The Red Cardinal

Mark sat next to his motionless mother.

“How is she doing today,” Mark asked the nurse. A red cardinal perchedon the window sill chirped.

“The same. Quiet and still.”

Mark opened his journal and wrote the date. He spent his time writinghappy moments with his mother rather than spending time on a novel.

“Mom, look. There’s a red cardinal, your favorite bird.” Sophia’s mouthsagged, expressionless.

He sighed. “Mom, I’ll be back tomorrow.”

Mark left the room with a blank space in his journal. Alzheimer’s tookhis mother away and he didn’t know how to endure the emptiness.

From Guest Contributor Lisa M. Scuderi-Burkimsher

Futile Gestures

Leslie struck at the hand as it approached her face.

"Don't touch me."

"There's a leaf in your hair."

"I can take care of myself."

Steven remembered when they cared for each other. He'd cook dinner on nights she got home late. She packed a lunch when he had fieldwork, a chocolate bar hidden at the bottom of the bag.

Those thoughtful gestures became less frequent as the fights occurred more often. She perceived every request as an assault on her freedom. She likely had her own side, but he'd stopped caring long ago.

Steven walked away without another word.

The Benefit Of Integrity

He sat alone at lunch. The rest of the section gathered near the tea urn to create a susurration of disapproval, which reached for some sort of crescendo which might adequately protest his being promoted without due process.

The manager emerged from her office, paused at the door – interrupting her daily early escape – to absorb, glancing occasionally in his direction. Then she approached – a study in authority.

“Sean–”

A sudden gust whipped the vertical blinds inward, toppling a desk tidy perched atop an in-tray filled with unexamined client files. The clatter distracted.

“We’re public servants. They’re entitled. I told them.”

From Guest Contributor Perry McDaid

Backroads

State troopers in the backwoods called in the wrong road. At 90 mph, the sign was a blur. So deputies set the spike strip in the wrong place.

As Bob fiddled with the radio, flipping through static and endless commercials, his pickup suddenly went airborne, tumbling through cornstalks.

Officers had Bob handcuffed at gunpoint in seconds. Cuffs cut off his circulation. An hour passed before they learned of the mix-up. Cordiality crept into their tones.

A deputy in shades took Bob aside.

“Look, we’re just out here trying to keep you safe.”

“Safe,” Bob muttered, his temple damp with blood.From Guest Contributor Joseph S. Pete

Joseph is an award-winning journalist, an Iraq War veteran, an Indiana University graduate, a book reviewer, a photographer, and a frequent guest on Lakeshore Public Radio. His literary or photographic work has appeared in more than 100 journals, including The Evening Theatre, The Tipton Poetry Journal, Chicago Literati, Dogzplot, Proximity Magazine, Stoneboat, The High Window, and the Synesthesia Literary Journal.

Ripen And Split

We both said we meant it, your hands in my hair. In the end it didn’t matter, you looked out across the desert like you were already crossing it, a dehydrated camel hell bent on pushing yourself towards purple sunsets no matter how rough or dangerous the terrain. I sat in the barely shade near a towering saguaro and braided spines and blossoms intermittently, blood flowering on the waxy white petals. I watched you go until the heat rising from the sand turned you into a wavy haze. I sighed when both hands dropped the struggle to hold you near.From Guest Contributor Sarah Reddick

Sarah is a writer, editor, and a writing professor at the University of Missouri-St. Louis. Her work has previously appeared in The Local Voice, The Mid-Rivers Review, and Salt Journal.

The Remains

Stephanie allowed her eyes to adjust as silhouettes gradually manifested in the murkiness of the cabin. Even this deep, the difference between dim ocean floor and the total blackness within the shipwreck was stark.

After a few minutes, she saw the safe's boxy outline in one corner. Her fingers delicately worked the dial, hoping corrosion had not ruined the mechanism.

Stephanie spied two spotlights through the empty window. The competition. She worked faster without a torch, one of the reasons her employer always came to her first.

The safe opened. Inside: nothing but remains.

The question: Would her pursuers believe?

The Pit And The Stone

A mere glimmer of light reflected off the patches of clammy wall not occupied by greasy lichen and water-laden moss as he hung awkwardly upside-down, blood rushing to his head.

The darkness was dank and oppressive, and he began to wonder exactly what bacteria or even viruses he might pick up fulfilling this bucket list item. Well, he could blame no-one but himself.

He twisted a little and stretched, bracing himself against the other wall, slipping a little on the slimy algae.

A furious voice drifted down from above “If he doesn't kiss the damn Blarney soon, I'm letting go!”

From Guest Contributor Perry McDaid

The Consortium

After five years on the job, the speculative nature of their work weighed on Debra. Bobby said it was a waste of time to worry over whether any of it mattered, that she just needed to concentrate on the task at hand. Little by little, the evidence would pile up, and they'd uncover the truth. The whole truth.

Debra stared at their conspiracy wall and she could not quell her doubts any longer. The tenuous connections among various suspects required a gargantuan leap of faith.

She thought back to Sunday School. There was a time she'd believed in God too.

The Party

The smell of quality cheese and the clinking of wine glasses told Mark he was at the right party. He was feeling good. That is, until they came in.

The divorce destroyed him, and there they were. At the same party. With him.

It took two years of therapy for Mark to recover, to heal, to become whole. They were supposed to be out of town. But here they were.

They walked up to him.

“Hello, Mark. Good to see you.”

She was holding Nanette. One look at the poodle and Mark knew two years of therapy was not enough.From Guest Contributor NT Franklin

NT has been published in ​​Entropy, ​Page and Spine, Fiction on the Web, 101 Words, Madswirl, Postcard Shorts, 404 Words, Scarlet Leaf Review, Freedom Fiction, Burrst, ​Alsina Publishing, and Fifty-word stories, among others.

Conversation RIP (Killer)

There was furious silence in the booth from the women, mixed with a gauged suspension of opinion from the men.

Ginny, being invested, had expressed her dissatisfaction with the quality of man available to the unwed mother.

Kurt had provided a brutally frank answer. It hung in the air above the table like a phantasm.

To me, he’d drawled, a man willing to bring up another’s child born of selfish gratification – or conversely accept someone who’d aborted – wouldn’t think much of himself. Where’s the quality in that?

I wished the now red-faced Frank had given a brutally curt answer instead.

From Guest Contributor Perry McDaid