Microfiction Monday – 166th Edition
Lychees and Figs
by Marcy Dilworth
A purple fedora snatched from a visitor wobbled on Freddy Orangutan’s head as he followed Trainer Tom out the just unlocked door, determined to enjoy retirement after thirty years’ loyal zoo service.
But fruit cost money, and money didn’t grow on trees. He landed at Amazon and spent his days submerged in a gray cubicle selecting canned answers in faceless chats with strangers, amassing 5-star reviews and aching joints.
The gig kept him in lychees and figs, but was this it?
Back at the zoo, the door, locked; Freddy’s heart, lonely, open.
Fedora in hand, he waited for Trainer Tom.
Balloon Animals
by David M Wallace
We stand in line at the fair for half an hour. A harried clown in rainbow overalls, beset by toddlers. Twisting balloons into elaborate pink ponies, purple elephants, blue dinosaurs. Our turn, at last.
“A snake!” she says.
He shrugs. One quick exhale. Two unblinking eyes.
Next.
What He Liked Went Unsung
by R. P. Singletary
No pretending, he liked the sane signature across the old guitar best. Oh he could play, had learnt how, all alone in that field, only son, brothers both dead, Dad always away, hiding out in the open from them all. Too much fusseriness, he called all the women in the house (sister, mother, granny, aunt, cousin) all behind all their proud backs, but when they’d shout out toward the barren furrows to ask their cry for notes, he’d pretend then the best, to please, and he’d strum them exactly, just what they done asked for, as if all for them.
Construction
by Ken Poyner
When Quibble receives the happiness, he finds it was shipped unassembled, without instructions, and free of paint. He spreads the pieces across his living room floor and begins moving them about, gauging which pieces might fit best with which other pieces. He tires, decides to go to Thole’s for the paint he will use. He had hoped when he came back the pieces would make more sense. They do not. It appears they have moved themselves into confusing clusters and configurations, and will need to be realigned. Then he thinks: paint first, or assemble? This project could take a lifetime.
Microfiction Monday – 165th Edition
That Same Game
by Ronit Plank
He’s been here all of thirty minutes and my sister is telling our dad again about that night when we were little and still living with him, when he set her on top of the fridge and left her there. She thinks it’s a good story, like he was playing a game. She doesn’t understand. She puts the inside of herself outside for anyone, especially him, to hurt. She laughs once more and keeps watching him in case he decides to look at her or crack a smile. As if that will make the difference this time.
Colleen Red
by Marcy Dilworth
Drifts of ashes gray-blanket the farmhouse, the fallen cattle, the land they’d labored into life.
Colleen loads a knapsack with little to leave the nothing.
“How will Jed find me?”
No breadcrumbs; bread crumbled to memory long ago.
She tips in a tumble of treasured tubes—acrylics, oils, watercolors—and marks the miles of her pointillist path, a misery of blues, a yearning of yellows, a startle of oranges, more.
Only Colleen Red remains.
She slows. Dispenses dwindling drops. Contemplates beginnings and ends. And spies Jed, hobbling across the cinder-filled creek. Drips from his finger complete their abstract masterpiece.
Ashes
by David M Wallace
One hundred billion stars in the universe will die this year. One hundred billion lamps burned dry. And in my breathing body, as many cells will offer up their lives by Tuesday. Enough for a galaxy. But you, scattered on this sea? Too many and too long ago to count those griefs.
Microfiction Monday – 164th Edition
Pageant
by Lorette C. Luzajic
The future Miss Chatelaine daubs a final explosion of glassine goo on her lower pout and declares herself battle ready. Glowering from her throne of cast and crutches, Maude, her injured sister, records the monumental transformation in her diary. She glows, she gleams, a jewel among beauty queens. She pauses, then crosses a line through her prose. More like an ad for dish soap, she thinks, as Celie flounces out into the pageant pandemonium in a cloud of imposter Obsession.
Confessin’
by Peter Cherches
I’ve got the world on a string. I just adore Victorian wallpaper. I never freeze foods that should never be frozen. I know which side my bread is buttered on. I’ve been praised for my verbal skills and am not afraid to end a sentence with a preposition. I always flush after peeing; I always put the seat down too. It may take me a while, but I eventually get to the point.
I hope you’re sitting down.
I’m mad about you.
Cousin Linus
by G.J. Williams
A plumper version, but there’s no mistaking those eyes, their worrying shine. And he laughs apropos of nothing. What’s with the daybreaks I don’t know: he’s up predawn, poised and waiting, rain or shine. No use in asking; the answer would only confuse. Vigilance essential. Between the last drunk’s belch and the first bird’s tuning up, who knows what he does, what space he occupies. The room he’s in may be theoretical, and his place in it a phantom show for our deadened sensibilities. Who knows. I don’t. He may.
Microfiction Monday – 163rd Edition
Unto the Fire
I am the twigs thrown onto the fire. I grow smaller each time someone loves me and each time someone stops. I wither in the magnitude of the conflagration I’ve created.
After her love, I became the white flakes of flint drifting through the sky, like bits of torn flesh. Next time, I will perhaps shrivel into a speck of black powder, no bigger than a grain of sand.
