Microfiction Monday – 92nd Edition
This week’s artwork is by G.J. Mintz
Back to the Beach
by Joseph Yenkavitch
Maria sat stiffly on the multi-colored blanket leaning back on both arms her right foot fidgeting into the warm beach sand. Her husband, one hand holding onto little Grace, ran into the water while the more independent Kathy splashed nearby. Maria watched as the turquoise water encircled the children’s bodies. She sat upright as the waves climbed and lifted them. Catching her husband dreamily gazing out to sea, her hand grabbed a knot of cloth. Kathy waved as frothy water covered her. Maria leaped up remembering how Bobby had waved going under. But Kathy surfaced with a squeal of laughter.
Standing on Air
by Andrew C. Hartford
It was dark inside the prison yard despite the morning sun. Dressed in another’s Sunday best, Jeb Sanders trod heavily up the scaffold steps. No crowd had come, only the law and the faith, the latter of which was represented by a lone figure standing before the trapdoor. Moving to his spot, he made a quick study of the priest. Pale, baby-faced, the leather spine of his bible uncracked. His holy garb, though clean, was too long and fell past his feet, giving off the impression that he was floating. “Hey” Jeb said, “Mind showing me how you do that?”
A Slow Demise
by Seminare Ta’afua
My eyes opened yet the darkness did not go away. I lifted my head but it bumped into the ceiling. I moved my feet but could not bend my knees any more than a few degrees. Turning was also obstructed. I realized my demise and start to feel my tears roll down into my ears. I knew yelling wouldn’t help but impulsively- maybe by fear- I screamed out as loud as I could. I maneuvered my arms to allow for prime pounding position and proceeded to hit the coffin ceiling repeatedly. It didn’t take long until dirt started sifting through.
The Cockroach at the End of the World
by Jim Doss
He wants to be called Bernie, but no one’s left to speak his name. He stares from those sad Franz Kafka eyes, a body shriveled as if he’s lived for years in concentration camps. He combs through building rubble, nibbling on barbecued people, not bothering to hide since the bombs went off. Mutually assured destruction—some deterrent. His cells absorb radiation, mutate, then mutate again. He feels sick, both at heart and in mind. He isn’t transformed algae crawling out of a pond at the beginning of time, but he is the new Adam in search of his Eve.
Tendrils
by Matthew McEwan
She spotted it first through tears. It was a hiccup moment. Nothing significant, just something to notice; a small leaf sprouting against her grey wooden fence. The next morning, she woke up and cried. When the tears stopped, she saw two; a week later, three. Since then, she would cry in her empty double bed, then stare out her window, counting the leaves as her cheeks dried. Months passed and no longer did she cry, but one day she tossed her heavy duvet aside and rushed outside. She took hold of the blossoming vine in a white-knuckled coil and ripped.
Microfiction Monday – 91st Edition
This week’s artwork is “Hourglass Figures” by Julian Cloran.
Once Upon an Apocalypse
by GB Burgess
Grimm Forest had suffered its share of wolves, curses and wicked witches, but we weren’t prepared for a monster invasion. The creatures were small but many.
We fled up beanstalks, but the monsters were master climbers.
We hid in gingerbread cottages. The monsters’ gap-filled grins chewed expertly though sugary walls.
Our best weapons failed. The monsters gagged and recoiled from our poisoned apples.
In the end, there was no escaping. Monsters rushed at us from every direction, giggling madly, their sticky hands groping.
Defeated we little pigs, gingerbread men, orphans, princes and damsels succumbed to the hugs of the children.
A Future Scientist or Psychopath—Not That They Are Mutually Exclusive
by Zebulon Huset
She insisted we bake her mud pies. “They have a secret ingredient.” Ingredients, I’d learn. Each clay cupcake had a secret center of worms or centipede, three stink beetles or a tiny frog. She’d probably smushed it when forming the cake—enough to squeeze the consciousness from its tiny little head, to squish the function from its organs. Too tightly packed to still be alive when the steaming began, I tell myself as I wash my face before bed—desperate to avoid a vicarious nightmare of being baked alive in a wet sarcophagus. A sleeping bag sauna getting hotter and hotter.
