List

The Poland that I once knew is gone. I haven’t been back since the war and now that it’s over, I won’t stay. Too many memories. I came here for a purpose. Eleanora left the bottle with the list buried in the courtyard.

The building reduced to rubble and smoke made me gag, but I waded through the debris to the back and went to the spot where she told me it’s hidden. I used my hands to dig, and there the bottle lay in the dirt with the list of names that would reunite Jewish children with their families.

From Guest Contributor Lisa M. Scuderi-Burkimsher

Getting Off The Island

“What's the matter, Mel?”

“I'm trying to get help for us, Charlie.”

“But I already put a letter in a bottle and threw it in the ocean.”

“What'd it say?”

“I wrote – ‘HELP, WE'RE ON A DESERT ISLAND. ALL WE HAVE TO EAT ARE COCONUTS AND WASHED-UP FISH.’ Then I gave them our last coordinates before the boat sank.”

“But it didn't work.” Mel had a point. They were still eating coconuts and fish heads. “That's why I've written this manuscript. People should respond to a manuscript.”

“But will it fit in a bottle, Mel?”

“Well, Charlie…That's my problem.”

From Guest Contributor David Sydney

For the prompts Manuscript and Letters

Jog

I jog along the pathway with my Shih-Tzu Bentley, but the sunshine and heat cause me to stop and rest. Bently jumps on the bench panting. I pour water in the large plastic bowl I brought for him and drink the rest out of the bottle. I probably shouldn’t be jogging in this heat, but my compulsive tendencies tell me otherwise. After a ten-minute rest, I start again along the path.

Sweat drips down my forehead and the temperature feels intense. Suddenly, I get a shooting pain in the chest, and collapse to the ground, Bentley barking.

Everything goes black.

From Guest Contributor Lisa M. Scuderi-Burkimsher

First Year

As I stood on the beach, I folded the letter, placed it in the bottle and closed the cover. I promised him that every year on the anniversary of his death I would write a letter and throw it into the ocean from his favorite spot. This was the first year.

A tear slid down my cheek as I listened to the waves splashing.

When I threw the bottle into the sea, it made a splash and bounced with the waves.

I watched until the sun set over the water, and the bottle drifted out of sight, seagulls soaring above.

From Guest Contributor Lisa M. Scuderi-Burkimsher

Teases

Sam is lying languid on yellow sheets. James will be home tomorrow which leaves little time for new lovers.

Sam reaches up and receives the glass and sips, as I drink from the bottle and look at scars on a wrist, tattoo marked and bled, bracelet often mislaid.

Bob Marley doesn't give a shit, while Sam Cooke looks dispirited at what yet will come. Joplin cries wild abandon from vinyl well-worn and well earned.

And James will return and for now Sam is here and I am here and the bottle is half full and Sam teases with a fingertip...

From Guest Contributor Michael Tyler

Michael writes from a shack overlooking the ocean just south of the edge of the world. He has been published in several literary magazines and plans a short story collection sometime before the Andromeda Galaxy collides with ours and...

Former Glory

She sits in a worn wheelchair, slightly swaying to the raspy and sultry melodies playing on the radio behind her. Drunkenly sloshing the dark brown liquid in the bottle she’s nursed throughout the night. Her eyes are as heavy as her heart, drooping with sadness and weeping with grief. Taking another sip, she sighs as the liquid scorches down her throat. She hums along to the music, reminiscing times when she played the same syncopated rhythms on stage. Her knobby and wrinkled fingers dance in the air on her ghost piano while swallowing sobs, thinking about her glorious old memories.

From Guest Contributor Sa'Mya Hall

The Sneeze

Otto couldn't stifle it. Did he want to sneeze all over Felice? No. But he did. And here he'd planned for a pleasant evening at the small BYOB Italian restaurant.

"God bless you, Otto," offered Felice as she grabbed her napkin."WHAT'RE YOU TALKING ABOUT!" It was a deep voice from above. Loud enough to shake the table.

Again, Otto sneezed. His nose was running now, but things weren't running well with Felice. And he'd brought a bottle of Pinot Grigio.

"God bless you, Otto," said Felice again, politely.

"NO WAY I'M BLESSING OTTO!" boomed the terrifying voice. "NOT OTTO!"

From Guest Contributor David Sydney

It’s Him

Jeff got drunk after she told him, “It's not you. It’s me.”

But Jeff knew it was him. It always was.

He got so whiskey drunk that he woke the next afternoon tasting chalk. He couldn’t remember downing all those pills, but he must have because the bottle was half empty. Not half full—definitely half empty.

He spent three minutes on the help hotline he found on the internet.

“Dude,” the counselor said, “maybe it really wasn't you.” That’s when Jeff hung up. Probably just some college kid volunteering for a class project.

Jeff would survive. He always did.

From Guest Contributor John Sheirer

John lives in Western Massachusetts and is in his 30th year of teaching at Asnuntuck Community College in Northern Connecticut where he edits Freshwater Literary Journal (submission welcome). His work has appeared recently in Wilderness House Literary Review, Meat for Tea, Poppy Road Review, Synkroniciti, Otherwise Engaged, 10 By 10 Flash Fiction, The Journal of Radical Wonder, Scribes*MICRO*Fiction, and Goldenrod Review. His latest book is Stumbling Through Adulthood: Linked Stories. Find him at JohnSheirer.com.

In Pursuit Of Tomorrow

A young boy shaped sand sculptures. His parents combed the beach with a metal detector. When clouds rolled in, mother rose, balancing on the only leg spared in a shark attack.

Over driftwood, shells and rocks they trampled to reach the trail that would lead them to a road.

Father turned for one last glance of the abandoned tanker anchored by the coast. He had heard of buried treasures from at least a dozen ships in those turbulent waters.

As he imagined newly acquired wealth for his family, the sea tossed out a bottle. Nestled inside was a folded note.

From Guest Contributor Krystyna Fedosejevs

Krystyna writes poetry, fiction and creative nonfiction. She resides in Alberta, Canada.

Reign Of Terror

When the reign of terror begins in earnest, a street corner poet with hollow cheeks and large feverish eyes will sit at the anchor desk delivering the news in a toothless mumble and then ignore increasingly frantic signals and pleas to go to commercial break and instead recite between pulls on a bottle a long, rambling, incendiary poem, his voice rising and falling like a medieval executioner’s double-sided axe, until all the baskets are filled with the heads of our namesakes and the only sound that is still worth heeding is the disputatious sound of the children’s orchestra tuning up.

From Guest Contributor Howie Good

Howie's latest full-length poetry collection, Gun Metal Sky, is due in early 2021 from Thirty West Publishing.