Microfiction Monday – 46th Edition
This week’s artwork is “Altar” by Madeleine Barnes
Necro
by Alex Creece
Rigor mortis at reception desk. Groundhog Day in grindhouse fashion. Vulcanised flesh raises no unexpectdead questions. Demands are bleated above the sound of viscous, visceral humours bubbling in a guttural cauldron – toxicity within a casket of taxidermy. Hooks of obligation pull the corners of my mouth into a gruesome smile, pull my eyes open to groping, grappling, griping zombies. Shame oozes up my throat from somewhere I knew well but could not specifically pinpoint. It solidifies upon my epiglottis. I cannot breathe through it. I cannot swallow it. Something trickles down my neck, my spine. The undead just keep bleating.
Plato’s Cave
by Jennifer L Freed
In the dream, it is your birthday, but there’s no cake. You are afraid. Your doctor has just told you something urgent, but you’ve forgotten what it is. You hide in a cave, feel safe there, warm. Shadows flicker, reminding you of candlelight. When you half-wake in the darkness, you remember nothing, yet think briefly of your doctor. You’ve found a tiny lump at the base of your skull. You slide deeper beneath your blankets, drift off again, dream of chocolate cake.
Change in my Pocket
by Kenny A. Chaffin
Sick of our constant fights I fled to Safeway for beer. The translucent red cube was there when I pulled change from my pocket to pay the cashier. I stopped, entranced by its billions of tiny blinking specks deep inside. An entire universe of swirling galaxies and stars full of possibility. “Seventeen ninety-five!” he said. Back home I held the cube out to her. “Look at it dammit! Look at it!” She rolled her eyes. I pushed it under her nose. “Look!” I said, touching it, tapping one, two, three times, and she was gone as if she’d never been.
Old Tongues
by Michael Shattuck
When I was a child, I spoke as a child, thought as one. As an adult, I took that child out, past the woodshed, to the marketplace and ordered it to work for me. I spend its pay on what helps me forget the woodshed and the marketplace, which invents newer and more elaborate childish things. Now I speak into a prophecy mirror; no thought is unknowable, no time beyond understanding. That child says it wants its own child. It too will send me its pay or I will set a time to take us all out behind the woodshed.
Store
by Laurie Stone
At camp we rode horses to a general store. That’s where I saw the yellow haired children on a splintery porch. Their clothes were ragged, their teeth blackened to little daggers from drinking Cokes, their elbows scabbed. They stared at the coins and bills we tossed lightly on the counter. Corkscrew rolls of flypaper hung from naked rafters, thickly coated with buzzing flies. The pale, blond children faded into the heat. Their orange kittens were too languid to squirm away. I did not speak to the children. The screen door banged each time we flew in or out.
Plum
by Ima Ocon
She told me to twine my hair around the chopsticks, praising its silky length, never looking closely enough to notice black blending into dark brown. Her glasses were gone. She had no need for them, even when she was stumbling over her clogs and we had to rush to her side because a hip surgery would kill her the moment they cut her skin open. Sometimes she sang, incomprehensible: I could not bear being taught its syllables, or her refusal at my refusal. I pick up rice in between the chopsticks, and my hair at full hardly grazes my shoulders.
Microfiction Monday Magazine Best of 2015 – Cover, Table of Contents, and Preorder Link!
The Microfiction anthology is off to the printers and scheduled for release on May 15th! This anthology features the reader-voted best stories from 2015 alongside brand new works from each of the contributing authors. The cover art is “Beggar King Does Whilst the Earth Boy Plays Human” by Ege Al’Bege, which appeared in our December 2015 online edition. You can preorder your copy for $9.99 (free US shipping) from Blue Skirt Productions by clicking here. This title may also be purchased from Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and most major online booksellers. Check out that table of contents!
