Microfiction Monday – 128th Edition
Formal Feeling
by Andrew Stancek
I am not in denial any more.
I spend my time on the couch, a blanket up to my ears. Monster has opened the box of Chablis, brings a glass, pops a pepperoni pizza in the oven.
I’ve mentioned him to the shrink but he always lets it slide. Hallucinations are not on the list of side effects of my pills.
Monster farts, burps, eats sausages and granola – he can’t be just a figment.
Can I love her more than before, since she died?
The pizza box said it serves six, so why is it all gone already?
Spaceships Landing
by Alan James Beard
Aaahh, goes the singer, spaceships landing between the voice and the lights. He melted over to his future wife sat in the corner bored and talked down to her so he could see her face upturned, the body beneath, full display of legs in jeans. Dropped to his haunches, face bobbing in front of hers now. The music came up around her face as he looked popping colours around the rather long nose and chin, and drew them reluctantly together.
The Secrets of Lipstick
by Angela Joynes
Except for my Aunt Charlotte, everyone in this family lies. But she speaks truth as bold as the Avon lipstick she sells from a case that trigger-clicks open, containing dozens of samples the size of .22 bullets. With her jam-glossy lips–pomegranate, heirloom tomato, or maraschino–she exposes lying uncles, cheating grandfathers, and deer-jacking cousins.
And when I’m thirteen she offers to teach me her secrets. Makeup, she means. But all I want are her lips, the color and courage and power to dispatch my own secret cloaked by the night.
Honeymoon: St. Lucia
by Susan Morehouse
“It’s an island,” he said. “Flat. You’ll be fine.”
She knew about islands rising hot and stinking from the depths of the sea. How they were not habitable for centuries. How they weren’t flat.
On the back of the van, the wheels of her bike spun easily next to his. He sang “My Girl” with the radio. She changed the station.
It rained all week. She pushed her bike up mountains. She fell, rose, and pedaled on. Rainbows shimmered in the spray from his tires.
At night, her heated body exploded, like song, like something feral, like fire inside water.
Microfiction Monday – 127th Edition
Otter Love
by Judith Shapiro
Otters sleep holding hands lest they float away and lose one another.
After our argument, we turned and faced the other way, feigning sleep that eluded us, keenly aware that we’d both still be here in the morning.
Elephants are like ballerinas. You think they have these big, flat feet but underneath it all, they’re walking on their tiptoes, as if in toe shoes.
I wanted to ask you if you’d rather be an otter or an elephant in your next life.
Crown of Rain
by Matthew McEwan
Rain fell and drowned in curbside rivers.
The man in the grey suit waited under a drumming umbrella.
He used to love standing out in the downpours. His mother would yell at him for getting wet. But when the streets were empty, the city was his. He could walk anywhere. He was a king.
The man stuck his hand out, catching cool raindrops.
The taxi’s brakes whined.
‘Where to?’
‘Uh-‘ the man stammered, wiping his hand on his suit.
Cravings
by Gail Tyson
On this frigid night, I’m famished. Linda and I order at the bar, but my entrée doesn’t come. She kindly shares her salad. So far in life, I’ve avoided kale, but tonight my fork spears a blue-green leaf curled around a wedge of butter-soaked toast. Salty-sweet tang explodes in my mouth. Bite after bite, kale and toast remind me what I’ve been missing: how what is good for you and what is not can come together, spark hunger I never knew was there, every mouthful making me want more until only the taste lingers on my tongue.
Like you.
Please Dispose Of Your Heart Properly
by Elad Haber
“I gave him everything!” I sobbed to the screen. “Six years!”
The matronly woman on the other side of the screen had wire-rimmed glasses and calm, understanding eyes. She pressed a button and a slot opened in front of me. A proffered tissue. I wiped my eyes with it.
“It seems to me,” said the therapist, “that your heart is broken and you will need a replacement.”
Another slot opened with a ticket.
“Please take this to the next screen for further assistance.”
In the surgical room, warnings papered the walls.
I sighed and attempted to follow the on-screen directions.
Microfiction Monday – 126th Edition
Daddy, Can We Build a Snowman?
He knows he should say no, but he can’t. So he bundles his four-year-old in her winter coat and carries her to the center of the road, where together they begin rolling snow into three orbs of differing sizes. After the orbs have been placed in a snowman configuration, he makes his way to their gravely stuck car where they have no cell service, where his wife breastfeeds their newborn, where they only have enough snacks for a day trip and only a half tank of gas, to rummage through their belongings for something that will make a good nose.
Righteous
Upstairs, Carl logs on and searches for forbidden fantasies: classics removed from schools and libraries because the district now calls them “unbalanced” and “inappropriate”.
