Corn

Toxic chemicals from a nearby factory contaminated Mr. Williams farm. Every year sixty-foot tall corn would grow. The farmhouse and barn are not affected and deemed safe.

A cornstalk opens sideways and reveals a mouth and eyes. Its husk legs can move up and down quickly but have a hard time moving forward. It extends its husk to reach for a wagon, but spots a unicycle and grabs that. The giant cornstalk rides towards the house.

Mr. Williams’s wife Ruth hears something and looks out the window, then screams.

“What is it?” her husband asks.

“It’s a unicorn,” says Ruth.

From Guest Contributor Denny E. Marshall

Zip Bombs

Six nuclear bombs head for Russia. A short time later the world’s arsenal is launched. Life on the planet changed overnight.

Jon is hiding in a barn with other civilians. As soldiers break in Jon transforms into a pile of hay bales. Soldiers gather the civilians and escort them to camps. Julie, still in the barn, escapes detection because she‘s covered in hay bales. Jon saved her life. Jon changes back to human form.

Afterwards Jon and Julie become best friends. Months later, Jon tells her his secret. “Those six nuclear warheads, they weren’t bombs, that was me,” says Jon.

From Guest Contributor Denny E. Marshall

Window Towards The Barn

She consoles the dust for being lonely. The rust for being needy. The rot for becoming unstitched by rain. It is easy to whisper these things on the day of rest. When even birds decline seeding and bees stay inside hives. There was little moving in the sparse outside, save a cat prowling between an empty peach bucket and a splintered fish pole leaned against fence rails, its frayed point vanishing in the tale’s middle.

She sits with tears on her cheek. Cheek on her hand. Pinkie finger tracing glass. Watching her three level acres all forlorn, infertile, sour, outworn.

From Guest Contributor Catherine Moore

Catherine is the author of three chapbooks including “Wetlands" (Dancing Girl Press, 2016). Her fiction appears in Tahoma Literary Review, Illinois Wesleyan University Press, Tishman Review, Mid-American Review, and The Best Small Fictions of 2015 anthology.

The Abandoned Barn

The children of Glen Haddock often played near the empty barn on Signal Hill. They would dare each other to approach and brag about going inside at night.

The barn was abandoned years before. The children speculated what evil might lay within and noticed that sparrows would fly inside and never fly out again.

There was a man working the field near the barn. He was frightening in his own way. He warned the children away.

"That's where we lock away the scarecrows after they go bad."

None of the kids ever thought of going into the barn after that.