Microfiction Monday – 45th Edition
This week’s artwork is “Fading Identities” by Fabio Sassi
A Single Man Visiting Seattle
by Gregory Ramirez
Not bad, you utter as the man onstage sings Elvis. Your sister’s friend stands up, her hand out to you. Go ahead. Take it. It’s just a dance. What starts as a waltz changes once she draws closer to you, her hands wrapped behind your neck, her head pressed to your chest. Your sister’s graduation happened earlier today, and the dinner finished a few hours ago. You fly back tomorrow to California, returning to its drought, leaving the drizzle outside. Deprived of affection, committed to avoiding a one-night stand, you think to yourself, Please keep singing, please keep singing.
Curl
by Erika Price
I would curl up with grief whenever I thought he was leaving. I would hold my hands against my chest or strike my head against the wall, my face contorted as the cries came out, knowing it was wrong and manipulative, unable to stop. I am sure that I tormented him. It was only after I left that he began to torment me. He would sit in the parking lot outside my window, curled up like a hurt child, mewling and begging for cars to strike him. His pain made me feel strong, but not at all safe.
Forever
by Jason VanFossen
I stabbed my finger with his gold embroidery needle. Instead of testing the iron in my blood, I tested the gold in his needle. Now every time my right thumb touches anything, I feel the prick where my blood fell out. Michael took everything except his embroidery kit and that pillow he made for our one-year anniversary that read “Forever.” In the sunlight of morning, the steam from my coffee dances into nothing. I feel a slight pain when, after another sip, I swipe right. Forever is a short time.
The Subway
by Lisa Rehfuss
It’s 5:55pm, and he’s where he has stood every night since I started taking the subway. His job is to check subway passes. The purpose is to move people through the turnstiles quickly. I smile and say hello, as I have every night for a year. He never responds. He can’t seem to find it in himself to talk to anyone who is not beautiful. I constantly remind myself there is nothing being gained or lost with a simple ‘hello’. He can treat me like the invisible woman, but I will not, and do not, step quietly through his world.
Abandoned
by Mercedes Lawry
She gave that flinty smile before she drove away. The boy felt his stomach drop and a chilled hand curved around his heart and squeezed. She was gone again, mother or not.
He was staying here, without her and anything that smelled of comfort. I am less than that pile of dirt by the steps, he thought, I’m just an outline, nothing she needs to keep close. The dark was coming now, pushing into the blue-gold sky and he stood watching with the flimsy hope that he too would be swallowed up.
The Laborer
by Michael Kulp
The laborer blinked away sweat and pulled another handful of the Rich Man’s crop. His unfettered mind dulled the grinding sameness with vivid fantasies of a soft future. Calloused hands did the work, and he counted his dreams and regrets. Weeks metastasized into years. He saw his children, then grandchildren, grow and leave. They had no callouses on their hands, and he was worried. Would they amount to anything? At last, as he sighed away his dying breaths, his fading mind felt the gentle caresses from those many soft hands. He had made them soft. And he finished without regrets.
Microfiction Monday – 44th Edition
This week’s artwork is “Best Seat in the House” by W. Jack Savage
Up Here Broken Down
by Matt O’Connor
He is smiling as he helps me inspect the Yamaha’s motor. “Bad bike,” he says. It’s the first English I’ve heard in days. There are not many other travelers in the mountains. A child walks past. From her fist, two puppies dangle lifelessly by their tails. We get the motor working again. The man is still shaking his head. The villagers have gathered around something I can’t see. I thank him again and set off towards the valley, where the air is quick and heavy. In the distance a pig screams as its feet are bound. The blade is ready.
Total Failure Lucky Duck
by Eldon Craig Reishus
Donald pretended that his life was a total failure because he was concerned about nothing besides authoring A Lucky Duck, his autobiography. But Donald truly was a lucky duck, for he never suffered any block as he wrote by flashlight beneath the covers. Donald scripted his rich sex life like he was moving forwards on his autobiography by writing backwards from the bankrupt ending. His sex script partner was the rhythmic method actress Jillian Jenkins. Her role was to make our lucky duck feel like a total failure by bringing home real men to take care of his bills.
