Until Further Notice

Thanks to social distancing, my co-worker Connor and I are finally alone. Only two employees at a time are permitted in the break room to clean out their lockers.

“Did you know Amazon Prime ships steel caskets in two days?” Connor looks at me, and my gut drops.

“What?”

“According to CNN, death rates are rising. We need to plan.”

Even when he says crazy things, he’s irresistibly cute.

“Look, it’s okay,” I say, “At least we weren’t fired.”

“I guess,” Connor sighs, “But how long will we work from home?”

I shrug. “So kiss me now before you can’t.”

From Guest Contributor Tammy Smith

Tammy is a social worker from New Jersey. Her writing has been published or is forthcoming in The Esthetic Apostle, Ailment: Chronicles of Illness Narratives, The Dewdrop, io Literary Journal, and Ariel Chart.

Old Fire Station - Berlin - March 20, 1939

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Removing his peaked cap, Gerhard runs his hand thru his fair, slicked-back hair. He is only a soldier: molded by the Nazi party. He isn’t a person just something to enforce Chancellor Hitler’s government. This time though, the instructions come from Joseph Goebbel. Anything marked with an X gets no mercy.

Gerhard stares into the inferno that devours the art dubbed degenerate. The canvases feeds the blaze, bubbles, and burns: turning into searing embers that fade to ash. He never understood art. The only thing he knows is everything burns. No matter the color, vibrancy, culture, religion.

We’ll all burn!

From Guest Contributor McKenzie A. Frey

Three Seals

With muzzles lifted towards the sky, they gather on rocks long dry. The sun touches down where water no longer passes by. Sable tips wash to marbled tails that tell of a time in the distant past. As wind sifts the sand nearby, it slowly edges them away. A golden plague bears their memory with a single name and details of their cause. For now, they pause as a simple thread meant to knit its way into today. When clouds darken the light, rain falls and remembers the familiar trails. It brings with it a mending unearthed by the dawn.

From Guest Contributor Kristi Kerico

Kristi is a psychology major at Pikes Peak Community College. She is studying to become a horticultural therapist. She currently works at a bookstore and volunteers at a zoo and nature center. She began writing after enrolling in a creative writing course at PPCC. She enjoys poetry the most, considering it's brief yet complex beauty. She also loves writing with a focus on nature.

Buried

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Quintus, uncomfortably warm, found himself staring blankly at the frescoes on his wall of intertwined naked ladies and men. Startled out of his daydream when the floor shook and the walls cracked, he ran through the atrium to the front wooden door and opened it. People scrambled the streets, colliding into one another screaming in terror. Mount Vesuvius had erupted into fiery lava, ash and pumice.

Quintus ran, but the roof collapsed and buried him in a pile of burning rocks. With shallow breathing, and his lungs collapsed, he bid farewell to Pompeii as the sound of dying screams faded.

From Guest Contributor Lisa M. Scuderi-Burkimsher

Divorced

I’m the son of divorce to the neighborhood. Parents keep me from their children. They don’t know my pedigree, they claim. Nothing against me personally.

They know about Dad and his liaisons. They slander over smiles and Sinatra. Mother’s a “hysteric.” Can’t keep a husband. Son’s a bastard.

Mother wears starched smiles for neighbors, weeps at night.

I want to fight. I want Mother to smile. Let neighbors hate me for loving Elvis, not for Dad’s idiocy. I want to cruise the streets, to be called friend. Best friend.

I’d be considered hysterical to mention this.

I don a smile.

From Guest Contributor Yash Seyedbagheri

Yash is a graduate of Colorado State University's MFA program in fiction. Yash’s work is forthcoming or has been published in WestWard Quarterly, Café Lit, 50 Word Stories, (mac)ro (mic), and Ariel Chart.

Botticelli

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As Sandro walked to his home on Via Borgo Ognissanti, he was so completely preoccupied he did not pay attention to his surroundings and collided forcefully with an unfortunate gentleman. The moderately obscure artist's parchments went sprawling on the brick walkway, some fluttering quite a distance in the breeze.

“Sandro, please look where you’re going."

"I'm sorry, Filippo, but I've just made the most amazing discovery."

Hoping his eccentric neighbor had some interesting gossip to share, Filippo inquired further.

"There is apparently a game, a quite popular one, that is being played around town, and they've named it after me!"

From Guest Contributor Sheila Fields

Mistaken For Quackery

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Dr. Jeremiah Jackson touted himself as the most learned man in the Northwest Territory. He offered cures, extremely cheap cures, for everything from consumption to the plague, and he guaranteed their efficacy. As far as he knew, in fact, he was the only man of medicine to offer guarantees of any sort, which should have been testimony enough as to his trustworthiness.

A man of such esteemed intellect deserved respect and accolades everywhere he traveled. So it was with great consternation that he found himself sentenced to death and hanging from a rope just a day's ride from Fort Detroit.

From Guest Contributor Oliver Park

Threatened Birds Nesting

You’re eating lunch on a bench in the park, close to a roped-off area where a sign says threatened birds are nesting. It’s the first nice day in a week. You’re enjoying the spring-like weather when a man you’ve never seen before steps out from behind a tree. He points a .38 special at you, shouts, “I regard Henry Ford as an inspiration,” and fires. In just hours, friends have assembled a pop-up shrine at the spot, with flowers, teddy bears, messages of love and respect. Although not me. I’m reading true crime books in order to gather survival tips.

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.

Stuck In A Cabin With You

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Pete stared out the window, surprised at his boredom. 'Cabin fever’ was becoming a thing. Alan and Dick each had areas staked out, and Pete felt like any incursion on his part might lead to an argument.

All he could see outside were stars. The moon would come into view in a few minutes, but that brought its own set of painful thoughts.

The quarantine order had come several days ago. John signed off saying, "You're safer there than back home."

Apollo 12 was stuck in lunar orbit with a mysterious pandemic spreading on Earth. Pete did not feel safe.

From Guest Contributor Emma Sparks

My Usual Jog

I stretch my legs inhaling and exhaling. It’s a beautiful abundant sunshiny day, and I’m ready for my jog. Not many people are out and that’s normal nowadays.

Each day I pass the same houses. My favorite is the one with the bright yellow sunflowers along the front walkway. What else do people have to do in the spring, so why not make their yards look nice?

Since jogging, my legs have strengthened and I’m more energetic. I’ve been working from home and cooking more, but I miss the previous world. However, I won’t let Covid-19 take away my jogging.

From Guest Contributor Lisa M. Scuderi-Burkimsher