Microfiction Monday – 186th Edition
Her Son’s Garden
by JD Clapp
Maria sits by the garden, easel and paints set out, her canvas blank. She watches birds. A hummer, translucent reds and greens, buzzes lemon tree blossoms. Two crows watch from the powerline, cawing. The rabbit nibbling greens doesn’t notice the hawk, death’s harbinger circling above.
Maria’s face is moist, salty, despite the cool vernal air. Her husband and daughter, now chemical ghosts, churn in a jumble of neural shards, fading images competing with the empirical.
She sees him and beams.
“Sonny! I saw a robin!”
“Ready to go in Ma?”
Smiling, he sees a splash of yellow on the canvas.
The House That Does Not Die Alone
Generations grew their foundation on my bones—from birth to death to that which comes after. I provided shelter as they ushered decay.
I was once a fresh-faced thing. Made of strong trunks from the ageless forest, my walls built by skilled and callused hands, logs chinked with mud and sweat.
For years, high-pitched squeals bounced off ceiling beams, filling my rooms. Long-suffering mothers cooked countless meals in my kitchen, and knelt on my floorboards to pray.
My inhabitants are mostly silent now, scarce whispers from the chorus. They only ask, “What is next?”
We wait for the answer, together.
Dad’s Wallet
When my Dad died, the hospital handed me a tray with his personal effects, including the wallet, I’d bought him as a boy. The brown leather wallet was bent to the shape of my Dad’s buttock, he always carried it in his back pocket. I remembered buying it in Bexhill with a friend I’d made from the campsite where we’d holidayed nearby. I hadn’t known what colour to choose so my friend asked what colour my Dad’s best suit was. ‘Brown,’ I lied. My Dad didn’t have a suit.
Remembering Muriel
It’s not possible. She died thirty years ago. But like magic, I smell her as if she’s beside me. I freeze at my desk, staring at the breezy blue summer scene of snap dragons in the window box. Pens in their cylindrical container, papers scattered around me, fingers curved above dormant computer keyboard. Paused, as if we all listen. Is there more? She smells of linen and soap. Then I hear her voice. Fresh and loving, her words fall over my head as they did in childhood. She is not gone. “Imagine that!” my grandmother would say. I am, Grandma.
Interpretive Shift
Solid-gold band, azure stone with a star in the center like a slice of the Milky Way: my dad’s ring was endlessly fascinating. He let me try it on, peer into the little supernova, imagine the planet it came from.
Decades later my parents rented a suburban apartment. Smaller. Who needs that much space? Near dad’s office, to save gas. While helping them pack, I found the ring in a plastic, 35mm film canister. Light as air, too-yellow gilt, star painted in a sky of resin: thirty years fell from the galaxies to crash in the palm of my hand.
Microfiction Monday – 185th Edition
The Magician
by Adam Conner
I first had the father I never met sawed in half. Then I had him stand against a wooden board and outlined him with daggers. Then I fed him swords on fire. For the grand finale, I stuffed him inside a wooden box and hung him in the air. The box exploded, and my father disappeared yet again. Later, when people asked how I did it, all I could tell them was, “Magic.”
Thirtysomething Leavings
Give me more space to be me, maybe a baby—just not his. Waited for the right timing and changed my address and quit my job! Planned what to take. No inkling to friends or family. Weren’t we the couple that had it all? I contained everyone’s shock. Consoled their concern. But my failings and flailings still travelled with me. Bills to pay, graduate school to finish, job to unquit. I wasn’t lonely but felt disloyal to our ‘til death do us part’. I relinquished owning porcelain china and Waterford crystal for ten. To become a single tenant of me.
Things that Evaporate in Fog
The summer I turned nine, while other kids barged in and out of friends’ houses and tore around the neighborhood, I visited my grandparents in the Smoky Mountains. No argument here. An anxious book nerd who didn’t understand the noise of other children, I looked forward to three bully-free months.
We arrived too late and exhausted to explore. Early next morning, I stepped off the tiny porch into the dew-kissed lawn. The mountains scratched the edges of dawn and hoisted the sky on its hazy shoulders. I shrunk under their immense silence, my childhood problems smaller than a June bug.
Utopia
by G. Lynn Brown
She slips under the covers. A fan sits on the floor and blows a breeze on her face.
He hates the fan. The draft chills him, the sound disturbs him, and he hates her for having it on.
She doesn’t care. She needs its white noise to drown out the midnight silence. So, she ignores his gripes and closes her eyes and thinks of someone else.
