The motivational speakers took the stage. The audience didn’t expect these founders of the phenomenally successful dog-training company, Sit Down!, to unveil a new venture. On command, their yellow lab, Connor, joined them at the microphone to explain, in an almost imperceptible canine accent, his handlers’ latest enterprise, Speak Up!
Susan Heisner, aka the wyowordslinger, writes for fun and connection.
You’re bludgeoned with (arguably) the scariest diagnosis you’ll ever receive. Parts of your body are chopped off, dissected, catalogued, banked. You’re tethered, drips saturating what remains with killer chemicals. You lie bare, pinpointed radiation beams burning tender fresh scars.
Finally to hear: “If you die of something else, this worked.”
Susan Heisner, aka the wyowordslinger, writes for fun and connection.
Wickham Wax Works docent, Marilyn, unearthing from cold storage the figures for the “Wickham Soothsayers” installation, levered open the last wooden crate to find her late granny, Florence, staring up at her. Marilyn carefully pried her long lost Magic 8-Ball from Granny’s wax fingers, wondering if it still held answers.
Susan Heisner, aka the wyowordslinger, writes for fun and connection.
You did everything else right: tended the immaculate coop twice daily, fed only Noland’s Layers’ Blend. I grew fat on bugs, seeds, eggs, and finally, chickens. You suspected, but my luck held as not once, but twice, you released me from the trap, your sights set on an imagined fox.
Susan Heisner is the recipient of a 1st Place Big Write 2021 Award for her short story, Tales of the Wyoming Wordslinger. She favors flash fiction and wishes she could tap the everyday as well as Billy Collins does.