I stand at the window, watching the trauma helicopter land. I perform the ritual: touch glass, touch wood, touch skin, and the wounded will live.
The nurse puts me back in my hospital bed.
All month the helicopter lands; all month I stand at the window.
I lose the baby.
Laura J. Frantz lives and loves outside of DC and blogs at laurafrantz.com.
The plane was loud, and the explosion louder, but the air is much worse than both. Unfeeling, it whips my ears as I drop. It’s not the air’s fault, though; I am falling through it.
I should have worn earplugs. My flight is now more deafening than the screaming children.
Corey Orthmann is a freelance writer and mercenary wordsmith-for-hire based in Los Angeles, California.
He sat outside the bank, his hands in his pockets, where they caressed lint, two quarters and empty dreams. It was Friday and also the first. Businessmen and the elderly walked in shoulder to shoulder to do business. He wished he could join them. He missed the rank and file.
AR Neal got bit by the writing bug back in the late 1970s while watching Rod Serling and reading Ray Bradbury. Although she has worked in education for more than a quarter century, she has never been cured of her penchant for speculative fiction. Find some of her flash fiction at www.starvingartist.wordpress.com.
Susa was beautiful. Videophone calls from London to Rio kept his love alive.
Now, outside the café where they met, he would surprise her when she arrived from the beach.
Her tanned body reflected in his sunglasses, as she nonchalantly brushed past to kiss Paulo, her husband, the café owner.
John B Sinclair is a much-travelled Scot who has now returned to Scotland, where he enjoys freelance writing on a variety of subjects.
He smirked. “Well the principle don’t rule us here!”
“Huh?”
“You said you wouldn’t do it outta principle. I was making a joke.”
“Those words are spelled differently. The principal is your pal.”
“Mr. Jansen ain’t my pal.”
“No, it’s a mnemonic device, for remembering the spell–”
“Just smoke it!!!”
Caroline Shapiro is a writer and aspiring zookeeper living in Tucson, Arizona.
Children aren’t mean. Sometimes they just lack common sense.
For example, at the party I was in charge of the pinata. Finding one, hanging it up, getting some big sticks.
We were having a lot of fun until Mrs. Pinata from down the block showed up, looking for her kid.
Joe Malone is living in a mud hut in South Sudan. Read more from him at http://joem18b.wordpress.com/.
Francine picked at the stitches, removing them one by one, each a separate, deliberate act.
In the hearth a log shifted as those beneath it burnt away. Sparks glittered momentarily before extinguishing themselves. She glanced up at the sound it made, fingers never stopping, never ceasing to pick, pick, pick.
Emily ripped the list of baby names out of her journal and held it up over the sink, admiring it this one last time. The paper was heavy, as if it were waterlogged with the tears she’d cried after he said it wouldn’t work. But oh, how that list burned.
Julie Judkins is a librarian and famous explorer. She makes art journals under the name Show Me Your Riffs.
The Mastersons wondered if parenting was easier when dead. They agreed it was pleasant observing their boys unseen, but Father preferred chastising in death, believing the boys would only argue anyway, whereas Mother felt she could reason with them if still alive, at which Father laughed. The boys would’ve, too.
Raised in the Deep South by a Catholic Yankee and a Korean Buddhist in a magic shoppe turned comic book store, life was always interesting for Andrea, to say the least. Passionate about reading, writing, and all things comics!
“You’re doing it wrong,” the Hatter said. He laughed as Alice poured the tea. All hands and fingers. No wrist. She was the mad one.
“You’re being rude,” she said.
Laughter stopped when she spilled a drop. He wondered if the Queen of Hearts needed more heads for the day.
Tamra Artelia Martin received her MFA in creative writing from the University of Central Florida. An overachiever at heart and a glutton for academic punishment, or academic joy depending on the day, she’s currently earning her second MFA in stage and screen writing at Lesley University. Check out her blog on writing.