Microfiction Monday – 141st Edition
Daisy
by Melissa Jornd
The man next to me seems nice. He’s quiet, which calms me. Although the staring unnerves me–should I be doing something?
I glance at my tablemates: the nice man, temples graying. Two young adults, clearly siblings. One toddler, all chubby cheeks and drool.
“Hello,” I venture. They smile back.
A sandwich, veggies, and pudding land in front of me. I hate pudding.
The man reaches over, using sleight-of-hand to replace it with a daisy.
And I remember.
I grasp my husband’s hand, desperate not to forget again.
“My Daisy,” he murmurs.
“I love you,” I reply, while I still can.
Hers
by Lester L Weil
Although he lives here, the pictures on the refrigerator are hers. Figurines atop the cabinets—hers. Paintings on the wall—hers. Knickknacks on the shelves—hers. Plants that he diligently waters—hers. It has been years—her ashes long scattered—but everything here is still hers. And as he wanders through the house, the mirrors reflect him—still hers.
Superspinster
by G.J. Williams
Details pertaining to fabrics twilled or corded leave her cold. So, too, tales of glossy silkstuffs trailing parquet floors. She knows how she cuts it as she goes. Too tall for her own good; bareheaded to a fault. A figure boding ill among the hedgerows; so local she’s a silhouette. If only she. But then again. There but for the grace of. It’s said her eyes up close are bloodshot pools. That monster word: loneliness.
Elixir for Unrequited Nostalgia
by Katherine DiBella Seluja
Start with childhood trauma. Your father throwing you out will do. Mix in your schizophrenic brother, evening locked ward visits. Add a fistful of teenage pregnancy. Let it simmer for thirty-five years. Spread it thickly over 2000 miles. Lace it with your mother tripping on the dog and falling down the cellar stairs. The doctor said, the first forty-eight hours will tell. Run up and down those stairs seven times. If you can, make it ten. Watch strangers walk out of your house, back their car down the drive. Resist the urge to tell them, this was my childhood home.
Microfiction Monday – 139th Edition
Almost 100
by Robert Runté
Her skin had become so translucent, I could see the flow through the veins stop whenever I held her hand.
Called to her bedside, I asked, “Why now?”
“Birthday,” the nurse explained. “Either it becomes a goal—hanging on for whoever they have left to turn up for their 100th, so they can depart surrounded by family—or they refuse to believe they could get that old, and pass a day or two before.”
“Your mom’s new worker reminded her, ‘You’re turning 100 next Tuesday.’ Just making conversation, but your mom put down her tea. So I knew: this weekend.”
Escape
You could resign, storm out in high dudgeon and let the cards fall where they may. You could fantasize about finding another job where your skills are finally appreciated and imagine submitting your resignation with an air of smugness. You could become unmanageable and take the fired escape. (Except there’s the money, your unemployable middle age, the mortgage and the kids and your partner’s anger and the looming wasteland of your irrelevance to your former colleagues.) Or you could accept that you built this escape-proof prison and raise birds to release through the bars, before they become like you.
Alice 2.0
When the package arrived, Walter wrestled off the lid…then gazed at its contents and sighed.
The replicant Alice looked like a poor imitation. Same height, build, and hair color…but he saw gleaming rivets, which felt disconcerting, like he’d dragged home some Frankenstein’s monster to replace his dead wife.
He carried it to the sofa and draped a blanket over it.
Ten days later, he got up the nerve to turn the key.
Her eyes fluttered open–slate blue, like Alice’s.
He gasped. “I…made your favorite, carbonara.” Then he felt foolish; she couldn’t eat.
But she smiled. “Lovely.”
It was.
Hope Towers
by G.J. Williams
Hope Towers. Inaptly named. And there’s a man who won’t move out of one of its third-floor apartments. How to make him see sense has replaced the weather as a talking point. He’ll be the song of the drunks yet. Category NETG: nowhere else to go, one of them. In short, one from whom there’s nothing to fear. Single male, middle-aged, keeps a cat. No comeback.
Microfiction Monday – 134th Edition
At Home With The Ticking
by G.J. Williams
Cled? Cled’s on what he calls ‘ticker time’. It’s his heart, the meat one, the literal ticking of it, a minute-by-minute affair. Seems it took fifty years for the news to reach him: dying’s a big deal, truly. It means what it says on the tin. Going by the look on Cled’s face he’d no idea. Odd, in view of his apparent death wish. He’d like to say it’s all been gravy. Instead, Cled says, It’s not been gravy, any of it.