“I’m sorry,” I’ll say to whoever tries to love me then, knowing they will kill me, “this is all I have left to offer up unto your fire.”
Traveling Salesman, 1927
Selling cocktail glasses creates a thirst for many things, not only liquor. But the pretty girl serving dinner in the hotel restaurant seems immune to my charms. Our paths cross again in the drugstore where I’m buying aspirin for the inevitable hangover and she, filling a prescription for her bedridden mother. Red-haired, dimpled Angelica lets me walk her home. It’s a gorgeous tropical twilight, and she laughs at my jokes. I kiss her and promise I’ll return to Tampa soon. Her face glows like the full moon in my dreams. I sleep poorly and am on the road before sunrise.
Entertainment
The clown wobbles on stage, shackles dragging amongst debris, where Joy-Bringer awaits, whip in hand, skull mask lighted by torches.
Barefoot in his predecessor’s blood, he faces the crowd.
Ashes fall through the collapsed roof, on skins whitened by sunless years. Hollow eyes, bodies, minds, hearts. Starved, but salivating for the show.
Pain explodes on his back, cheers in his ears. Their only amusement—someone’s suffering.
But this clown, he smiles. Has lost everything, endured all torments.
The whip cracks. His flesh too. Never his spirit.
He giggles; they roar.
He lifts his arms, laughing, absorbing their frustration.
His entertainment.
Microfiction Monday – 162nd Edition
Poorophelia
by G.J. Williams
Poorophelia is a condition commonly found among the middle-classes, and is characterised by an excessive fondness for the more plangent manifestations of mental illness. Generally, the more winsome and fragile the sufferer, and the more broken her song, the greater the degree of sympathy accorded her; and it usually is a her.
Pooropheliacs are known for their hearts; they are often to be found bleeding. Pooropheliacs tend to hover; their faces search yours. Furrowed brows also feature heavily.
For pooropheliacs a rose is not a rose, never was. As for twilight, it bleeds, and the rivers they run lonely.
Green Flash
by Ana Cotham
We set his ashes and a profusion of leis—orchid, pikake, ti leaf—adrift on the outgoing tide, an oil spill of tropical colors. Then we bring her inside and prepare for a new day. This grief, these new days, are ours alone, because four days ago she stopped asking where he was; like a whirlpool, the drowning in her eyes, as sixty years of marriage simply drained away. We don’t insist; we keep her warm and happy instead. The next morning, we comb the beach for dislocated strands and sodden orchids, and add them to our sandcastle.
The Man with the Wooden Beard
by P J Rice
In the town of Warton-on-the-Mold, a man named Dwunt failed to grow hair from his chin. The solution: to carve a fine, solid beard from an oak log; suspend it from his ears on leather straps.
When Dwunt held up his head–chin out–the wooden beard stayed firm to his face; but usually it hung and swung like a pub sign.
The wood’s weight dragged Dwunt’s head, stooping him. Stretching his neck. The straps pulled his ears forward, two cabbage leaves. Dwunt didn’t care. He had a well-made facial appendage. His manly-man’s beard. A solid piece of his own.
Microfiction Monday – 161st Edition
Choose
by Madison Randolph
Pipe smoke swirled and tickled Tam’s nose as he puffed. The dirt path he walked undulated through the corn to a crossroads.
The smoke thickened two spirits appeared: a hooded figure stood to his left and, to his right, a veiled woman.
“You must choose,” they said in unison.
Tam turned, but the road had disappeared. Horrified, he fell to his knees before the veiled apparition.
It lowered the veil, rotting skeletal teeth smiled down.
The hooded figure sighed with a shake of his golden curls.
Life may be shadowed in mystery, but to some, death will always be inviting.
Big Aitch
by G.J. Williams
The state he’s in, you can smell the rot. No question Big Aitch knows it. The aroma unmistakable. And where Big Aitch goes the rot goes. He tries to disguise it of course. Comes on all radio rental; rolls the eyeball, makes much of his fingers, puts on airs, pulls faces, has it out with his own shadow, calls a spade many things but never a spade. Makes up his mind so that his mind’s made up; tralala. Watch your words; watch his. There’s no telling. The state he’s in. You can smell the rot from here.
Switchbacks on the Pacific Crest Trail
by Ana Cotham
We’d heard a Trail Angel was four miles ahead, so we kept hiking. Shin splints knifed me with every step; Lisa gritted her teeth through blood blisters. We found the cabin, where a silver-haired woman greeted us with stew, coffee, hot showers.
Clean, fed, soothed with bandages, we shared stories over steaming mugs of cocoa. Sunset glowed, making a silhouette of trees, and she told us the storm had passed.
Lisa said uncertainly, “But—the weather’s been clear.”
“No, my love,” the woman said kindly. “The storm took you both by surprise. How else do you think you found me?”
Microfiction Monday – 160th Edition
Number 4 was Born at Home
by Shannon Hare
After a sleepless night, each crunchy step reminds me of granola. I swat at blackberry brambles with spoon arms. It helps to get scratches. To ground me. To pick at until tomorrow.
“I’m asking for ten minutes a day.”