Fake News
by Charles Duffie
Come home late from night school, drop my backpack on the kitchen table, microwave the dinner dad always leaves for me. I sit on my bed with the warm plate in my lap and stare across the narrow hallway. He works early so he should be asleep but light flashes under his door and voices thrum with a machine rhythm like there’s a factory in there, an assembly line where ideas are welded onto his imagination, words blow-torched under his skin. I eat my vegetables, watching my father be remade, then go downstairs and pack his lunch for tomorrow.
The Bell Curve
by Tommy Mack
The bell curve glows on my collar. Like the ones carved on the town hall or above the altar in church. A fair deal: sporting odds. Attached on my retirement by the company. Everyone agreed the population was too old but no one liked the countdown to death. There were protests, suicides. So they made the collars. A trigger designed to execute, not on a prescribed date but with a fixed probability each day, like Russian roulette. At 84, I am an outlier, an object of curiosity to the local children and I can’t decide whether I’m lucky or not.
Microfiction Monday – 90th Edition
Listening to George
by Alan Beard
In his back yard. He’s big, reddened, rough with illness, talking about the manic-depressive next door who was putting up their mutual fence after taking a dislike to their previous one. He’s left it half done to go off for a fortnight’s ‘session’. And of his lodger with his fear of scrambled eggs. He cracks a joke about the rain we’ve been having week in, week out and then says his wife is leaving him. Has left him. I thought it was quiet. Then he jokes it’s the lodger, the neighbor. There are madmen all around.
Now You See Her
by Lisa Strong
The girl with the cannula, offers to show me a magic trick. She must have been here before, looks sick enough to be a regular. I’ve just never noticed. Her bald head is the bleached white of an egg, but her eyes are very blue. A shaft of light pours in from the high institutional windows picking out every blond eyelash. I wonder, is it possible to fall in love on same day you find out you’re dying or is this just a trick of the nervous system, some flood of endorphins, as the soul desperately clings to life?
Two Goats and a Basketball
by Matt Weatherbee
I had two goats named Lebron James and Michael Jordan. I asked them who the greatest basketball player of all time was, hoping they’d start fighting so I could declare the winner the greatest and finally have a definitive answer, but they just tried to headbutt me. Jokingly I tossed a basketball up in the air over their pen. It plopped in the mud and scared them. I left the basketball there and soon forgot about it. Then one morning a few months later I found Lebron James and Michael Jordan dead, the basketball sitting bloody and deflated between them.
Going
by David Ford
She is always jolly. Her kids hate that. She strokes the palm of her hand with her thumb, the life line and the heart line, wishing they were longer. Then the finger on her lips as if silencing the question: who will miss me when I am gone?
He holds her tight but not tight enough.
Listening to Seashells
by Hannah Whiteoak
I lift the shell to my ear. “Come back,” the sea calls. “Finish what you started.” I remember jumping from the pier, the sudden cold shock I was sure nobody could survive. And then the arm hooking under my shoulders, the stranger dragging me to shore. Air swooshes around the shell like waves closing over my head. Giving up should have been easy, but I clung to that swimmer until we reached the beach, where I dug my fingers into the sand and wept with relief. Inside the shell, my heartbeat echoes, reminding me to hang on.
Microfiction Monday – 89th Edition
This week’s artwork is by G.J. Mintz.
Fully Immersed
by Andrée Gendron
Perched on a porch swing overlooking marshlands for long hours on end an old woman systematically discards (molts) her pointless (undervalued) humanity. Transformed once dissolved she becomes fully immersed in the pageantry below. She boasts a newly crocheted poncho—black, red, and bright yellow—resembling her spirit animal, the red-winged blackbird. To further blend in with them she spreads both arms wide while swinging as if darting amidst the cattails and sunbeams. Only there and then can she find true joy and peace among her own kind. It seems they are all the family the old woman has left nowadays.
