Mrs. Brown, queen of the classroom.
57,559 hours of Romans, Vikings, Celts behind her, over and over.
Sandwich every lunchtime. Tweed suit, lace-ups, greying bun. Kids in navy uniforms, year after year.
History unchanging.
Endless, exquisite hours ahead.
Sequinned dress. High-heels. Flowing hair.
Queen of the ballroom.
History to write.
Josie Lejeune wrote this story.
I’d reach for the dishcloth, squared in black and white, and you’d don the Marigolds. Together, we’d wash and rinse and dry the cares from the world. Till finally, the chequered flag was raised and placed back on its hook.
I miss that: the dailiness, the dalliance in our lives.
Thomas Malloch wrote this story.
Every year the fox returns.
Once the days lengthen and the sun shines on our garden, he reclaims his place. Fox stretches out, as if on a sun-lounger, sometimes bringing his mate and—later—infants. He routinely fertilizes the vegetable patch.
Untouched by war, famine, pestilence—his presence is reassuring.
Jenny Logan lives in Edinburgh. She has stories selected for Dark Rose Press and Iron Faerie Publishing anthologies and has been featured in Friday Flash Fiction. She likes travelling to Marseille, Antwerp and Istanbul. Jenny is training for a half-marathon and enjoys watching Grand Sumo.
______to see whether the cancer
has also leapt to his brain,
my husband drives wintery roads,
bringing one of our daughters
to a birthday party. The dog
wags at the door, eager
for his walk, and the plow
leaves another ridge of icy snow
at the end of our driveway.
Jennifer L Freed mostly writes poems, which have appeared in various journals and anthologies. See more at her website, jfreed.weebly.com.
Every day after school, we go to the park.
Every day, the man on the bench admires the acers in the Japanese gardens.
Every day, he smiles and asks my daughter how she is.
But today he isn’t here. She whispers that maybe this is his first day in Heaven.
Henry appreciates nature, and spending time in the park admiring the trees seems like a pretty good way to use your time.
She stands, trackside, holding his lunchpail. Bright blue dress, matching shoes, red lips, yellow hair, a permanent wave. The diesel rounds the bend same time daily, right after school, halts with that same sudden jerk.
She has her man, a real engineer. He has his girl, waiting for him alone.
Bradley Harris has: one swell girl to come home to, two prize-winning novels, three imaginary dogs, a quadruple bypass, five books to write, six thousand books to read, seven decades of consciousness, eight or nine people who act as if they like him, and ten thousand reasons to be grateful.
You could set your watch by Old Man Haney’s trip to the mailbox. That’s how I knew something was wrong Thursday morning.
A sense of foreboding set in.
I was about to call 911 when I saw the widow Wilkins leaving his house.
But you didn’t hear that from me.
Susan Gale Wickes is from Indiana. In addition to writing poetry and short stories, she enjoys penning aphorisms and epigrams.
Crosswords, cappuccinos, and Classic FM: I basked in the gentle cadence of Sundays until I was caught depositing company profits into my account. Now, Sundays are indistinguishable from every other day: anaemic coffee, bartering jam for marmalade, and the sonorous symphony of my cellmate making a different kind of deposit.
Fee Johnstone is a managing editor of a medical journal who lives in Scotland and favours cats, craft beer, and cheese over most other things.
I try to be patient but it’s tough. He often forgets who I am.
And he’s acting more peculiar than ever. Last week he made a caterpillar walk on the rim of his teacup. Said it’d go on for years if you just set it straight once in a while.
Mark Farley is attempting to write 1,000,000 words in 2016. Only 7,000 to go; please wish him luck! See more at mumbletoes.blogspot.com.
She exhales into a brand new year, fresh and vibrant. Each beat of her heart expels any niggling suspicions of staleness. The morning rays flicker through, brightening the room, and she feels the picture’s complete, till hubby shatters it with shards of routine: “Morning, Love. Fancy a cup of tea?”
Connell is reassured that the more things change, the more they stay the same.