I was too far away now to hear the baby crying. Still, the rush comes to me, just at the thought of it. Milky circles on my shirt.
Women and Girls
by David M Wallace
My dear wife. I have your letter and the joyous news. The army winters in Gaul but will return to Rome come spring, gods willing. I will send money soon. If the child is a boy, name him Lucius. If a girl, leave her to the elements. Greet my mother for me when next you see her.
Certification
by Ken Poyner
The guards at street’s end swing quart bottles of blood. It is not their blood. It is not your blood. With these exceptions, it could be anyone’s blood. When guard is changed, the new guards bring new blood. In your house you worry how the blood is collected, in what province or block, from which political party; with tubes and needles, or by sopping it from the floor. No one speaks of it, yet everyone worries. Slowly, it is marveled at less. It is assumed each rotation of guards will have new blood. It is normal. The experiment is done.
Microfiction Monday – 159th Edition
Housework
by Thomas Henry Newell
The house smells of new paint, but the stain remains. It’s all too much for the director of a cleaning company.
The employees he demanded come out on the weekend are running late. So, he stares at that blasphemous spot.
What if he bleaches it?
He pours chemicals into a rag and dabs at the darkness coming through the whitewash. His fingers start to burn and blacken.
The workers resent the boss. When they enter the house through the open door that was not answered when knocked, they find there is no work for them. Just nothing.
Fire in the Hole
by Jeannette Connors
Stanley lined them up for epic battles. Some pointed broken rifles, some had smooth nubby helmets, others were headless but fought anyway. A cracked bazooka balanced precariously on a saluting private. A water canteen sat in the grass just out of reach of a footless soldier. “Where’d you get all this crap?” a friend once asked. “A special place,” Stanley said. Each evening Stanley’s father came home with barely a chance to remove his scrubs before his son begged him for the day’s booty.
Snowball Fight
by Scott Bogart
She ducked behind the car. I snuck up and got her good. She nailed me in the groin. Reeling, I retreated, packing another snowball. I let it fly as she rounded the corner, striking her boob. She screamed and fled towards the house. Believing it was over, I limped into the garage. The shovel made a loud thwack against my back and down I went. I took out her shins with the skateboard. Back into the snow we rolled, with neighbors aghast, turning the yard into strawberry shortcake before exhaustion forced an amicable stalemate. Never argue before a snowball fight.
Microfiction Monday – 158th Edition
A Halloween Encounter
by David Henson
I’m raking leaves on a blustery Halloween morning when a green-skinned warlock appears. He tells me I can eliminate my life’s regrets with his magic rifle. With a wink and a hand wave, feathery things fill a bare tree in our yard. “I don’t want to shoot a bird,” I say.
“Not birds. They’re your regrets.”
Relieved, I fire. One of the creatures chirps and falls to the ground. Guilt engulfs me. “I should feel better, not worse. Was it truly a regret?”
The warlock flashes a wicked smile. “No. And now you have one more.”
Judgement
by David M Wallace
After the stoning, no one could say for certain who had delivered the fatal blow. Sara was an adulteress. She had it coming. No one felt any guilt. As she lay bleeding, the men recalled her beauty. That night, the remembrance of the curve of her breasts fueled their fantasies.
Dirty Word
by A. Zaykova
“Keep your eyes on that door,” Jim says.
Freddie, his new partner, looks green and nervous.
“First time?” Jim asks and bites down on a hotdog.
Freddie nods.
“Just do as I say and you’ll be alright.” Jim takes another bite and a splat of ketchup lands on his good pants. “Shoot!”
Freddie cocks his rifle and pulls the trigger. Some poor bugger falls to the ground with a red flower blooming between his eyes. Their target darts into the crowd and disappears.
Maybe Judith was right in saying there’s something off about a hitman who doesn’t use cuss words.
Microfiction Monday – 157th Edition
The Last Cigarette
by Scott Bogart
He took one last drag in the darkness, high above the city, savoring the moment, before flicking the butt and watching it fall. A stiff breeze tousled his hair, causing his cancer riddled body to sway. He gripped the railing. He’d quit years ago, but what good had it done? The bustling streets below were a noisy and glittering reminder of life’s indifference. He smiled at the thought then released his grip on the railing. As he fell back into bed he pondered what laid ahead. Maybe it won’t come tonight. Afterall, there’s still one cigarette left in the pack.
Purity
by Rebecca Iden
The trees are washed in morning gold and rain impregnates the air. My skin holds the shadow of his hands and my muscles are hot with blood. Leaves cling to the back of my liver-colored frock and I must hurry. A rabbit freezes on the path, eyes bright like coins.
Night Life
by Natasha Dalley
Dad stands next to the shower holding a library book he will never return. When Mom asks, he swears he is clean. Mom gets stomach aches when she eats grapes but not when drinking them. Dad says if she would stop holding her breath she would feel better. He hands her a glass of wine. Mom belts out “super six pack shower hour” upstairs. The psychic tells her that there will be peanuts in the bathtub tonight. Or penis. Or perhaps a pianist though that is the least likely. When Mom gets out, she will swear she is clean too.
Microfiction Monday Magazine 