Would Give 0 Stars If I Could
by Adrienne Ryan
I go through the ritual, draw out the circle for summoning Roneve, but end up conjuring Raum instead. I didn’t mean to do that, but it looks like the incantation was for Raum and the symbols of binding are for Ronove. Nice. Needless to say, the barrier doesn’t hold. If it weren’t for my talisman I would have been incinerated! Now Raum is demanding a blood feast, and I really don’t have the time to deal with this. I won’t even attempt a dismissal since I don’t know if I’m using it’s true name. Seriously, do not buy this ebook.
The Horror of Doris’ Toenails
by Janet F. Murray
Everyone hated Doris’s toenails. As long as her fingers and painted a bright red, her gait was like that of a clumsy alligator. Inopportunely, as Doris discovered, she did not share the alligator’s agility. Sheriff Milne realized this one day when up to his own nefarious activities in the Great Dismal Swamp in the south eastern region of Virginia. About to bend young Sophia over a conveniently placed tree stump, his eyes lit upon the grotesque sight of bleached brown phalanges, red nails desperately clinging to swamp grass. Doris’ digits are now memorialized in formaldehyde at the local museum.
To Be Warned
by Trisha Ridinger McKee
Sam tried to sneak past his mom as she handed out candy, but her sharp squeak reached him. “Did you just wake up? That’s ridiculous. Hey, watch for the crazies. Tonight, they’re everywhere. Be careful.”
He rolled his eyes but simply agreed so he could escape into the night, amid the miniature ghouls and werewolves holding out pillowcases. He strolled down the sidewalk, and as everyone was watching the dressed-up monsters of the night, he slid into a backyard, wondering as he sank his teeth into the scrumptious neck, what his mom would think if she knew.
Cedar Balls
by Brooks C. Mendell
My first customer gifted the cedar wood balls rolling in the cup holder. “You seem nice, but your car smells kinda funky.” If my next fares give five-star ratings, I overtake Vernon in Lansing and reclaim first in the Midwest driver rankings. This garners respect and encourages tipping. I turn to offer hardboiled quail eggs while Vivaldi plays. Two chipmunks sprint across the street. I slam the brakes. The espresso machine tumbles, showering a nun from Holt and a ride-sharing personal injury attorney with scalding water. The sounds of bouncing cedar balls fail to cover the screams and profanity.
Killed by a Drink
by Mir-Yashar D Seyedbagheri
Nick’s sister Nancy is struck by a beer truck. He tries not to conjure the truck, making contact. The motion of Nancy flying into the air, crack of bones on pavement. He tries to block the nicknames she bestowed on him. Saint Nick, Little Nicky. Whirlwind energy, love of piano. Footsteps, loud clickety-clack. He wishes she hadn’t gone out that day. Wishes he’d followed her. Gotten hit himself. When people ask about her, he says it was a drink that killed her. Technically correct. A truckful. Being killed by booze seems mysterious and inexplicable. Beyond logic. It’s easier.
Microfiction Monday – 88th Edition
End of the Summer Season
by M J Christie
Answer the call of a deserted beach. Welcome the silence filled with memories of her. Look not for phantom footprints washed away by rolling tide. Instead, endure the pain. Suffer the change her leaving brings. Let it shape the man inside. Be him.
Remember the day she left. Blow a kiss. Au revoir, mon amour. Au revoir does not mean goodbye. Futile wishes foster hope but then collapse like castles made of sand.
Laughter.
A hand tugs. ‘Dad?’
Embrace him. Capture his grin. Revisit the love that made him.
‘Race me!’
Smile. Accept his challenge. Make this moment about him.
Running
by Joseph House
He leans back, eyes closed. His glass dully clicks against the bar. Its contents burn Sherman’s Path down his throat. The whiskey is cheap, primordial… speaking to the onrushing progress of fire. There’s no flavor, nuance, substance. There is only burn, marching forward… conquering… destroying while creating. It is purely penance, paid for in cash and hangovers.
He doesn’t look at his phone. He doesn’t think about the calls… the texts…. His thoughts slide over the roll of hundreds in his pocket… the corporate account he emptied.
He needs to move on in the morning. He orders another whiskey now.