The Causeway
Tolls went up two dollars. All I saw were red brake lights. The accident was on the northbound 24-mile bridge, but I was going southbound at 5 mph now. When the rubbernecking ending, I tried to make up for lost time, but the patrol car pulled me over and gave me a $300 ticket. A bird flew past my window and barely avoided suicide, but the thick layer of bugs that have collected on my bumper weren’t so lucky as I finally exited the bridge. Something tells me there will be a foggy convoy when I return.
Breakfast
by Judith Salerno
It was the same nasty breakfast, raw bean sprouts with prune juice.
“I understand the prune juice, Worf, but why the bean sprouts?”
He growled, “It’s the closest thing to gagh that I can find at the supermarket.”
“You’re not a Klingon, dear. Your mother just named you after one.”
He scowled, and I knew my mistake would cost me.
“Today is a good day to die!” he stomped to the den and started Klingon Academy on the big screen.
Great, he’ll be there all day while I’m raking leaves.
Maybe I’ll dig up some earthworm gagh for his dinner.
Soup’s On
by Jen Schneider
The cast iron pot lived life in a box. All corners sealed. The attic its forever home. Amidst yellowed photos, christening gowns, and soiled denim. Clean-ups long overdue. Survivor on TV. She scrubbed spots. Diced celery. Chopped onions. Simmered broth. Chicken legs shed skin. Time melted in savory air. Inhale. Exhale. Breathe.
Microfiction Monday – 133rd Edition
Soul
by G.J. Williams
She said it was because he didn’t ask about the scar but instead kissed it. That’s what did it, she said. Miri all over. This Joe feller, he kissed that scar, held her wrist, said nothing. Where Miri lives, that’s a man with soul. That’s a bod worth keeping.
Hunger
by Ashley McCurry
After you left, I started packing up boxes and found a picture of myself as an infant.
I was sitting with an unenthusiastic Santa, dressed as a tiny elf with white tights, grinning wildly.
The photo was worn, and a rusty orange smear coated my lips and teeth. I looked as if I had just devoured the raw flesh of my enemies, there on Santa’s lap.
I wish I could transport myself back into that plump, unsuspecting vessel, watching my parents waving at me to coax a smile—
Believing that I would always be the center of someone else’s universe.
Follow, Follow
by David M Wallace
Follow the path of crushed stone, the curled leaf riding the creek. Pass under the bridge with moss hanging from its struts. Climb the bank toward the strains of the calliope, where trinkets dangle, whirligigs spin, and clowns lean from a carousel waving white Jesus on a stick.
There Are Wolves
by Kaitlin Beauchemin
“There’s a mountain lion in the yard.”
The husband presents this information like an accusation. Like he’s taking a stand.
The son yanks out another clump of her hair.
Her eyes water.
“No, honey. No.”
“You can see it from the window. It’s right there.”
The husband watches her very carefully.
The son slaps her face.
She gazes out the window.
Everything stings.
What fucking yard?
Microfiction Monday – 130th Edition
Late Night Coffee
by Steve Bates
“That’s the last of the coffee,” she said. We’d talked half the night. She’d told me more about herself than I wanted to know, and I’d told her more about myself than I intended to. That’s the curse of two lonely people living in the same lonely apartment building in the same lonely city finally meeting. We’d revealed our dreams, dancing around our disappointments, which was really all either of us had found since moving here. No amount of small-town education can prepare you for this. “Should I put on another pot?” she asked. “Sure, why not,” I said.
It’s Not The Music
by G.J. Williams
He thinks the music brought back the rat. It’s not the music I said, and there is no rat. It’ll be the violins he said, the higher-pitched pieces. Or the promise of warmth in a cello. Neither I said, besides there being no rat. The walls are quiet when you’re around he said. And I certainly heard no pattering of feet across any ceiling. The music all the while stayed stopped. That’s not healthy I said, you love your music. There’s no serenading any rat. It’ll be the piccolos he said, it’ll be the woodwind the flutes the pipes.
Feeding the Hungry
Tiny tunnels lead through the grass to the crime scene – young squash vines strewn over the ground like corpses, decapitated chard shoots poking out of the soil, pole bean seedlings cut off in their prime, a harvest thwarted before it even had a chance. At the edge of the garden, a heron stands in silent vigil, then – stab! – and it’s vole for dinner. “Come back,” I call as it lifts its great blue body into the sky. In the shadows by the riverbank, a crow hovers over the heron’s nest.
