Trees sway, creating monsters on moonlit curtains. Fear squeezes my gut as shadows float toward me. Spindly fingers caress my throat and tighten as ragged nails draw blood. Choking, I claw at the bony wrists that vanish at dawn.
Staring in the mirror, I wonder if nightmares always leave marks.
Rita Riebel Mitchell writes in the Pinelands of South Jersey. Her work appears in Flash Fiction Magazine, Versification, Black Hare Press, 101 Words, and others. Visit her at FridayMicro.com.
The bumpy pumpkins all listed. We chose a large one with no redeeming qualities, just attitude.
Lid cut, insides scooped, a jagged face took shape. It grinned a lopsided grin.
On a street where every house had a perfect Jack-O-Lantern on its porch, ours was the one children loved best.
Candace Kubinec posts her stories at storydribbles.wordpress.com and her poetry at rhymeswithbug.com.
“Ten cents a dance,” I said. He held me close.
We curled around the room like automatons performing selected sequences of human movement to Glenn Miller’s “Moonlight Serenade,” oblivious to the sounds and smells of war. He, the prince. I, Cinderella in my glass slippers.
Stealing peace out of chaos.
Tears flooded down her cheeks. The girl’s most outrageous fantasy had been realized: a pair of unicorns, in nature.
As she surveyed their matted, blood-soaked coats with horror, her eyes froze on contact with the victor, who, looking elated but puzzled, said: “Why do you think we have the horn?”
Kai Gaitley is pursuing an English major at the University of Hawaii at Hilo, and enjoys discovering the energy that resides within every format, whether it is a sonnet, a blog, or a well researched essay. This dalliance with fiftywordism is a new and exacting path, full of high-stakes promise and brutal editing decisions.
Rukmini was tremendously busy throughout her vacations, clicking eye catching snaps and then continuously checking for new notifications on different sites.
“How were your holidays?” you ask.
“Great fun!” she answers, but her face does not light up.
She’s still awaiting that one comment for which the trip was made.
Vijai Pant is a language teacher in a school in India. He is also a freelance writer.
A witch stole our only lemon tree from the backyard. She rode on it, shoving the last ripe lemon into her toothless mouth.
A frightening, nonsensical sense of helplessness woke me up.
Auntie hovered over me and I remembered that real life is scarier than the witches of our dreams.
Azarin Sadegh, a former student of the late Les Plesko, is working on her 125,000 word novel, The Suicide Note.