Cigar Features
by Ashlie Allen
His features burned last night while he was smoking cigars. I was sitting on the couch, bored, sad, imagining what was happening in space. The smoke gathered around his jaws until his entire countenance was covered. I briefly closed my eyes, having drank too much gin. I heard him scream, which frightened me, and when I ran to calm him, I saw a flat surface where his eyes, nose and brows once rested. Only a tiny portion of his lips remained, and I kissed it to silence his terror.
Thirst
by Shih-Li Kow
We were on the move again, hunting rain clouds. We have been too slow and for days, we saw nothing but patches of dried mud left by others. But today, we found a baby cloud snagged on trees in an abandoned valley. We put out our buckets and we killed it. Mother was the most savage, as always. When it bled, we stood in its rain and opened our mouths to feed. Although we were told to hide our bodily pleasures, I could not stop my spasms. After the endless thirst, every drop of water was the purest drug.
A Picture of Grief
by Joelle A. Chasse
On the front lawn, the owl was preening its dead mate. Its beak combed through the feathers as carefully as you’d adjust someone’s buttons. Funeral rituals in animal form. “Look,” I told my five-year-old son. “Look at that, poor thing. She must have loved him.” His grandma recently died—what a perfect opportunity to show him, it’s okay, animals grieve too. He looked up at me with watery eyes. “Why’s she eating him?” he asked, and suddenly, perspective mattered.
Microfiction Monday – 43rd Edition
This week’s artwork is “Blue” by G.J. Mintz
Thursday Commute
by McKenzie Schwark
The sun floods through the doors and washes the train car in amber. He enters with his hair tucked neatly into a grey beanie; his beard auburn and misshapen. He settles into the seat across from me and becomes a silhouette against the mid afternoon sun. I could imagine loving him for a lifetime full of Thursday mornings and red-headed babies. I bless myself for snoozing my alarm and missing my train. He is looking at me. He shifts. We are watching each other and smiling coyly back and forth. He exits downtown, dissipating between State and Lake.
Ship of Fools
by Paul Rogalus
Red-headed drunk guy in a Red Sox hat on the “Ship of Fools” harbor booze cruise gives his “girlfriend” his ATM card, and she tries it at the bank machine fifteen feet away. “Mike, it doesn’t work,” she calls. He smiles stupidly and shrugs, and she uses her card. She turns around with cash, and he asks her for a Sam Adams Summer Ale. She gives him the finger and goes upstairs to dance to “Sugar Magnolia.”
Vultures
by Jackson Freud
Jason photographs the dead. He keeps a police scanner in his apartment, races the cops, coroners and paramedics to crime scenes. He has photographed jumper-suicides, murdered men and women, car crash victims. The pictures are tacked to a corkboard in his kitchen. “This is sick,” Sam says. She moves out, leaves Jason with his dead friends. He doesn’t mind though; he enjoys the silence. One morning he snaps a faceless man, pins the Polaroid to his board. He studies it for minutes, hours, days. He discovers a lump on his testicle and prays the next vulture captures his good side.
Vacancy
by Hasen Hull
Approached her in the usual club and started with the usual line. We’re both young and beautiful; we talked about ourselves and pop music. To seal the deal, I made her laugh, entertained her like a child. If we were in another world, we could find a hotel with a vacancy. Instead we’re back at mine, loud and lurid as we screw, two strangers at the peak of liberation. After, she gets up and uses the bathroom. Through the wall, I can hear her pissing. It’s the only noise I’ve heard all night I can relate to.
On the Detroit-to-Chicago Line
by Brent Fisk
My uncle, a brakeman for Amtrak who lost a son himself, told this story many times: A young man walking, his back to the train. Between cities at speed, it could take them a mile before they could stop. No horn could make him look back, step off. Firemen cut a path through the trees so they could wash what was left of the man free of the grill. My uncle split a bottle of bourbon with my dad, and he’d wink when he’d notice me listening behind the couch, say, “Get your uncle a few more cubes of ice.”