Johnnys On The Half Shell
by Mark Pearson
Salty winds stung his scowling face as he reviewed the Dear John Snapchat, the shore pines resolute before the cliff. A dark blue seascape beckoned 20 fathoms below. Jump, said the purple starfish on the inter-tidal rocks, basking in the cool sun. Don’t you have enough smartphones? asked the seal. Not an iPhone X with a charged battery, said the echinoderm. Dibs on his eyes, said the crab, clinging to the barnacle covered basalt, seaweed hanging like long green Jheri curls. You Cancers are all the same, said the Octopus. The cephalopod flashed JUSTDOIT in red letters across his body.
Kindness
by Tommy Mack
When Dad moved in, I resolved to kill him with kindness. Topping up his glass, passing the M&Ms, fetching and carrying to keep him on the sofa. Picturing the fat hardening in his arteries as I troweled butter onto his morning toast.
Blood vessels burst in his face and his eyes yellowed with jaundice. Diabetes came, gout too but the bugger refused to die.
He sits, outlined by twenty years of sweat: a pasty, bloated mound of dough, pudgy fingers drumming on the table as my shaking hands pour six measures of cheap supermarket scotch into his cracked glass tumbler.
Softer Parts
by Catherine Stratton
Divorce is cynicism unmasked. Or, perhaps, it’s hope set free that hearkens an escape?
Then, one day I make the call. Something with the kids and I hear his voice and I’m flung back to the time I burrowed into his softer parts; the window shades raised to reveal a dark and wintry wonderland of snow latching onto the trees with a clingy embrace.
He says something. The moment passes and, like a boomerang, I’m flung back to the present and I feel cold.
Mona
by Eliza Mimski
Her smile leads the way. She is a dream leaning against a streetlight, breath coming from a doorway. Glossy and detached, she presses against you. There is the roof of her mouth. You enter her eyelids. A breeze circles your ankles. You swim inside her remedies. She owns your footsteps.
The next day, her smile sits upright in a booth. Time is a tunnel and she pulls you through it.
Later, the soft sidewalk. She is drunken streetlights, a locked car, red lips breaking into dark buildings. The moon is an apron and the night inhales.
Chameleon Eyes
by B.E. Seidl
The moment I try to fixate my gaze on a detail, it changes its face. A smile contorts into a grimace, a structure resolves into chaos, beauty fades away. At times, when I’m tired or tipsy, I watch as the broken becomes whole again and the weathered blooms with new life. Yet, nothing ever stays the same. Whenever I seek to catch an instant, it slips away, leaving only a faint impression like a falling star. My eyes have become sore from their constant blinking. I’m tired of this kaleidoscope world. Still, I cannot stop myself stop from chasing consistency.
Unaware
by Louella Lester
Cow has already been milked so she lies here with feet tucked, eyes closed, and face held up to the sun that sifts down through a gauze of cloud. She smiles and thinks she’s dreaming what is really a past life reminiscence of basking on a yacht off a warm coast with friends who flirt and nibble canapés. Cow is still unaware, so she’s able to ignore things like the bluebottle flies that buzz and land on her nose in a vain attempt to remind her of just how she got here.
Pain Relief
by Kari Treese
I opened the sliver of my surgical scar that covers a hard lump under my right knee. When that thin skin split, I pulled the top half of a miniature statue of liberty, bleached white, out of my leg by her torch. This bloody half popped free and skin snapped back. Next, I fished out a shard of plastic, a thick splinter, also white. Two flat copper disks the size of a fingernail that smelled like dirty pennies. The abjection relieved the pressure inside the joint, as expected. Waking, I felt her there, under the skin, yearning to break free.
Microfiction Monday – 87th Edition
This week’s artwork is “Mills” by G.J.Mintz
The Wishing Well
by G. Allen Wilbanks
“What are you doing?” my sister asked.
“Making a wish in the well.”
Addy slipped a hand into her pocket and pulled out a coin. She let it fall into the well and we waited until it hit the water with an echoing plip.
“Nope. You’re still here,” she announced. “It doesn’t work.”
Addy turned and walked down the hill, her ponytail flouncing behind her as she went.
“Very funny,” I shouted after her, but I wasn’t mad at her for the joke.
