he spends entirely too much time devouring the content of computer games.
“I don’t know. I just don’t.” He was shaking his head left to right.
“Until last Wednesday I was quote recovering unquote.”
“I just don’t know.”
“My wife two years ago. My son last year. Now me.”
“Cancer. I don’t know. I still can’t sell you a gun.”
Reynold Junker is a short fiction and poetry writer currently living in Los Angeles (Silver Lake), California.
You held her on your arm. She was stunning, and classy too. You didn’t tell her.
You opened the door and walked through first. Like you always do.
That’s how you lost her.
Another guy moved in and swept her away. He held the door open on their way out.
With a background in filmmaking, Justene studied writing and directing at the University of Auckland. Her short story Seven Dollar Fifty Life was recently published in Snorkel Magazine #17. She is from Auckland, New Zealand.
A single thought echoed through my head like a broken record as she slowly uncurled her perfectly manicured fingers from the gun’s handle and let it drop to the blood soaked carpet beside me: This is a woman I could spend the rest of my life with.
And I did.
Chris Griglack was born and raised in Massachusetts where he has lived for 23 years. He graduated from the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth in 2012 with a degree in Writing, Rhetoric, and Communications.