Microfiction Monday – 42nd Edition
This week’s artwork is “Cardboard Dreams” by Emily Story.
The Least of These
by Mir-Yashar Seyedbagheri
Ever since his wife left with that priest, Matthew hangs out at bars. He drinks like a peasant, listens to trains wailing, lies about Betty. She’s dead, he says. He drowns their halcyon days, when responsibility was a shadow, throwing Junior Mints at children. Driving past apartments, mooning strangers. Swapping identities. His mind swishes over her note that read: I need a higher purpose. You too. He lies to fallen princesses around jukeboxes, says she had cancer, loved him wholeheartedly. If he keeps talking, to the moon, the emptiness, he’ll almost believe it, a man among the least of these.
Silent Thoughts
by Romalyn Ante
I rocketed from the steel chair, flopping the dated magazine onto the table. I was certain I’d felt the weight of your fingers running down my arm. A glimpse of your shoulder as you pattered through the back door and you were gone. The doctor called it “grief hallucinations”. I didn’t ask for his explanation. The grey dog hopped on to the sill observing the faint flashes through the misted window, attentive of every screeching car, hoping, that, perhaps tonight you would tuck him to bed. But like any other nights, he and I would fall asleep, waiting…
Mooseface Scumbag
by Dan Crawley
After saying our goodbyes at Sky Harbor, I complain to Paul in the car how his sister called me Julia, his ex. “At least they don’t call you Mooseface Scumbag like your family,” says Paul. Later, I feel bad and write him a funny love note and tack it to the fridge. My lovely Mooseface Scumbag. I would kill you, and then myself, if you ever found another Julia. XO. Then Paul’s mother visits. She insists on staying with us. I come upon her in the kitchen, staring at my note. “I knew it,” I hear her murmur.
A Hard Winter’s Tale
by Joachim Frank
The episode my grandfather recalled in his letter happened during a hard winter. It had snowed three consecutive days, then the temperature rose and the snow turned into rain. Next, a deep freeze overnight turned the snow on the ground into a shell of pure ice. In the morning the valley was filled with deer in many hapless positions. God works in mysterious ways. They had stepped out of the forest on top of the hill, lost their footing and slid down on their backs. Down in the valley the farmers stood open-mouthed, with their knives raised, and ready.
I Always Wear Pink on Tuesday
by Roy Dorman
“Jason, we need to talk and I’m going to be doing most of the talking,” said the angry voice on the phone. “Hold on. Wait a minute; wrong number. There’s no Jason here. But, ya know what, I could be Jason if ya want me to,” Bill Grogan said coyly.
“All right, smart guy, be Jason. What do you think I found when I was dusting under the bed this morning? A pair of women’s panties with ‘Tuesday’ in hot pink lettering on them.”
“Now, honey, I can explain that; those are my panties.”
Prometheus Bound
by Joshua “Jammer” Smith
Wake up.
Pray.
Eat. Cereal.
Go to work.
Come home.
Fuck. I’m dying.
Read.
Write.
Go to bed.
Dream. I’m dying again.
Wake up (too early)
Kill myself.
Wake up.
Try again.
2015 Microfiction Print Anthology Voting Results!
The votes have been tallied, and all authors of winning stories have replied to their notifications confirming their desire to be included in the 2015 Microfiction Monday anthology, which is scheduled to be in print by May of this year. The following winning stories will be included in the anthology alongside original, unpublished works from each author:
“Issue” by Jonathan Cardew
“Coming out of My Shell” by Rob Grim
“Chasing Swallows” by Allison Huang
“Aftermath” by Michael Jagunic
“There Once Was an Old Lady Who Lived in an Air Jordan” by Smith Q Johns
“Numbers Never Lie” by Jace Killan
“Networking” by Casey Kimberly
“Crwys Road” by Steve Lucas
“Before He Gets Home” by Bill McStowe
“Mermen” by Cole Meyer
“Outside” by D. Quentin Miller
“Cleanliness” by Brad Nelms
“Care Package” by Nancy Nguyen
“Ubiquitous” by Marc D. Regan
“A Song Before Dying” by C.C. Russell
“The Small End of the Funnel” by Robert Scotellaro
“The Bug” by B.E. Seidl
“The Storm” by Sam Snoek-Brown
“Mom” by Zack Stein
“The Drowning Pool” by Cathy S. Ulrich
“Provocation” by Sarah Vernetti
Congratulations to all of the winners! And to those whose stories did not make it, do take heart that this competition was stiff precisely because EVERY story we’ve published on this site was chosen due to its being exceptional, yours included!