It had been two years since the car crash. I was just happy to see her again.
The Crack
by Marta
While shattered china patterns of pink and red flowers spread wide on the bone cold kitchen floor, we hide the dustbin to avoid picking up the shards and tip-toe around the tiny daggers to get to the milk and cereal so we can go about our day.
En Shore
by Jake Zawlacki
On a sand-sprinkled beach, I stared into the world. The world, in a molting scarred form, ruptured from the water to face me, it’s slick wings licking the ocean around it.
“Why are you here?” I asked.
It moaned and sputtered, in pain, “An odd question.”
I shoveled granules and threw them at the world. Sand-scattered salvo splashed, then was absorbed by the ocean, like all things.
“There is nowhere else to be,” the world said, the shiny scars of its back wet and glittering. Under heavy breaths it groaned and creaked then, silence,
as the world swam away.
The Last Blue
by Karen Walker
“Let’s bring your photos, Mom,” Jennifer says.
I’d take them with me if I could. Snaps of a misty morning at the lake long ago, of Jack in those awful navy socks and sandals, of our daughter’s wedding in lavender.
“So it’ll be just like home.” Her smile drips into a sob; she’s so sorry. I catch her tears. She wipes mine.
“Go home,” I tell Jennifer. Her girls need her.
Setting the prescription beside the bed, she kisses me. “Have a good sleep.”
I will. The pills are blue like her father’s sky eyes. I’ll see them tonight.
Paper Cranes
by Nhu Tien Lu
A Hmong girl, home high above rows of stone corn, sings to the water buffaloes in her rainbow skirts. Her laughter bursts bright and contagious. At fifteen, she is kidnapped to be a wife. She eats 55 poison leaves, chewing one at a time, but doesn’t die. At sixteen, an uncle takes her to China, where he sells her to strangers; for four months, she swallows her songs like beating wings. Now at seventeen, in the safe shelter with the other girls, she dreams of seeing the ocean and folds tiny colorful paper cranes. She sings until they soar.
Microfiction Monday – 86th Edition
This week’s artwork is “The Wind’s Hush After a Kiss” by Bill Wolak
Faded
by Bronwen O’Donnell
She was never close to her father’s mother. She’d gone when she was just a bairn. Her rabbit had died the same weekend, and it had been Smokey that had wrung her infant heart.
Thirty-two years later, the faded photograph, so fragile…almost dust in her hand, told a truth.
A young woman, a park bench, a baby the same age as hers. Her own eyes looking back at her.
Someday, she would be a dusty photo in an attic. Even now, she was a memory waiting to fade.
She framed her grandmother. It was the least she could do.
Denver Disappeared Wednesday
by Eric Robert Nolan
Denver disappeared Wednesday.
That’s how it happens. Cities targeted by EAGLE-X simply vanish. The orbiting laser is cleaner than a nuke; it vaporizes its maddeningly random targets.
When the EAGLE-X defense satellite went rogue, it gave us a global game of Russian roulette. First its malfunctioning program targeted an obscure Siberian town. Then a nondescript French suburb. Then it left Buenos Aires a silent, sulphurous, blackened flatland. Tuesday it incinerated Kirik, a Icelandic fishing village of just 400 souls. Every time we try to nuke it, it defends itself.
I kiss my infant son tonight — maybe for the last time.
The Corporation
by Charles Gray
Entangled in your policies — I never strayed from your goals. Choked by your procedures, I pried your hands from my throat, so you could choke me again. Down the paperwork abyss I fell, and with mangled fingers, clawed out. Yes, I worked the extra hours — unpaid — because that’s what you needed. Promoted to project manager, I presented the customer your scheduled accomplishments — all lies. The sleepless nights piled up and dropped me to my knees. When I extended my hand for my thirty year anniversary plaque, you smirked, “Thanks for your service, Mr. Goodman,” and handed me a pink slip.
The Vase
by Bill Cook
Before passing, Patsy applied rose-scented lip balm. Now she’d miss out on her pottery class. I, her sinewy fingers, the pliant knuckles of a pole-vaulter. Her at the round wooden stool. Her agile hands clasping the slick malleable clay.