Cradle and All
by David M Wallace
There was an official investigation, of course. No one blamed her. These things happen. It’s nobody’s fault. But next morning a little flurry of hail fell. She stood at the window watching it gather against the porch steps and dreamed of fairies and baby teeth.
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 – 116th Edition
I Never Gave Her a Name
I remember my synthetic baby girl. Like me, a smiling-sad little thing. My childhood doll was a plump thermoplastic form dad had brought home one unusual night. Unusual because he wasn’t in the habit of walking through the door holding little baby dolls in his big hands. He was thrilled I wanted a doll. My first. My only. My younger sister’s flaxen-haired, bow-lipped dollies had never bothered to kiss away my tears. My brown-haired baby doll was beautiful to me, a full-bellied, coffee-eyed friend. I never gave her a name. Then I gave her away.
Grandmother Goose
by David Henson
A golf course snaked around the facility where they cooped the old woman after her name flew away from her. One day she snuck out behind the mail carrier and meandered the fairways and greens, snatching balls — eggs to bake the chocolate cake that once lured family to her home.
A foursome tried to corral her, but she out-maneuvered their carts and crouched among a gaggle by the hazard on seven. When the golfers charged, the birds honked into the sky and wedged away.
They found her housecoat floating in the pond, but Grandmother Goose was never seen again.
No One
by G.J. Williams
There was no Dexter Mahon. He was made up, to account for the sinister edge that entered proceedings. He was never anywhere near. His matter-of-fact approach was the fruit of agonised retellings, each word honed. He’d no link to the lower echelons, no say to speak of. What daylight there was found him out, as it was bound to, of course, there being no such person. He was not even in the shadows.
Microfiction Monday – 111th Edition
Patchwork Blanket
by Louise McStravick
Her hands would move quickly, without thought as she watched television. The hook pulling the wool through. I would watch it grow, widening.
I wrap myself in the colours of it. Fall asleep to a programme I’m not watching.
I dream I am wearing the blanket, in the woods. Somewhere we’d visited before. I cannot find her, so I walk deeper, unspooling until it is nothing. I am naked, cold, alone. I am running, following the thread back home to where she is sitting. Hands gathering wool.
I wake up. Alone. Held by the blanket.
Warm Wool
Larry attended a knitting circle with his cellmate. He learned to hand-knit scarves and blankets, weave supple yarn with stocky hands. He looped soft thread around calloused fingers, was lulled into daydreams. Knitters smiling and chattering about neighbors or children. Knitters boasting of spouses and jobs, houses and cars. Knitters not shoveling gravel or swinging sledgehammers, not scrounging to survive. Knitters not getting blackout drunk and burning things, not beating a man and getting scared of who they’d become. Knitters not swearing they would change or be better, not breaking promises and knuckles as warm wool comforted their unstained hands.
Eve
She was down to a single Rome Beauty. The last apple for her last day. Later, she’d run naked through the frigid forest to finish what she came to the cabin to do. Go out as she came in. Bare ass moonlit naked. She counted down her time an apple a day for thirty days. Time to live. To think. Laugh. To remember. Or not. To howl with wolves. Dance the hot potato. Burn camp chairs in the fireplace. Hang pots and pans from blue trees. Sugar rush deer hardcore. Practice run to the cliff where winter skies wait.
Howdy
by Yash Seyedbagheri
They bid me howdy in their white trucks with their easy smiles, scents of Camels and tar. The Eagles play from radios. They welcome me. Ask if there’s anything I need.
I smile. Wave. I even tip that cheap cowboy hat I bought.
It’s been months since I’ve heard that word. Fuck off has been my constant companion.
Every time I try to reciprocate, my words seem flat, like months-old Diet Pepsi. They nod in understanding. They must think me shy. Or weird.
But when they say goodbye, I reciprocate with desperate ease, word echoing like a hundred goodbyes before.
Autosarcophagy
by Jeremy Nathan Marks
I bought a broom that lets me sweep up spiders without breaking their legs. I can deposit them gently into my garden. My garden is like a coliseum of displaced insects. Some have all of their limbs, while others are missing one or more for mysterious reasons. How is it that insects are threatened with extinction? I find them wobbling around, waiting to grow new limbs. They prove the point that life is more than fight versus flight: it is autosarcophagy. A fox will chew off its leg to escape a trap. There is a future for the maimed.