Microfiction Monday – 41st Edition
This week’s artwork is “I Had a Bad Dream” by W. Jack Savage.
Yellow
by Lynn Mundell
She had no feeling for the color; it barely registered. Then it was everywhere. The newborn with his jaundiced, puckered face. The buttery sunlight the nurse held him up to, that set his amber down ablaze. The lemon her husband had painted the nursery, until her mother claimed the color agitated babies. Then the egg white with a hint of honey on the freshly painted walls. The rubber duck, the sodden diapers, the pureed squash, all saffron. And her own fear, that something would steal away this golden happiness, became the darkest shade of all—a stinging wasp, a poison.
Packing
by Len Kuntz
In the locker room he lit a small tuft of tobacco.
“It’s not okay to smoke in here,” I said.
“You a fireman now?”
“You shouldn’t be smoking at all.”
“Now you’re my wife?”
“Listen,” I said, feeling brave, “how about we go grab a drink?”
His eyes dropped to my shorts, and I felt myself blush.
“You might want to take care of that first,” he said.
I turned toward the locker, stared into the gray, metal slits. I counted backwards from one hundred in my mind. By the time I got to zero, he was gone.
One in the Eye
by Clay Greysteel
The bullet entered his eye socket, tore through brain matter, and exited the back of his skull. The police arrived first to find his sobbing wife and a gun in his limp hand. They thought maybe it was a suicide attempt as they administered first aid, but a bullet in the eye was a choice they’d never seen before. As he recovered in the hospital, they asked him what happened. “Was just checkin’ to see if it was loaded,” he said.
Acorn Truths
by Lauri Rose
The deer remember where the lettuce grew last year. They still go searching for it, their bright black noses snuffing the dirt for something that no longer grows there. Tender lettuce is good spring and summer fare. But in the fall the deer will want the life-sustaining acorns. I fed you acorns also, but it did no good. You left me anyway, despite the hours spent pounding brown nuts to mush. Now, I miss your broad shoulders in the morning and there is no one to remind me why I love the first daffodil so much.
Identity
by Rachel Warren
Isaac was not his real name. He knew this. But he’d learned in the last few days not to argue the point. Carol, the woman claiming to be his wife was buckling him into the passenger side of her car. Both of his arms were broken. He couldn’t do it himself. She smiled as his buckle clicked. That fake smile she’d been using ever since the look of horror wore off after he stopped insisting Isaac was not his name. Everything about her—her hair, her eyes, the scent of her shampoo—all of it entirely unfamiliar. This car, unfamiliar.
2015 Print Anthology Voting!
We are proud to announce that Blue Skirt Productions will be publishing a 2015 microfiction print anthology!
But we need your help! We are asking all of our readers to vote for their favorite five stories published on our site in 2015. The 20 stories with the most votes will be selected for print publication, and each selected author will be invited to submit an additional, previously unpublished piece for inclusion as well.
View the archives and look at the stories from January through December and identify your favorites. Then click here to cast your votes!
Voting will be open from now until January 15th. The top 20 authors will be notified by January 30th and each will be asked to submit new pieces for inclusion in the anthology by March 15th. We then hope to have the anthology in print by May 15th!
Notes:
*Some authors have been published more than once this year. If more than one of their stories makes the top 20, only the highest rated one will be chosen for publication.
*If we are unable to contact an author to notify them they’ve been chosen, then they will be excluded from the anthology, and the next highest voted story will be selected.