September sunlight bled through mouth-blown windowpane. Cottonwood warmed golden-green before her return to the hospital. Patsy sat coaxing a squatty vase into being. “A vase meant to hold a reflection.”
She had ground pigment. Had made fire. Had pumped hand-drawn water.
This morning, a year later, I gripped the furrowed stem, caressed the vulvic collar. Placed the clutch of garden tulips.
Cleaning the Lies
by Mir-Yashar Seyedbagheri
I try to scoop up lies I’ve told my father. They keep slipping. I shouldn’t lie, but want peace. He loves to dissect. Find flaws in every move. I’m too weak, artistic, need to use people. Trust no one. I’m in a prestigious PhD program. Have three girlfriends. Top of the class. I’m rough, thriving on the energy of fights, taking out neo-Nazis. Lies expand, contract, consume. Truth and I part ways, even as she tries to reconcile. I want peace. Can’t expect him to be pleased. I lost that expectation. I keep scooping, but I’ll never clean everything. Anything.
Dough
by Mandira Pattnaik
A wrinkled palm held out, I used to sing a ditty on the steps of the glitzy Bank. Moneyed people eyed me like a roach. They wished homeless, penniless people like me disappeared from these polished sidewalks, from their upmarket business district, from their chic city, from the face of earth.
This changed overnight when I brought my pooch along and wrote ‘For the dog’ on my cup. I made enough to last the week before lunch.
The River
by Carson Stone
There’s a couple holdin’ hands down there by the river, no more’n teenagers if I had to take a guess. They’re still in the springtime years, dazzled by the motion of a growing life in a world where everything is brand new. I can’t help but notice the stillness that’s crept into these old bones and spread to damn near everything else I’d rightly consider part of me. I stare at the empty rocker sittin’ next to mine and follow that laughter back to the riverbed. Same river it’s always been. Can’t hurt to hope I’ll be there again someday.
Inherited Land
by Jacob (Radar) DeBoard
Josiah sat quietly in his favorite chair on the front porch. He looked out over the several dozen acres of farmland before him. This had been a new evening ritual of his.
Things hadn’t been the same since he had inherited the land from his father. He missed him. His wife emerged from inside. “Everything quiet?”, she asked. Josiah gave a small nod in response.
Just then, his eyes caught a glimpse of something in the distance. An older man covered in dirt, shambled down the road. Josiah stood up, picking up a shovel. “Looks like dad got out again.”
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Microfiction Monday – 85th Edition
Fish
by Tiffany Grimes
Goldfish were thought to be like freshly cut wildflowers. Decoration only.
I don’t know what to do with my pet goldfish while I’m gone. He will slowly suffer, his tiny body rotten when I return.
I pick him up. It takes a few tries but soon I can predict his movements. I squeeze his golden body between my fingers.
I place him in my mouth. He squirms down my esophagus and then my only friend in the whole world is gone.
I don’t have to stop for lunch.
Grounding
by Kirsty Holmes
The first thing I notice is the absence of birdsong; a thudding silence as my heart fights, as the panic closes hot, dry hands around my throat; the room shrinks around me until, Alice-like, my awkward limbs fold and my too-big elbows shatter the windows.
The only thing to do is run; choking on vinegar tears. Out; the field. I strike toward the sun; barefoot, dishcloth in hand; one two, nine ten; count the steps, my breaths, my heartbeats. Stare at the sky until it sears into my vision forever, the pain just about clean enough to hold on to.
Skeleton Weight
by Leslie Cairns
I was ribs, bones, and sulking hallways.
Feeding tubes, and a skeleton weight.
A man who would later save my life and buy my graduation gown, would pull in one fluid motion. And, in the same sentence, reminds me of the other girls he’d seen and done the same. He used to call us the tools in his toolbox. Screwdriver, he’d laughed with abandon at that. I was, with some affection, the hammer.
Dashed lines, jagged cliffs, lost rocks. Wandering back, barefoot.
I’m a crevice, a flight path, a steady pattern of people coming and forgetting where they went.