While awake, hopes abound. But slumber brings dreams. Now she’s in between, just as much awake as asleep, where hopes marry dreams, the ideal place to visit her someone else, and she dozes off.
Freedom Floats
by James Rasco
A promise of escape dangles from a nail above a white ceramic cookie jar. A keychain; a faded yellow oval of foam. Tiny fingers pick at the peeling vinyl advertisement. It smells of lake water and chemicals. The car is packed: fishing gear, food, clothes. We take everything we need, which means Father stays behind. For the weekend we can play pretend that our family is more whole than fractured. Hours later and past the gate, a key attached to a faded yellow oval of foam opens the metal door. Inside, it smells of stale air, old dust, and freedom.
Microfiction Monday – 184th Edition
The Elf and The Bull
by Bradford Ellington
Your leg must come off. I can do it; let’s rest on these rocks, before we reach the sands.
The minotaur winced, extending his grotesque limb.
I’m scared.
I know; don’t look. I possess wizardry – you will not die.
Will I bleed?
Some. I can stop it.
The work began. The setting sun flared. The knife flashed, sunk. Old Elfin incantations erupted among dry desert winds.
He left the bull slumbering, returning at nightfall with a carven crutch.
Better?
I still feel…
You will forever. But it isn’t there; it can’t hurt you. So let’s move on.
And they did.
Juliet Picks Up the Dagger
by Lily King
Juliet awakens to Romeo’s body against hers. The blood from the dagger drips onto her lap.
Romeo is still breathing. He looks at Juliet as she opens her eyes and stares back at him.
She picks up the dagger.
Romeo is buried and the Montagues and Capulets both weep. Lord Capulet beams as Juliet weds a new Paris. They’re all the same.
Juliet keeps the dagger and begs for Romeo to know she was only trying to set him free. Her prayers always end with pitiful apologies to Rosaline.
She thinks Paris will live forever.
Queen and Goddess
by Paul Negri
The Queen’s first victim was her mother, who did not survive her birth. Was that bloody passage made lethal by those little fists pounding so furiously in her prison of flesh and the gnashing of prodigious teeth which lined her infant gums? Or (as legend has it) the full grown nails of the she-wolf at her fingertips?
As inauspicious as was this beginning, it in no way gave adequate warning to the subjects of her kingdom, who watched in horror as she grew, year by year, into the malevolent ruler of their unfortunate world.
Amen.
Mrs. Duff’s Icebox
by Ruth Brown
One morning Mrs. Duff vowed to clean her ancient icebox.
“Better wear gloves,” her husband admonished, “could be nasty things growing in there.”
In the icebox was a small village. Lumberjacks felled matchbox trees, smoke rose from chimneys, trout leapt from a nimble trickle of water. She looked closer, sniffed bitter woodsmoke and sweet baking.
One doll’s house was her own. Same missing shingles, same weather-worn shutters. Out stepped her miniature, mug in hand. The little Mrs. Duff blinked up. The big Mrs. Duff blinked down.
“They’ve started sprouting,” she said to her husband, on her way to the broom-closet.
Antiquity
by JJ Collins
The god woke with an urge to create.
He dipped brushes in a palette of swirling eddies, laid paint to canvas hungry for inspiration.
None came.
Charcoal was smeared artfully across pages, but the greasy residue lacked dimension.
He kneaded clay, but it would not yield to his practiced touch.
His workshop had grown cold, hearth devoid the spark of devotion.
Perhaps I am dead, he mused.
He reconsidered. Today, he would simply take what he needed, appropriate the inspiration of another. Call it his own.
Not stealing; repurposing. Greater vision, greater scale.
A greater lie. But who would notice?
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 – 182nd Edition
Lifesaving
by David Sydney
In the advertisement, an elderly woman thanks the lifesaving device company. Having fallen, she was able to use the device to call for help. She is now alive. But…
“I can’t stand that device.”
“How do you mean, Harriet?”
We are now dealing with Harriet and Gertrude. Real people, not advertisements.
“George is still alive, Gertrude.”
Harriet had been married to George for 57 years when he fell and successfully used the device.
“Damn, Harriet. That reminds me of Frank.”
Gertrude, too, had been married for 57 years, in her case to Frank, who had one of the devices also.
Largesse
by G.J. Williams
Just think of the music you’ll not have to face tomorrow, the gauntlet you’ll not have to run, the saliva you’ll not have to wipe off, the hundred piercing voices you’ll not have to close your ears to, the funeral you’ll not have to attend, the laughter you’ll not have to endure, the fortune you’ll not have to lose, the case you’ll not have to fight, the morsel you’ll not have to reach for, the glare you’ll not have to withstand, and the corridor down which you’ll not have to shuffle. Think on these things. Regard them as windfall.