The Ongoing
by G.J. Williams
The man who gave you a helping hand has had his fingers broken, and the woman who gave you shelter is homeless. Is how it stands at the moment.
And those kindly fruitsellers at the park? Picking stones, somewhere north. As for your ornithologist friend, she’s finding the dusty basements hard going, old dental records not being her bag. And your neighbours? They keep to themselves, and are happy enough to do so, aware as they are of the various alternatives.
Is how things stand at the moment.
Post
by Iain Rowan
Even though he doesn’t get letters anymore, because who does these days, he still looks forward to the post arriving.
He picks each envelope up from the doormat and holds them tight in his hands for a few moments before putting them into the recycle bin. Even though it’s only ever junk mail, to reach him it has passed from one human hand to another, and in that there is something.
Microfiction Monday – 108th Edition
Ignition
by Blue Silver
Two thin fuses lie buried in my face, and one day my skin will flicker and burn. I unearthed them in the mirror, and they creep towards my nose from upturned corners. You told me I had ignited yours, but levity and gravity always left you traceless.
These days, I watch stars from my porch and sometimes old newsreels of your launch, and your descent towards the red dirt. Tonight, I hit play on the last tape, the fireball upon landing, and wonder why your fuse burned quicker than mine. You might have loved the view from this porch too.
Barnacle Bill
by Bernardo Villela
Beset by the world’s woes Bill Lee went to live at sea. Landlocked existence churned his stomach; acrid wildfires stung his eyes; the summer sun scorched his skin.
With fish and fresh air, he could live anywhere. Beneath the water line, in the brine, barnacles started growing upon his hide. Surfacing for warmth didn’t shake them or kill them off. He loved them as they multiplied, felt a symbiosis with them—they were Neptune’s gift.
They were his armor against mankind. When people approached he’d say “Woe betide to all who come this way.”
Off they ran, and stayed away.
Get Back to Work
by Nicholas T. Schafer
The framing nail stuck out of my chest. Everything stopped. I stared at the nail. Jesse, who was holding the other board, stared at the nail. Sam, our foreman, who had fired the high velocity shiner out of the nail-gun through the two by four into my chest, stared at the nail.
Only the nail moved. Up and down. I realized, with relief, that I was still breathing, and that breathing didn’t hurt.
Sam reached over, pulled the front of my shirt. The nail pinged to the floor.
“No blood, no foul. Get back to work.”
None of Us Is All Here
by G.J. Williams
This is where cigarettes are called christnumbers and the go-to place after death is referred to as The Shangles. What happens there is unclear but is generally thought to be agreeable. In the meantime there’s a white wall of silence; palpable; procedural. And there’s always someone who’ll pipe-up, ‘Hey, where isn’t Jesus?’ A more valid question can scarcely be imagined, given what’s at stake, which is to say: everything. Immortelles are in their vases, corridors cry. All is not well with the world. It comes on strong, adopts a joshing tone as it clatters in, the cutlery plastic.
Felina
by Xanthe Miller
I got fed up. That has made me wicked. By wicked I mean effective. Unapologetic. I’m not sorry, just hungry from years of genteel starving. Ravenous with a mouth full of my unspoken self, footsore with undanced dances. I am finally getting comfortable in this skin, just as it begins to shift and fade. I’ve opened the book of spells and have my favorites. So tonight at sunset I will put on the voluminous skirt that belonged to my mother and my grandmother and whirl and whirl while I can. And take what I take.
Window Note
by Liz Betz
Jenny knows she could have parked straighter, but she’s running late. First the car needed gas and then she caught a string of red lights. Her toddler begins to cry at the door of the daycare. Jenny has to be strong and kiss her goodbye saying, Mommy has to hurry. Mommy loves you.
Her little girl would be okay in a few minutes, but will she? Back at the car, she sees the flapping paper. A ticket? No. A note. You SUCK at parking. SERIOUSLY. She can’t argue. She needs to do better.
Enough of a Triumph
by Ken Poyner
Playing croquet on a hillside complicates the game. Grass thickness comes even more into play. Strategy requires elevated thinking. You do not recover as well from a blunder. And yet, it adds thrill to sending an opponent’s ball thundering off. Differences in elevation drives subtlety in approach. Consider how long it will be, from all the leaning back or aside, before your hamstrings give out. I’m off to lay out my wickets in the cruelest of spots. I cannot wait to see the confusion on your face.
Microfiction Monday Magazine 