The carousel spun, frozen horses galloping within the abandoned funfair.
She clung to her mount, fingers prying flaking paint away. Dreaming of a heartbeat, the rhythm between hooves and breath.
Tears tracked down her face. She missed horses the most, yet like everything they were gone.
Lost to the plague.
Andrew originates from the UK but lately finds himself drinking black coffee and dodging possums in Brisbane.
Registration class with Miss Stone forty years ago created scars mental and physical.
“Rogers?” she would call, aware of his impediment. “Enunciate!”
“P-P-Present,” he stuttered.
Now the twisted face of the stroke patient in emergency looked familiar.
“I’m Doctor Rogers. When did you suffer the stroke? Enunciate, Miss Stone.”
Silence.
John B Sinclair is a much-travelled Scot who has now returned to Scotland, where he enjoys freelance writing on a variety of subjects.
Editor’s Note: Read the sequel, Payback (Part Two).
If Bunny didn’t get off here, she never would. She would stay on this same road for the rest of her life.
This road would bring her happiness. “Happiness, nothing more,” she thought. Screw that.
She jerked the steering wheel hard, just catching the exit to the road less travelled…
Devin Hubbard is a neuroscientist by dawn, moonlighting writer by dusk.
I couldn’t flush my dead goldfish. Instead, I left him in the bowl in the kitchen and I cry as I mix a tuna salad for lunch. My dishtowels smell like low tide. I keep his plastic toy squid on my bedside table and I dream of a heaven, underwater.
Carolyn Mainardi, a graduate of Boston University, lives and writes all around New England. Her short fiction appears in Danse Macabre and is forthcoming in Burn Magazine.
Stan poured himself a tall glass of milk.
Sometimes he got to thinking about the stuff that’s in milk. Blood, pus, artificial hormones. Sometimes that made him feel sick and put him off drinking it. But most times he just smacked his lips and knocked it back without a care.
Samuel Best is a Glasgow-based writer and also runs Octavius, a literary magazine for students studying in Scotland. Samuel is currently writing two novels based on different blends of Scottish national identity, violence and running away. He tweets at @spbbest and has more stories available on his website: samuelbest.weebly.com.
“Terry isn’t right for you, Melissa.”
“Dad, he’s perfect…”
“He’s crippled.”
“There’s nothing wrong with him, believe me.” Melissa pointed at her father’s chest. “You’re being intolerant.”
“I really wish the problem was just me acting ignorant, but I’ve seen Terry when he’s angry. It’s his rage that cripples him.”
David Rawding has a BA in English from The University of New Hampshire and an MFA in Fiction from Southern New Hampshire University where he teaches English as an adjunct professor. His fiction has been published in numerous literary journals and magazines. David is searching for a home for his completed mystery novel “Taking on Water.” In addition to his professor work, David works as a fly-drift boat fly-fishing guide in Alaska. Keep up with David at davidrawding.com.
It was love at first sight and it was everything he’d ever dreamed of, his sun, his moon, and his stars. He wanted them to grow old together. The apple of his eye, his everything. His heart had been taken hostage.
His wife wished she’d never bought him that Xbox.
Laura Chester is studying creative writing at university, hoping to go on to make a living doing what she loves.
They walk among us. Amos couldn’t hold his liquor and spilled the beans. I didn’t believe him until he levitated the bottle of hot sauce on our barroom table.
Here to invade, these aliens? Nope. Earth is a galactic Tijuana. Alcohol. Drugs. Violence. Littering.
It’s boring out there, in civilization.
Joe Malone is fluent in the South Sudanese languages of Nuer and Zande.
Amanda woke to crinkling paper.
She squinted at her husband as he flipped through a magazine at 5:00 a.m. on a Sunday. “Do you have to make so much noise this early in the morning?”
Jerry lowered his reading glasses.
“It depends, really… Do you have to snore when you sleep?”
Kristina England resides in Worcester, Massachusetts. Her writing is published or forthcoming in Gargoyle, Short, Fast, and Deadly, Yellow Mama, and other magazines. For more on her writing, visit kristinaengland.blogspot.com.
Leroy, the toughest guy in Chunktown, stole a gun and robbed the Central Bank.
“Gimme the money, punk,” he said like on TV.
Leroy fled with the loot up the middle of Main and collided with a bus.
The city paid for the funeral. Leroy ain’t so tough no more.
Gary Clifton, forty years a cop, has over sixty short pieces published or pending with various venues. He has an M.S. from Abilene Christian University.