Threads
by Dorcas Wilson
They say we make a strange pair; you untidy and tattooed, me immaculate, not a hair or stitch out of place.
You stride through life, grabbing opportunities as they arise. I walk with precision, every step planned.
You shout and swear. I talk with quiet eloquence.
You screech into the night. I sing in the shower.
You love stories. I love facts.
They whisper about us as if we can’t hear them.
They will never know what makes us two, one. They will never see the thread that binds us. The thread that one day will snap, tearing us asunder.
Harbinger of Death
Before she became a vulture, with a wingspan stretching six feet, she was a child, with no wingspan at all, disciplined with ridicule, told to stand straight and smile, to never bend, to never give in to whimsy. To never dream. In order to survive, the other vultures told her.
Before she became a vulture, she thought she could be anything, maybe even a brightly-colored macaw.
Microfiction Monday – 181st Edition
Space Became Distance
by Akmal Hafizi
You needed space, and I gave some. But before I knew it, space had become distance, and time became a while. As I had expected, you eventually reached the event horizon—a point from which there is no return. I was really reaching for the stars, except that they were redshifting away—you were.
I flung myself bound for you, and engraved longing into words and texts—wishing there would be a slightest echo where I would hear the same “come back”.
All the while I failed to recall that space is a vacuum—lacking of sound and indefinitely gloom.
The Girl Who Cried Gardens
by David Henson
When her mother died, the girl cried a garden of flowers to comfort her father. When he passed from grief anyway, she sobbed a garden of vegetables so she and her brother wouldn’t starve. When her brother ran off and left her alone, she wept a garden of angry thistle. When she became ill and was on her deathbed, she cried an empty garden for the life she would never know. After she was laid to rest in a place with no markers, a rock garden appeared on her grave.
The Last Letter
by Caleb White
She gripped the pen, her heart heaving with sorrow. She expressed her emotions and all the things she wished she had spoken to him before he went. She expressed her love for him, her longing, and her desire that he would return to her. She gave him a kissy-signature, sealed the letter in the envelope, and set it on the mantle next to his picture. I love you too, my dear, she heard faintly as she turned to exit the room.
Ouroboros’ Chain
by Sam Anderson
Martine sits alone on the park bench, tears streaming down her face. This is where he first said, “I love you.” But now, she sits alone and clutches the necklace he gave her, the thin chain tight around knuckles. A hand touches her shoulder. She turns and sees him smiling. “I’m back.” She jumps up, wrapping her arms around him. But his skin feels wrong, cold like misty leaves. His kiss on her forehead holds no warmth. Only the memory of something missing, now forgotten. And so, she sits once more, uncertain why she weeps but struggling to remember.
On Board
by David Sydney
Brutus and Rattus were on board the Ark, Brutus representing the Brown rats and Rattus the Black rats. The heavens were about to open up, with 40 days of rain to follow. It was getting dark and dangerous. Brutus used the words ‘ominous’ and ‘foreboding’, typical of a Brown rat.
Two platypus ducks boarded. Then, two cassowaries. Two hyenas. Then, two weasels.
Rattus frowned. “Everyone dislikes weasels,” Brutus agreed.
“HURRY UP,” the extremely long-lived patriarch, Noah, bellowed. “CAN’T YOU SEE THE WEATHER?”
Two Chihuahuas boarded, representing dogs.
“Can you believe who they’re letting aboard this thing?” said Brutus to Rattus.
Microfiction Monday – 180th Edition
Glue
by Phil Temples
You are the glue that holds us together.
It was one of his favorite things Hubert would say when he was alive. In reality, it pissed her off to hear it. She was the one who sacrificed her wants and needs for the relationship. She was the one who frequently made do without. She was the responsible of the two.
Yeah. I was the glue that held us together, alright.
It seemed only fitting, then, to mix Hubert’s ashes with the spackle compound to patch the crack in the kitchen wall.
You can be the fucking glue for once, asshole!
Bookmark
by Benjamin Marr
Growing old inside the ribcage of the dragon I slayed decades ago. The blackened bones now cold to the touch; drafty and freezing. The young lady I rescued now long gone on another planet a lifetime away.
I wonder if she felt as alien as I always have. Leaning up against a UFO in the park. A passerby making a joke, “Do you come here often?”
I walk to the library where we used to meet so long ago. I find the last book she read beside me before she moved away. Unfinished, her bookmark a first step to finding her.
