Microfiction Monday – 217th Edition
Lessons On Electricity
by Laurie Kuntz
Who is culpable? The lights left burning when we’re no longer in rooms that we share together or alone. Who left it on? No cat or dog to blame, and our son is long gone to his own lighted place. When admonished for this faux pas, I don’t need the lecture on wattage and currents, or the waste of power. All I need to hear are three words, Lights off please, or maybe those other three words we should be saying more often in our lighted and darkened places.
Two Elderly Men with Dementia
by Chung-Suk Yu
Charlie and Bob are elderly roommates in a two-person room in the lockdown unit at the nursing home. Neither of them recognizes that they are roommates. At night these two men are trying to protect their shoes. When Charlie goes to sleep, he either hides his shoes under the bed or sleeps with the shoes on the bed. On the other hand, Bob carries his shoes to the living room where he used to sleep. The residents in the unit at the nursing home do not wear shoes but wear socks since they forgot how to put their shoes on.
Icy Heart
by Amber Weinar
You can tell it’s almost winter when it starts to rain, and the water crystalizes on impact. All it takes is one drop expanding. Your heartburn was similar. All it took was the pain to expand before the worrying struck. By then, it was too late. Initially undetectable, The spread was inevitable. Like a sheet of black ice you couldn’t prevent and had to drive over. The doctor asks why you didn’t come sooner. It’s hard to say when you felt fine yesterday. Maybe the doctors were wrong? The heart was overtaken by ice, and yet only my hope remained.
Business as Usual
Dusk in September after a rain. Street lamps spread their white steeples of light around the wooded park. Here is where the flying termites convene, as reckless as early aviators in close quarters combat.
Supper is done. An hour of liberty. Children charge down porches armed with corn brooms. In this vespering hour, they knock all those stars from the sky and pluck out their silver veined wings.
And this is a skill that will come in handy later in life. In the real world. Where the mighty will thrive and the vulnerable will need a bit of a trimming.
Whack
I was too young to attend the funeral, too young to understand grief. I remember watching my older brother through a window. Mark and Andrew, sixteen, had been best friends. After Andrew killed himself, Mark went outside to hit rocks with a wiffle ball bat. He’d scour the ground for the perfect-sized rock, pick it up, and toss it in the air. Then, with all his might, he swung the bat. Over and over again. Scour the ground. Pick up a rock. Toss it in the air. Swing the bat. I remember the sound; it cracked the sky in half.
Microfiction Monday – 183rd Edition
Natured
by Jeeya Balwani
I could see her reflection in the rippling waves or were they just her tears?
The water gathered around her or was it the hurt drowning her?
I wiped her tears or was it the sand soaking it?
I hugged her tight wrapping us in a promise or did we just spot the water do the same to the sand?
Murder Gone Wrong
by Onyinyechi Ndukaire
The cops are knocking and trying to break the door. I have to think. Odin’s body is at my feet and there’s a chandelier above, so I climb. My heart thumps as they brush in. Up above the chandelier, I watch as they examine the body. Then, the rope cuts and I fall on his body with the gun in my hand. The cops laugh. “Well, that wasn’t so hard.”
The Writer
by Ian Willey
“Before I send you back,” says the attendant, “please be aware that in your next life you’ll be a writer.”
“Wow,” says the soul. “Sounds great.”
“Not quite,” says the attendant. “Though it will consume most of your time and impinge upon your every relationship, your writing will remain unrecognized in your lifetime and all lifetimes to follow.”
“Oh,” says the soul. “So it won’t be any good.”
“No!” says the attendant. “It will be beautiful. It will scintillate like the stars.”
“I see,” says the soul. “Well, what choice do I have?”
“Exactly,” says the attendant, pressing the button.
The Lifecycle of a White Shirt
by Amber Weinar
Day one: I am born from my packaging. Looking at my mother’s face, she’s ecstatic, already dreaming of my future.
Day two: She takes me out to see the world, cautious not to let anything happen.
Day ten: We go out again, but there’s an accident. Coffee drips down her face, and onto me.
Day eleven: My first bath; I’m in critical condition as my mother looks up various treatment options.
Day twelve: My second bath; I’m on life support, but hopeful.
Day thirteen: I’m laid to rest, buried in the back of her closet, never to be worn again.
Microfiction Monday – 178th Edition
Capable
by Ken Poyner
He imagines silk and the coo of caged birds. Rose petals and a mist of lavender. She would pause at the threshold, one hand and one eye twisting beyond, tentatively, as though the decision to enter had yet to be made. A candle lit, wavering on the dresser. Quibble sits electrically and smooths the edge of the bed. His wife, sealed in her ten-year-old housecoat, ceases spinning her hair into its sleeping station. Thinking a moment, she notes this would be the second attempt this week. Silently she admires his persistence, but still longs to tell him it is unnecessary.
Recipe for Redemption
by Amber Weinar
“Wish for whatever you’d like”, I tell my daughter. In the background, I hear the Cowboys get a touchdown, reminding me of the time I wished for a cupcake after my father rushed to get back to the game. My daughter has his smile, my smile. A half-smirk appears as she bites her lip, thinking of all the possibilities.
“I got it,” hugging me; she says, “I’d like a KitchenAid stand mixer.”
“Are you sure?” I say.
“Yeah, it’ll make Muffin Mondays easier. Can we get a pink one?”
“Of course we can,” I say, reclaiming my wish in hers.
Eternal Rest
by Ben Nance
The caretaker found the man asleep on his wife’s grave again. It was the third time this month. His robe was damp, hair disheveled, and somewhere along his three mile trek to the cemetery, the man had lost a slipper. The couple had been married 12 years, and she was now three months deceased.
The caretaker phoned the police.
“Lock him up this time, officer,” the caretaker said as he turned away.
The officer guided the bereaved to the patrol car and took the man home.
“Wear your jacket tomorrow,” the officer told him. “I’ll bring coffee.”
The man nodded.
Parenthood
by E. H. Warrington
You are blue brine, the smell of burnt driftwood on the sand, beneath stars. I am the lap of water at your feet. You arrive like a coyote out of the fog, into my world of tents and harmonicas, harmonies. Howl with me. Together we birth the morning sun, bright, brilliant. She glitters, rainfall in the wakening Spring on chamomile. She speaks nectar and gold. Then I slip into the undercurrent, cold, your blurred shadow on the surface above me. Abandoned on the shore, shivers a burl of burnt charcoal. You become a crescent of white salt in the sedge.
Microfiction Monday Magazine 