*Any author may decline publication or inclusion in the voting upon request.
*Only those stories published in the 2015 calendar year are eligible. This includes editions 29 through 40 and the special AWP edition published in mid April.
Microfiction Monday – 40th Edition
This week’s artwork is “Beggar King Does Whilst the Earth Boy Plays Human” by Ege Al’Bege.
The Book of Jobs
by Kenny A. Chaffin
Maybe it came from reading science fiction, watching The Matrix or remembering Biblical burning bushes. I asked Siri what would happen if I was somehow sucked up into the network where she was. It must have been one of those super-secret Easter egg phrases because as soon as the words were spoken I found myself inside, reborn, resurrected, and bodiless; Googling answers for a million simultaneous strangers with ease and ponderously speaking the results. What now, I thought, beginning to panic. Then I heard a familiar voice. “What is this beating, this pounding I feel in my chest,” Siri asked.
Chasing Swallows
by Allison Huang
My father woke to streaks of hair on his wet pillow. The day we found our mutt’s warped body in the street was the day my father decided to shave his head. Teddy found a broken bottle in the recycling where he cut his fist, and more nestled like birds under the stove. Now frost soils the ground. My father’s body disappears into the maw of a casket. A butcher shuffles outside to watch a dog bleed red shadow onto the street. What a lovely shape, he says before ducking back in to carve another breast to pieces.
Heirloom
by Dave Donovan
My father would ask children if they wanted to see a monkey. Then he would show them their reflections in a small pocket mirror. Some nights he walked in from work wearing a horror mask and spread his arms for a hug. I remember trembling. Dollar bills on invisible fish line would zip into his palm while my fingers snatched at air. The old man is dying. I carry a picture of a pygmy marmoset, ready to hand him, tell him I found a photo from his youth he might want to see, back when he had all his hair.
Neither Here nor There
by Joshua James Jordan
Riding a unicorn through San Francisco, I saw a man holding a sign: “Anything helps”. Grey and white streaked through his beard and he wore a military jacket, the colors faded. I reached into my bag and gave him a green nugget so that he could buy his own unicorn. “God bless you,” he said, offering toothless smiles. More showed up but I was blessed with my currency, befriending many, feeding five thousand with a single loaf. We lit their struggles on fire and exhaled. They followed me, riding through streets of rainbows. The troubles of another world faded away.
My Three-Way
by Charles Rafferty
Our neighbor Bonnie had a lot of loud sex. To be fair, she tried turning up the stereo, but her boyfriend always pointed her right at our headboard. One night, Donna and I were making love while Bonnie was getting fucked. Bonnie came repeatedly on the other side of the wall, and hearing her, or knowing that I was listening, made Donna more vocal, more passionate. Bonnie, in turn, got louder still. But then, over breakfast, Donna denied having come with Bonnie, and that afternoon in the communal laundry, both of them kept quiet as they measured out their soap.
Face Plant
by Ashlie Allen
I want to sleep inside a flower pot, but mother yells at me. She says I feel sorry for myself and think of pretty plants too much. When I was four, I stammered through the neighborhood with an orchid pot on my head, searching for my friend. He didn’t have a face, only an oval shaped hollowness setting on his neck. He hid beside a creek. “Do you hate me?” I asked, sitting beside him. He grabbed my hand and set it inside the hollowness, like he was trying to plant a seed inside of it so he’d grow features.
The Mission
by Nels Hanson
It’s safe. Don’t worry. Put your arm through here. Now buckle up. There, that’s good. I’ll tape the wire to your right wrist so you can hold the controls in your hand. It’s simple. Green is go, red is stop. Blue’s the parachute. You have it straight, what the boss wants you to do? You sure? Okay, give me your hand. Good luck! Just bend your legs and put your palms together, like you’re jumping upward for a swan dive. Now I’ll stand back as you ignite the booster. We’ll send the signal when we’ve got you tracked over Montreal.
Microfiction Monday Magazine 