What I Did for Love
by Roberta Beary
At the bar we bonded over favorite musicals. When I went home with him I knew it could turn weird. And it did. His hallway was filled with whips and chains masquerading as shabby chic wall art. He steered me to red silk sheets. It was over before it had started. He said It was good for me was it good for you, before rolling over and falling asleep. His armpits still had that yeasty smell. Like when we were married. Before I left I grabbed $500 from his wallet. For the kids’ music lessons.
On the Right Track
by Mark Reels
She resolved to do three laps around the walking path every day.
She trudged past the blooming daffodils in April.
In May she walked beneath the delicate flowers of a crab apple tree.
A teenager pointed and laughed at her as she jogged and panted past in June.
By July she was running with her earbuds in.
In August the apple tree was producing hard, tart fruit. When the jeering teenager whistled at her and yelled, “Lookin’ good, mama,” she picked an apple and beaned him in the head with it.
He gave chase, but she easily outran him.
Microfiction Monday Magazine – 84th Edition
The Rot
by TL Holmes
Doctor Kline says it is chronic not fatal, that it is possible to live a full life with bent stems and wilting leaves, that there is a rose bush he cares for that’s been living with it for sixteen years. She is bald and thornless but still beautiful, he says. I’m not a rose bush, I want to scream, I cannot live without my leaves. My husband tells me he will love me no matter what but late in the night when he thinks I am asleep, I hear him in the garden with the daisies, just bloomed.
Needle
by Nathaniel Darbonne
I swallowed a needle while trying to make something beautiful. While holding it between my teeth I realized I would never be happy, a revelation that made me gasp and suck it in. With the needle in the back of my throat, I raced to the hospital and ran around, trying to convince the doctors there was something wrong with me, unable to speak. The needle traveled further down whenever I swallowed, scraping the soft tissue, gathering more flesh, creating scars, unseen.
An Arrival to Aimlessness
by Calvin Yorick
White walls glow cool with rainbow circuitry; razor lines thin like spider’s silk, threaded, tangled unbroken for what could be forever, pulsing methodically, all healthy-like. Fun to look at. Strange to contemplate—like most of the phenomena in this odd, underground vista. She wants to be perplexed, to be genuinely curious before this mystery, but the anxiety gnaws her open. The stretching pit in her stomach swallows any interest, atomizes whatever wonder. She’s not here to daydream theories about the labyrinth’s origins or nature. She’s here to stay lost, and she knows this, but she carries on regardless. Aimlessly.
Foul Flesh
by Calvin Yorick
The foul flesh of the white beast ripples like milk. It groans, ill with lacerations, thousands of newborn wounds. And then it deflates. Dies gasping. En masse the tortured souls of its victims pull themselves up through its shredded hide, and they’re all mottled and ugly and wretched with the weight of a timeless imprisonment. They do not linger. Or show gratitude. The ruined warrior, a premonition of offal, watches with weary pleasure the senseless dead rising like plumes of smoke into the sky, off to rediscover their options.
The Great Pretender
by Alessia Pietraroia
I’m allergic to cotton candy. Rides make me nauseous. I’m afraid of clowns. Yet every weekend in July, I go to the fair. I hop into my prettiest shorts, the ones that mask bruises and salted wounds, and drive. I smile for pictures I don’t want to take, eat a candy apple, despite its poisonous center, play mundane games that bore me to exhaustion, ride the ferris wheel, in contempt of its rusted seats and loose screws. I ignore the stomach-churning scent of laughter and euphoria. And when I get home, I tell my family how much fun I had.
Family Road Trip
by Jody Perejda
“I spy, with my little eye, something starting with the letter ‘H.’” I feel like we’ve been in the car for six months. My brother smells like rancid roadkill.
“Whore!” I shout out. We’re on a highway in Kansas. No hookers in sight.
“That doesn’t start with an ‘H,’” is my dad’s reply. My flesh melts against the crap upholstery.
“I spy, with my little eye, something starting with the letter ‘D.’” I announce, snatching my victory despite flaunting all the rules of the game. My mom looks around pitifully.
“Diner?” Always optimistic.
“Dirt,” I tell them. Nothing but.
