Blessed Curse

Near dawn a rooster crowed.

“Mary died,” the midwife said, “I couldn’t save her, but you have been blessed with a baby boy.”

John pounded the table with his fist and with a heave, overturned it. The cup and saucer clattered to the floor while the wails and cries of an infant traveled from the other side of a closed door.

“God why did you take her?” he keened.

The midwife returned from the other room and placed the tiny child into his arms.

John prayed the baby would die. His life would be worthless without Mary. Damn the child.

From Guest Contributor Catherine Shields

Hungry Hannah

"HUNGRY HANNAH EATS REAL FOOD!" I thought all robotic dolls were creepy, but my twin daughters loved that commercial.

And they loved Hannah.

At least until tonight. Tonight I find the babysitter's back gnawed down to her spine. Karen lays legless, dead mid-scream, a broken doll herself. Samantha's face is chewed to tattered strips of scarlet skin -- wet ribbons staining hectic red hieroglyphs across the carpet. Her eyes and scalp are gone.

I find Hannah looking up at me. Her painted eyes are flat black coins. Her plastic teeth, still moving, are soaked in violent crimson.

"Feed me," she bleats.

From Guest Contributor Eric Robert Nolan

I Dreamt The Ocean Was A Woman

I dreamt that the ocean was a woman and she swallowed me. One second I was laying in my bed, and the next I was sliding down her throat. As I tumbled down, I felt seaweed and kelp cocoon around my body, wrapping tighter and tighter as I dropped further and further down her gullet. Her stomach was bedded with coral that deeply cut my arms and legs. All I could do was lay there, bloody, defenseless, and petrified.

Suddenly, I awoke from the dream, jumped out of bed, and walked towards the ocean to feel it all over again.

From Guest Contributor Melissa Maney

Caught On Tape

Funny, no one notices who is watching them. Overhead cameras, hidden inside rooftop owls, are wired to scare away drifting seagulls eating garbage bin leftovers. Genius: catching two birds with one shot—two kinds of thieves that never pay attention. 24/7: every move recorded, like clockwork. The boss reads the tape & sees you hustle into the crowded store, stopping first at the newsstand for a free newspaper; then, heading to the back where wild caught clams sit on crushed ice. It’s always a gamble, perched there like a fixture, until they switch off the lights for the night shift.

From Guest Contributor M.J. Iuppa

M.J.'s fourth poetry collection is This Thirst (Kelsay Books, 2017). For the past 31 years, she has lived on a small farm near the shores of Lake Ontario. Check out her blog: mjiuppa.blogspot.com for her musings on writing, sustainability & life’s stew.

Addiction

Juliana knew it was psychological. But the distress of withdrawal was real.

Her travel wanderlust was more than an indulgence. It was a craving deep in her cells. Journeys broke the shackles of the mundane and had become the embodiment of her independence.

Her last fix was fifty days ago. She kept distracted with work and avocation diversions. Yet, her mind would drift to the need, and normally steady hands would tremble.

When the seductive siren called, Juliana’s immobility became a shrinking coffin. Claustrophobic and suffocating.

As the taxi dropped her at the airport, she was able to breath. Freedom.

From Guest Contributors A.L. Gabriella and Billy Ray

The Chronicle of Higher Education

What is inside you is going to come out. I think of it as a crime scene. You have brought your dead cat, placing it wrapped in a pink baby blanket on the floor. I feel in the wrong just being there. Before the exam starts, you ask the girl seated behind you for paper, but are given a slice of bread. I can’t explain it. I would need to Google you to find out. At the front of the room, the proctor makes a gun with his thumb and forefinger and then holds it to his temple and fires.From Guest Contributor Howie Good

Howie Good 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.

Slow And Steady

Millie was a fireball and Herbert was steady. The cattle woke them up one night.

“Snake,” Millie said. And she shot out of bed.

Millie had the snake partially subdued with a garden rake. It was still moving so she stood on it with her right foot just behind the head and her left near the tail. Barefoot.

“Herbert! Get out here!”

No answer.

“Herbert!”

Finally, Herbert comes sauntering up to the corral. Fully dressed, knife in pocket, hat on, boots laced up, he sized up the situation.

“Millie, if I knew you had it, I wouldn’t have hurried so.

From Guest Contributor NT Franklin

Incensed

The crumpled notebook paper can’t be hurt, no matter how hard it’s thrown. An anemic crackle sounds at impact, a lazy, pointless attempt to uncurl is its sole achievement. The lopsided wad sits atop the unburning end of a Duraflame log. Mercifully, black char ashes the paper’s edge, further loosening the ball until gravity pulls it down to hearth. Still misshapened, I see blue ink, evidence of the second worst opening line in the history of writing. The winner is in my fist, ready to toss to the flames. It’s the only way to bring fire to my words today.

From Guest Contributor DL Shirey

DL Shirey lives in Portland, Oregon, writing fiction, by and large, unless it's small. He has been caught flashing at Café Aphra, 365 Tomorrows, ZeroFlash, Fewer Than 500 and others listed at www.dlshirey.com and @dlshirey on Twitter.

Lost

I'm tramping through the parking garage, briefcase in hand, searching, again, for my car. Stopping at a sign that says "Level 3", with the word “Remember” under it. As if that’s an easy thing. As if by putting "Remember" there that will make me remember where the damned car is. First or second time maybe. But, after that, it’s like all those other things that you filter out and forget. The trick is to remember to remember, otherwise you're lost.

As I am. Staggering up the parking ramp, wondering where all those things went that I can no longer find.From Guest Contributor Mitchell Waldman

Mitchell's fiction, poetry, and essays have appeared in numerous publications, including The MacGuffin, Fictive Dream, Corvus Review, The Waterhouse Review, Crack the Spine, The Houston Literary Review, The Faircloth Review, Epiphany, Wilderness House Literary Magazine, The Battered Suitcase, and many other magazines and anthologies. He is also the author of the novel, A Face in the Moon, and the story collection, Petty Offenses and Crimes of the Heart (originally published by Wind Publications), and serves as Fiction Editor for Blue Lake Review. (For more info, see his website at http://mitchwaldman.homestead.com).

A Philosophic Mind

He returned the edition of Kant to the library, unread again. He came out bearing Sartre’s “Being and Nothingness.” Surely he could make a last effort to master existentialism.

He decided to sit down on the bench in the high street to watch the passersby.

“How foolish they are,” he mused, “going on so unreflectively with their trivial business.”

“Not a philosophic mind amongst them,” he scoffed.

“They probably think I’m just an elderly man sitting here with nothing to do,” he surmised.

How wrong he was, for, unnoticed by the passing multitudes, no one thought about him at all.

From Guest Contributor Ian Fletcher