“Ain’t nobody gonna tell me what to read. I hear worse language in class every day”, he thinks, skimming another ‘offensive’ story. “I know people like this, they’re cool. What are these idiots trying to prove? It’s all online anyhow.”
He loses himself in books the censors don’t want him to see; they’re tinder to the spark inside him. Another file copied, another friend messaged, and he spreads the brushfire further.
Object Lessons
by G.J. Williams
Music as Terror: Discuss. The wiping out of villages to Shostakovich. The snow-muffled strains of Schubert as played by the Angel of Death, circa 1943. Or those funkier numbers favoured by the Mad Sams of the underworld who drill through flesh in derelict basements. Music to kill by. The soaring guitars against the Vietcong. The songs in Manson. The headphones of Nilsen. Not forgetting Stalin’s perfect pitch. For Stalin, every sound had its key. A building might crumble in E-flat, a tram go by in A-minor, a fly buzz in F-sharp. Every human had a special scream. Discuss.
Eastern Approach
by David M Wallace
Lena’s teacup performed a little jig in its saucer as the vibrations grew closer. The tiny cry of porcelain chiming over the rumble of tanks grinding in the street below her window. Soldiers trudged behind, clad in khakis and impunity.
Microfiction Monday – 125th Edition
Featurette
by G.J. Williams
It’s in his face: no dog and twenty old ghosts. It’s in the way he sits, his clothes shining with years of ingrained dirt. Been in those clothes so long they’d have to be surgically removed, layer by layer. A man without. Muttering into his beard. And that muttering of his can fire up and things get noisy. Many’s the scuffle he’s had with thin air. Leathered on god knows what gutrot. Been at the end of his life for years kind of bloke. Always on his tod. With a bunch of ghosts. And like I say, no dog.
Skin
Ninety-year-old bare skin is crepe, crossed with turkey’s wattle and if you lightly bump or grip too tight it bruises like an evil has been done. My mother hates that her arms, her neck, her décolletage look this way.
When I hug her I can see Mum’s scalp through the thinning, flyaway hair now worn short, as her fingers can no longer manage hair ties. Mum was always proud of her hair so she hates that too.
Worse still is the oedema, the fluid retention that merges her ankles and calves into one inflamed whole. Anyone would hate that.
EVERYTHING MUST GO
by E. O’Neill
The hands of a thousand brides carry the life’s work of Saul Bergman. Stone tokens of love everlasting, each expertly cut and polished under his watchful eye. Now, the sign in the store window announces the closeout sale. The sign’s reach goes far beyond the store’s inventory. Its message has roots and limbs. It grows like ivy and covers all.
Four rows away a lawnmower rumbles, drowning out the rabbi’s prayer. Ida grieves but doesn’t weep. She steels herself to the weather’s chill and the uncertainty of the future. She’ll move to West Islip to be closer to her sister.
The Merest Crack
by Philippa Bowe
Syl balances on the Waterloo Bridge balustrade, waits for a sign, body swaying though there’s no wind, battered by gusts of forever-anxiety, and there! the last city lights stutter and go out, snuffed by the night’s dark, time to let go, plunge into the water below, wet cold shadows enfolding her, time to sink and rest, but no, up she floats on pillowing wings of clothes and lungs, face breaking the surface, tilting up to a seeping cleft in the sky, a finger of light beckoning as a solitary star – tiny, determined – eyeballs her, and she says, Well okay then.
Microfiction Monday – 124th Edition
This week’s artwork is by G.J. Mintz
Mantis
by JW Goll
I’m on my second vodka and ginger ale. Delilah has had five, but as always, she’s steady and lucid. We sit in cheap plastic chairs near a greasy motel pool in Sturgis. We talk about Vietnam and she mentions a cousin killed at Hue, a childhood friend crippled at Dac To. She opens the second fifth, ignoring the ginger ale.
The light turns golden as does Delilah’s skin. A large praying mantis lands on a nearby table. It’s a love animal she declares. She takes a long drink from her tumbler. I wonder who it is here for, she says.
Scar Tissue
by Tim Frank
Why did the lonely boy from the high-rise estate, with his scarred wrists and nicotine breath, kill the dead-eyed drifter with a machete in the local park?
Why did the community act shocked and alarmed when behind closed doors they claimed he had it coming, like all the boys with infected tattoos – that they were a stain on the neighborhood, and deserved to have their stomachs carved up like pizza dough and then left to rot in a hole, forgotten forever?
Feet
by Betty Stanton
“Talk to me about one time you saw God’s hand at work in your life,” his counselor prods him. Doctor Jim is a small, serious man with milk-colored hands.
He could be a hand model, Andrew realizes, and then he bites his lip until he tastes the copper of his own blood and tells Doctor Jim that he doesn’t believe God has hands.
Just feet.
Presumably for stepping on things.