Fallacy
by Lucas Hubbard
He had only one rule at Caesars: Bet on black.
His second rule was leave on a win. Revised: Leave on the next win.
Then, play blackjack; okay, try slots.
Don’t use credit. No alimony.
He was walking home when the rising sun imparted his favorite rules: Go to Luxor. Bet on red.
Boy Man
You searched for something ancient. Something carved in stone. Fashioned in bronze. An arrowhead, a dagger, an amulet. Some Viking myth to keep you in perpetual boyhood.
But the old rituals failed you. You became disenchanted. An iconoclast. You vowed never to be fooled again. Cynicism is your faith.
It is almost always that way. We proudly take off our shirts and show the world the wounds we survived. Forgetting that the point was to die. To die and then get on with it.
Microfiction Monday – 179th Edition
The Night in Question
by G.J. Williams
It’s a beautiful night. There’s no one drowning in the lake. If there were, the moon would be shedding a pearly light on the fact. But no such commotion. Barely a ripple. Silky all the same. Definitely silky.
Yes, a beautiful night was had by all. That’s what they’ll say. Peaceful it was. Then came dawn.
What happened at dawn? I haven’t yet decided. But this night will be the one in question.
Presents
by Peter Burr
Jack devoured his 28th birthday tenderloin with his mother and grandmother, flung his China plate at the dining room wall, and left.
“That dinner was mostly nice,” Jack’s mom said, gathering shards, “but I really wanted to sing the song and pass the chocolate cake.”
“What was all that about?” Jack’s grandmother said.
“Jack’s efforts to find a job have fallen short and I’m tired of having him around. Today I delivered his two week notice. He’s reacting. We’re all trying to figure things out in this life.”
“Yes,” Jack’s grandmother said, “but some try a lot harder than others.”
After the Invasion
by Darcie Johnson
We sat cross-legged by the campfire, the sounds of our parents grilling burgers over the crackling fire drowned out our whispered giggles. Our lives seemed full of possibilities.
That was the night everything changed.
Their ashen ships descended from above, no pretense of coming in peace. As the fighting began, our futures were forgotten as our childhoods vanished like smoke from that last campfire.
Decades of war aged us, but after years of fighting and losing so many, we finally won.
Now, we sit around fires again telling tales to the youngest of life before. What we will build 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 – 177th Edition
Steam Heat
by J. Harley McIlrath
The window slid open, and she crawled through. I never bothered locking it. I never imagined anyone coming in through it. It opened onto the roof. “Do you have heat?” she said. “Mine’s off.” She was already stepping out of her sweatpants. “It’s steam heat,” I said. “The boiler breaks down all the time.” She lifted the covers and crawled in beside me.
I made sure the window was not locked after that. I kept the shade up. I slept with the light on. But the landlord fixed the boiler, and the heat stayed on all winter.
The Adversary
by James Watt
The court was waiting for Jeremy to begin questioning the witness. Clinging to the lectern, he glanced at the opposing counsel, an experienced trial lawyer with a formidable reputation. Head bowed and breathing deeply he stared at his notes. He looked up, coughed, and then sipped some water. The awkward silence continued.
His co-counsel scribbled a note and handed it to him: ‘lack of preparation is your only foe.’ A few moments later Jeremy’s voice reverberated around the courtroom.
“You were drunk when you struck my client with your car, weren’t you?”
Now his focus was on litigating the case.
Exercise in Futility
by Ian Willey
When I asked what he did for a living he said I’ve spent the last thirty years trying to improve the Oreo. It’s no easy task. Change the cookie and it no longer goes with the cream; change the cream and it no longer goes with the cookie. Maybe, I said, the Oreo is evolutionarily perfect, like the cockroach or the horseshoe crab. It can stay as it is for millions of years and be fine. I wish I hadn’t said it. He spent the rest of the night crumbling. I offered him some milk, but it was no use.
Flyover Tale
by Pratik Mitra
The flyover* was inaugurated days ago. Shreya was maddened by the deafening noise vehicles made rushing through that flyover. Unlike her, Anil liked the hustle-bustle. In fact he felt its proximity was cool. It’s like they could shake hands with the passengers if they wanted. Soon reading, films, sex, and money were replaced by that flyover as their favourite hobby horse. They were obsessed with what to do with a flyover that so filthily symbolized urbanity. They were tossed up between committing suicide by jumping at it or making love on rooftops. Only breezy drizzle was needed.
*note: in British English, a flyover is an overpass
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