Safety In The North

We hug the coastline, the water lipping and lapping, squeezing us against scrub brush and pink granite boulders. Sophie stomps her feet in plops of seafoam eddying in the tide pools. We let her play. So much has been lost. But not this. Her innocence glinting in the sunlight, giggles clutching our heartbeats. We safeguard this last remnant, this singular, unsullied, untarnished, vestige. Otherwise, what is it all for? Trudging at night beneath ribbons of greenish-blue light, the auroras coxswaining us toward safety in the northern hemisphere. We press ahead. Agents two days behind at most. Our precious cargo intact. From Guest Contributor Karen Schauber

Karen’s flash fiction appears in over 100 international journals, magazines, and anthologies with nominations for the Pushcart Prize, Best Small Fictions, Best Microfiction and the Wigleaf Top 50. Schauber curates Vancouver Flash Fiction – an online resource hub, and in her spare time is a seasoned family therapist. Read her at: KarenSchauberCreative.weebly.com

There Was No Pity

I watched my daughter die.

The hospital staff laid out a cot in her room. They gave me free passes to the cafeteria. They pitied me in a kindly way and I hated them for all of it.

I watched my daughter die.

I argued with the doctors. I argued with the customer service agents. I argued with my friends and family for no good reason. They all pitied me. All of them were one way conversations. None of them knew what to say to me.

I argued with God and there was no pity.

I watched my daughter die.

Under Watch

Armed agents conceal themselves in doorways and behind lampposts and newspapers. You just passed by one and didn’t even know you had. Time to electrocute your thinking. They’re paid to spy, and they spy on people like me – an old man walking a dog on a rope – who’ve done nothing wrong. I can’t sleep through the night for worry that they’re building a dossier against me by twisting something I said. Is it becoming a grass armchair? A black wall? A crying mirror? If it is, I’m finished. One day I’ll squeeze into a crowded elevator that’ll disappear between floors.

From Guest Contributor Howie Good

Howie's latest collections are I'm Not a Robot from Tolsun Books and A Room at the Heartbreak Hotel from Analog Submissions Press. 

The Remnants Of Atlantis

The agents of Atlantis first infiltrated the upper world more than a thousand years ago. Their technology was far more advanced than what humans were accustomed to and they easily assimilated themselves without detection. They became Kings, Generals, Scientists, and Philosophers. Everywhere they emerged, they prospered.

When the underwater volcano erupted in 1066, the bulk of their civilization was destroyed. No one mourned though, for they had essentially conquered the upper world for themselves, without fighting a single battle.

Not everyone agreed. Some Atlanteans argued that though they thrived, in reality, their civilization had been subsumed by the land-walking humans.