The Last Flight of the Honeybees
by Michael Anthony Fagan
The terminal honeybees cut their wings off, forcing their bodies through the compact wire fence. Their bodies fall onto plastic flowers (doused in peppermint and sage); their journey is in vain.
Her eyes command a tempest. A queen no more. The world around her is dying. She is picked up by leather fingers, crushed into a frosted glass, and smeared onto a faux Kandinsky painting by the bald bourgeoisie artist whose father owns the mill house.
Microfiction Monday – 123rd Edition
Snowmelt
by Kapka Nilan
Back then when I used to have a father and there used to be snow for as long as I remember before my memories turned into slush and the future became all too real without the intricacies of snowflakes and with the knowledge that all Santas are temporary but melting into nothing is a bonus as that way they would never get old and develop a catalog of illnesses that can only leave one half-alive.
Picturesque
by Matthew Corbyn
The sun poured champagne into the ocean. Pristine water bubbled on the white sand.
The porcelain woman lay on dark mahogany, shaded by postcard palm trees. Her oversized sun hat and sunglasses, a polite ‘do not disturb’.
She had meant to leave two days ago.
Her phone buzzed. She ignored it.
A local walked by early evening. She didn’t return his greeting.
Even as the crowds gathered under the full moon, followed by red and blue flashing, revealing the deep, dark ocean. She dared not open her eyes, lest another sight would be her last.
If I Could Give My Former Self a Fortune Cookie
Five years from now, you will live in a modest home, in a small town, with a fulfilling job, and a new partner. You will have a golden retriever named Lucky.
But right now, you are alone, crouched on the floor in the last bathroom stall, your head in your hands, sweat droplets running along the small of your back, your knees pulled up and pushing against your palpitating chest. You smell urine and Japanese Cherry Blossom, and a layer of coffee stagnates in your mouth. You keep lifting your feet to feel the slight pull of the sticky floor.
Hug Me Once
by Tim Frank
As a child I refused hugs, always offering a firm handshake instead – even to my mother who watched sadly as I grew into a frail teenager with perpetually clammy palms.
On her deathbed, grandma offered my greatest challenge.
“Give Nana a hug, darling,” she said, with dull grey eyes, stretching out her arms. “Not long for me now.”
Reluctantly, I leaned in, pressed my cheek against her wiry purple wig until I heaved contented sighs that turned into tears.
Then I burst into flames, incinerating my grandma, leaving her charred remains glowing on the mattress.
“Oh, right,” everyone said.
Microfiction Monday – 122nd Edition
Amongst the Heaps
by Micah Castle
Endlessly we toil before the fiery maw, feeding the flames coal under towering smokestacks, billowing thick, black smog.
The world trembles and rattles with each step of the crude titanic legs, tearing the earth asunder as it mindlessly journeys.
Heaps of brittle, blackened corpses lie in the dark corners, half-hidden by shadows. We take from the piles, too, throwing them into the fire. More fuel, life for our home. Terrified to look below; horrified to see the dregs of humanity.
We futilely fill its blazing belly, staving off death, until others take our place and we’re amongst the heaps.
Cravings
His mother called him “Willy-Lump-Lump” when she was angry. She was angry often: at his father who vanished long ago, strangers who said *smile*, colleagues who laughed when she recalled her beauty queen days. She still had the shoulders and cheekbones, but her hair had turned gray in her fifth month and her waist went the way of the boy’s father. The boy devoured Karo syrup sandwiches after school; spooned jelly under the covers; shoplifted Butterfingers, TastyKakes, Doritos. Now, he is six-foot-three and mostly muscle. He works on Wall Street, has a postcard-perfect family, guzzles Jagermeister after his mother visits.
Imperfect Timing
by Josh Cohen
I didn’t wear flip-flops for the excursion from patio to parking lot. There was no need—the path was paved, and I just needed sunscreen from the rental car. But had I known the vole’s morning routine, maybe I would have donned footwear. Either way, the result would have been the same. A flattened creature pleading for swift mercy.
With an unread USA Today, I swept the evidence into a garden bed. I didn’t bury it. Or eulogize it. There was no time—I could already hear the clang of the next trolley bound for the beach.
Microfiction Monday – 121st Edition
Blossom
by David M Wallace
In August were buttercups, lady slippers, snapdragons. Bluebells, cockleshells, eevy, ivy, over. Hopscotch and skipping rope. All around the mulberry bush and the ice cream truck. Then September and polka dots and am I pretty? All those tears and scattered leaves.
Anaglypta Dresses
by Justin Rulton
I watch them through the jockeying parade, merging with the walls, pinned like prisoners awaiting execution. Hidden in plain sight, hoping without precedence for something good to happen.
They just want to be asked, “Would you care to dance?”
