I fought the urge to wreck the place.
Tears streamed down my face, blurring the decorations I’d put up for Daddy. Presents taunted me from under the tree.
It’s late January now. There will be no welcome home from the hospital, no belated Christmas celebrations… Those gifts won’t be opened.
Alyce Clark was so awed and inspired by the stories of others, she decided to write them for herself.
The stockings were hung with melancholy.
There had been three stockings in the decorations box. Mr. and Mrs. Jones hung up two. They dropped the third into the trash, almost sickened.
Mrs. Jones turned on the radio. Elvis Presley was crooning, “I’ll have a blue, blue, blue Christmas… without you.”
Tylor James is a twenty-five year old writer living in New Richmond, WI. He writes dark fiction and has had stories, poems, and essays published in such anthology books as ACCURSED: A Horror Anthology, Emerging American Horror Writers: Midwest Region, Emerging Wisconsin Writers: An Anthology of Non-Fiction, and Willow River Writers Anthology. Tylor is prolific, having written forty-five short stories and one novel in the year 2019 alone.
I crept under the front porch, swiped cobwebs, crawled over broken bricks and debris, sat cross-legged, bent, chewing on my braids. Jabbed at tears on my hot cheeks with grimy hands, ignoring the scurrying and slithering around me.
Above me, Mom and Dad were showing off my new baby brother.
MaryJane Nordgren is a retired family practice physician living in the foothills of the Oregon Coastal Range. Founder of Writers in the Grove, MJ enjoys laughing with and learning from fellow authors every Monday morning. Her novel NANDRIA’S WAR will be coming out soon.
My father-in-law-to-be mowed our yard with his tractor, transforming the tangle into a park.
My son sobbed, He killed my favorite blackberry bush.
“But there are more,” I argued. “Look, they’re all over.” He wouldn’t face where I pointed.
I wish I’d said, “It’s painful to lose what you love.”
Lois Rosen’s poetry books are Pigeons (Traprock Books 2004) and Nice and Loud (Tebot Bach 2015). She has taught ESL in Oregon, New York, Ecuador, Colombia, Japan, and Costa Rica. Lois founded the Peregrine Poets of Salem, Oregon, and leads the Trillium Writers and the Institute for Continued Learning Writing Group at Willamette University. She won Willamette Writers’ 2016 Kay Snow First Prize in Fiction.
Dad makes every shot. Nothing fazes him, not the windmill blades, the narrow bridge, the ripped carpet on Hole 7.
“They should fix that,” he notes, then drains the tricky putt.
My own ball rims out. Again. I curse it.
“Relax,” Dad tells me, as if he ever could have.
Jim Anderson is a retired college lecturer who lives in Michigan where he reads a lot and writes a little. More of his micro-fiction can be found at JimTheWriter.net.
Ponder I, alone: “What brought me here?”
The wind says nothing.
“What force?” cry I.
Nothing, again.
“God?” I wait for any answer.
Nothing comes.
“Nothing, then,” ponder I, alone. No fate steered my course. I chose this path.
I turn away to family dinner. How I despise political turkey.
Andrew is an unpublished fiction writer in the Washington area. In his spare time he enjoys pens, pads, word processors and pudding.
Santa’s drinking Dad’s wine.
Head held back, he guzzles, laughing like a honking goose. Reminds me of Dad.
Mother claims Santa loves me.
I lose hints of faith.
Four years later, Santa’s hurling wine bottles. Mother and I dart among fusillades.
She doesn’t say Santa loves me.
Love’s a myth.
Mir-Yashar is a graduate of Colorado State University’s MFA program in fiction. A recipient of two Honorable Mentions from Glimmer Train, his story, “Strangers,” was nominated for The Best Small Fictions. Mir-Yashar’s work is forthcoming or has been published in journals such as Maudlin House, The Drabble, Door Is A Jar, and Ariel Chart.
At the cemetery, I look at my father in his dark suit and dark shoes and I see a drop of water on his cheek and I think it might be a tear. But then I think no, it’s only the rain. And then it rains and rains and rains.
Robert Hoekman Jr thinks you die when you stop wanting. He writes and writes and writes. He lives on a farm in Virginia and refuses to be put into a box. See more at rhjr.net.
No one cries but Grandma. She cries at the wake after, in the church basement next to the table with the sheet cake. I tell her hang in there, Grandma, because I don’t know what I’m supposed to say. Then I go into the bathroom and stand inside the stall.
Robert Hoekman Jr thinks you die when you stop wanting. He writes and writes and writes. He lives on a farm in Virginia and refuses to be put into a box. See more at rhjr.net.
When someone can’t show up, my uncle asks me to be a pall bearer. I carry Grandpa to the ground with five men I don’t know. Grandpa who used to snatch my nose with his thick mechanic fingers. Grandpa whose skin is like rubber. I carry him to the ground.
Robert Hoekman Jr thinks you die when you stop wanting. He writes and writes and writes. He lives on a farm in Virginia and refuses to be put into a box. See more at rhjr.net.