Last Dance

Rain blackens the windows, dime-sized water balloons of toxic ash. We haven’t had sun in months, and now this. You look up and say, Think it’ll stop? I love how you still look up, that instinctive angle of hope, of God.

It doesn’t matter since ration deliveries have ended, but I don’t say that.

We stand on the porch and watch the rain. Our last neighbors emerge from their house, wave, then slow dance down the street. By the time they reach the corner they’re convulsing like punk rockers. I ask you to dance but you pull me back inside.

From Guest Contributor Charles Duffie

How It Was Is How It Will Be

No one claims to know how the Hebrew slaves came to be heaving the shriveled bodies of the dead into raging furnaces. Soon their throats swelled from the smoke, and they couldn’t swallow or eat, and then their eyes turned red, and everything looked blurry, as if seen through the sting of tears. I feel less certain every day about my own chances. I go to sleep afraid, and I wake up afraid. Sometimes I’m even chased down the street, shoes slapping the pavement, but when I glance back, I can’t quite see who it is that is chasing me.From Guest Contributor Howie Good

Howie is the author most recently of Stick Figure Opera: 99 100-word Prose Poems from Cajun Mutt Press. He co-edits the online journals Unbroken and UnLost.

Breakfast

8:45, he gets up quietly. While the coffee’s brewing he takes two cups and two glasses and places them on the kitchen table. He takes the orange juice and the butter from the fridge and the butter knife from the drawer, then slips English muffins into the toaster. He pours himself coffee and orange juice and switches on the radio for the news.

When he’s done, he trudges to the living room and does a crossword puzzle in the armchair, facing her photograph. Later, when he puts everything into the dishwasher, he’ll place her cup and glass next to his.

From Guest Contributor Xavier Combe

Xavier is a freelance conference interpreter and translator. He teaches at the University of Paris X. He has authored two non-fiction books in French as well as op-eds in the French press. His story The Games People Play won 3rd Prize at the October 2019 Bath Flash Fiction Award. He writes and produces audio fiction with 2-time Peabody award winner Jim Hall on their website muffydrake.com. He has two adult sons and lives in the Paris suburbs with his wife, their two teenage daughters and their dog Zelda.

Requiem For The Unappreciated

“Did’ya hear blah died?” the barman had imparted, rather than asked, punctuation notwithstanding.

“Names don’t stay with me,” I’d admitted, and lifted my pint – eyes pointedly on the telly.

“Used to be regular – face all scarred.” Hint not taken.

I’d shrugged and adjusted my angle to him.

“You know him.” It was a slow day ­– the other customers had wisely chosen not to sit at the counter.

“Probably,” I’d ceded, thrusting my annoyance deep beneath a façade of affability.

It must have leaked, for the subject was dropped.

Two weeks later I noticed that an acclaimed local poet had died.

From Guest Contributor Perry McDaid

Humbug New Year’s

On the television, the ball in Time’s Square dropped. “Happy New Year,” the crowd shouted. I gulped my wine, not a fan of champagne, and shut the TV. After all, I detested New Year’s Eve. It’s a lonely holiday for some, myself included, and I’d rather get drunk on wine in the comfort of my own home, warm by the fire.

Tired, I took off my robe, climbed into bed and turned off the lamp. I told myself, tomorrow would be just another day.

Instead of spending the first day of the new year relaxing, I typed my resignation letter.

From Guest Contributor Lisa M. Scuderi-Burkimsher

Love Triumphal

Mother hides me in the closet.

You won’t go back to that school. I’ll deal with that asshole father.

She smells of lavender perfume and sweat. Not like Dad with his Old Spice, calculated aroma, who mocks Mother. Arranges my future with Headmaster Edgar. Harvard, law.

Men bang at the doors. Buzzwords waft into my musky space: “Custody arrangement,” “Legal orders.”

Fuck off. Mother’s words hold firmness, edge.

Footsteps draw near, unpleasant pounding.

My mother tells them I’m her son. I’m someone who needs love.

I absorb that word, so foreign, while she spars, words rising.

Love. What beautiful form.

From Guest Contributor Yash Seyedbagheri.

Yash is a graduate of Colorado State University's MFA program in fiction. His work is forthcoming or has been published in journals such as 50 Word Stories, Silent Auctions, City. River. Tree. and Ariel Chart.

Christmas Morning

Ben watches the kids open their presents. Sharon's smile is frozen in place. His too. It's like a hard layer of snow has settled over everyone, precluding self reflection.

He remembers the frenetic joy that would build as his presents got bigger, even as they became fewer. After the last one, a shameful disappointment set in, a feeling he refused to acknowledge even to himself.

His phone buzzes in his pocket. He slinks to the bathroom to read the texts in solitude. Sharon already suspects.

He uses the holidays as an excuse not to say anything. Let's wait until January.

Parting Sails

The seas clash between her and the shore. Yer crew lined up on the edge of the beach. Her sails are riddled with holes from cannon fire. Her hull crushed and impaled by other vessels that have crashed beside her. Quite a miracle she can float even now. As yer crew take their final glances, ye walk until the water reaches yer knees as ye recall her the most. Through storms, valleys, and currents. With a staff of flame on yer right hand, ye set her ablaze in a last gaze of glory. She rests in the sea’s foamy waters.

From Guest Contributor Nahum Zewdie

Nahum is a student of general studies in Pikes Peak Community College.

Art, Music, Philosophy

Our 5-year-old daughter, Celeste, was singing to herself. She suddenly stopped and said, "Why do I always fart when I sing?” Then a French farmer while plowing on a hill uncovered a rusted revolver that may be the very one Van Gogh used to shoot himself. I looked at my wife, who was looking back at me. I can’t keep drowning, I can’t. There are little children living without parents in freezing tents in detention camps. The ancient Greek stoics maintain a complicit silence. I just want it to end. Every kind of music is meant to be played loudly.From Guest Contributor Howie Good

Howie is the author most recently of Stick Figure Opera: 99 100-word Prose Poems from Cajun Mutt Press. He co-edits the online journals Unbroken and UnLost.

Eight Maids a-Yelping

“What’s a milkmaid to do? The only thing bovine hereabouts is the Silly Cow who owns the place. During the first seven days of Christmas, she let her true love convert her manor house into an aviary.”

“Tell me about it! I’m a housemaid, but I don’t do windows and I don’t do guano.”

A barefoot parlor maid lamented, “Look at my bloody feet after half a dozen geese pecked my corns.”

The other five recently-hired maids commiserated with them.

“Let’s tar and feather the harpy. We can substitute pine pitch, in a pinch, and there’s no shortage of feathers.”

From Guest Contributor John H. Dromey

John’s short fiction has appeared in Mystery Weekly Magazine, Stupefying Stories Showcase, Thriller Magazine, Unfit Magazine, and elsewhere.