Instead it’s more likely to be, “Wanna go to my place?”
The corpse of romance trampled underfoot, bleeding out under the pulsing lights.
Desperately numb, they aren’t even considered. Buttressed by my own wall on the other side of the hall, all I can offer is my empathy.
Leftovers go cold if they’re abandoned for too long.
I know.
I am.
The Empty Cupboard
by Jim Latham
His pantry held two kilos of chocolate, two kilos of coffee, two bottles of mezcal.
The chocolate ground with almonds, cinnamon, and sugar and pressed into discs the size of silver dollars.
The coffee grown in the shade by people who preferred the language of their ancestors to that of the Spanish invaders.
The mezcal distilled from wild magueys in small batches by gray-haired masters in villages beyond the reach of paved roads.
He’d eat and drink little else in his few remaining days. Life had been sweet. He wanted to leave it with his favorite tastes in his mouth.
Microfiction Monday – 120th Edition
The Letters Dance
by Oyeleye Mahmoodah
Miss Kenny hits the cane on the table. The sound makes me shield my eardrums.
“Read the passage,” she repeats, her gaze fiery.
“You don’t want to.” Her grip on the cane tightens.
Before she flogs me senseless, I’d like to scream, tell her I want to read, but the letters keep dancing across the page, outsmarting me.
My lung is also adamant. It won’t let out the pronunciations try as I may.
Whence the cane claimed my palm, I cried out, not in pain, but in frustration.
It is saddening that like everyone, the alphabets hate me as well.
Moosegrove
by Ben Lockwood
The woods are silent when the old moose finally finds the clearing. Moss-covered stone walls stand in the center, surrounded by thick pines.
A breeze sweeps through the branches, and on it, the moose hears the sound of hooves from long ago. The air smells of resin and lingering history. He snorts and stomps as it passes.
Proudly, the moose stands near the ruins, his antlers raised as he gazes upon the woods of his forebears. He watches the snow begin to fall before lying down near a thicket of winter berries. Content, he closes his eyes to forever rest.
The Pink Sweater
by Helen Faller
He wore it on our first date, the viewing, when we compared profile pics to flesh. Gazing at him in besotted wonder, I thought, this burly man is comfortable in his own skin. He’s arrived. He mailed it to me one Christmas we couldn’t be together because he had to spend time with his ever-dying father. I tried it on then. The collar was too tight and the belly bagged, turning me into a whale. When he left us, I wanted to char it to ash. Then my daughter claimed it and made the pink sweater her favorite pajamas.
Microfiction Monday – 119th Edition
Descent
It’s silly, but I run down, in case ghosts still inhabit these stairs. Greens and browns swirl under my toes, camouflage for frogs that once leapt from my overalls. At the laundry tub, it has to be my mother—not the one fading at The Grace—but the one who read me The Castle in the Attic and sliced my cucumbers into coins. She turns and glares in that “What do you think you’re doing?” way of mothers. “Get back to my bedside and finish your homework,” she says, then swings her dripping hands into the sink and pulls the plug.
A Winter Gathering of Townsfolk
We gathered in the town square—each and everyone that lived within Mercy’s city limits. Jonas joked that it was like that one short story—that we were going to draw lots and the smallest number would be sacrificed to God.
My dad hushed him, frost rising from his breath. “We’re not savages like that,” he said with a coldness to his tone I wasn’t expecting.
I knew that he had grown up with the man standing, blindfolded on the gallows’ stage, but it never occurred to me that they might have been friends back then.
My Beloved, Humanity’s Bane
Prior to our planet’s implosion, we relocated beloved creatures where they could survive. I protect the Brosno dragon. A carnivore, like Earth’s Spinosaurus, ample perch and burbot sustain her, but she craves sapiens. Her first human flesh belonged to Vikings ruling the Kievan Rus’ state; their fierceness flavored the flesh.
Batu Khan lost many Golden Horde warriors to razor-sharp maws; she altered history’s course: terrified troops fled, saving Novgorod from the Tatar-Mongol invasion.
WWII celebrated her consumption of a German plane; she didn’t eat the plane, though its German pilots were tasty.
Today’s menu features hikers; all curious travelers welcome.
The Scientist
by Matt Weatherbee
“Are you as bored of being tortured as I am of torturing you?” the scientist asks, yawning.
Slumped in a chair, his clone says nothing. Its face is so bloody and swollen it no longer looks like his.
“I’ve always wanted to torture someone to death,” the scientist says. “You know that. But I never thought it’d get boring. Maybe I’d find two of you fighting to the death more interesting.”
“Maybe you’d find being tortured more interesting,” his clone says.
The scientist smirks. “You’re funny. I like you. I wonder what would happen if the police found your body.”
Microfiction Monday Magazine 