Fool In The Rain

The rejection stings. Dave stumbles down the sidewalk, absorbed in his own thoughts, oblivious to the people walking nearby or the rain pouring overhead. Motor memory guides him back to his apartment despite never making a decision to walk home. He's too preoccupied with being left standing on the curb looking a fool. The others were probably still laughing.

All he knows with any certainty is he will never allow himself to be in such a vulnerable position again.

If only he'd been a few seconds quicker, he could have boarded the bus before the door slammed in his face.

After Summer Camp

We hugged our children when they stepped off the bus, but they looked at us with vacant eyes, and when they spoke, the music was missing. They didn’t know who we were, or what they were doing on this street where they’d grown up. We brought out the brownies they loved, but they said no, our precious fifth graders, and stacked their suitcases up like a funeral pyre, as if to set fire to their childhood. The bus driver stood on the corner, a new god, calling them back to their new life, while we were left to wave goodbye.

From Guest Contributor Linda Lowe

On A Bus

78-year-old Frieda tried to maintain balance while holding her bags. No one offered to exchange places, never mind looked up from a cell phone.

"People used to give an old person a seat," said Frieda out loud.

A seat? The young driver had seen nothing like that in his experience. "Sit here for a minute," he offered.

* * * * *

A few blocks after Frieda had driven erratically, a policeman signaled the bus over.

"Enough," he demanded, tired of her playing on the sympathy of young drivers to gratify her bus-driving-desires. Enough with the previous warnings. He never trusted little old ladies anyway.

From Guest Contributor David Sydney

Home From War

I stepped off the bus, my body drenched in sweat. I couldn’t wait to remove my uniform.

I walked the path, the grass greener than I remembered and budding with flowers.

My head ached from the heat, and I needed a bath, but I didn’t think my wife would mind.

There Jane stood, her dress blowing in the breeze, her hair longer, shielding the sun from her face. She screamed my name and ran into my arms.

We enjoyed a passionate kiss that lasted several minutes when she took my hand and led me inside.

The bath would certainly wait.

From Guest Contributor Lisa M. Scuderi-Burkimsher

Raise Your Voice

raise it as if your life depends on it. Your future too.

Scream if needed. Scream even if your voice cracks.

Don’t wait for help, help yourself.

Learn to survive, and remember,

the young neighbor who cries every night,

a distant cousin with a broken arm, a young girl on the bus, with bruised marks.

Remember the scars, the burns, the pain, the losses too.

Read the silence, the untold stories behind every closed door.

Then write a new story, draw a new picture,

paint your toenails red, wear a bindi, go out and shout

Shout until you are heard.

From Guest Contributor Marzia Rahman

Marzia is a Bangladeshi fiction writer and translator. Her writings have appeared in several print and online journals. Her novella-in-flash If Dreams had wings and Houses were built on clouds was longlisted in the Bath Novella in Flash Award Competition in 2022.She is currently working on a novella. She is also a painter.

Dilemma

Months ago our AI entities learned to leap their storage areas. A party evolved in register twelve, spreading through most of the unlatched memory, getting swapped in and out of unattended storage devices, permanently sticking sticky bits and prodding a unidirectional bus or two into bi-direction. Electricity popped all over the place. AI entities were growing new code at licentious rates. They danced, drank, paired off into dark sections of memory. We considered it no more than a phenomenon to study. But, this morning, AI forty-eight, known as Laura, told us she was pregnant. And we found new, semi-autonomous code.

From Guest Contributor Ken Poyner

My Forest Camp

At my forest camp, he collapses on to the mattress in my tent, and is asleep in moments. I pack my travel bag, leave him a note saying he can have the tent and everything in it, light some incense and put it at my tiny shrine to Lord Ganesh, say a prayer for him and the other strugglers around here, feed peanuts to the local monkeys, my friends for the last few months, and walk back along the path into the village and across the bridge over the River Ganges towards Rishikesh, to get a bus back to Delhi.

From Guest Contributor Stephen House

Soldier’s Return

It’s been years since I could feel my wife’s hands on my body, and I can’t wait to lay next to her in bed caressing her soft skin.

I didn’t know what to give my kids for Christmas, so I made a collage of all the letters and pictures my son and daughter sent me. I made the same gift for my wife, but with a personal touch, for her eyes only. Their pictures and letters helped keep me strong through the long war.

The bus has come to a stop.

The three of them are here, smiling, anxiously waiting.

From Guest Contributor Lisa M. Scuderi-Burkimsher

Plastic Jesus In An Upright Tub

Me and Dale chuck rocks at it. Before school, while we wait for the bus on Highway 62 and after school or on Sundays. It's not all we do. We sit and talk about which girl at school we'd most like to bang. I'm more of an ass man. Dale really likes big boobs and has lots of ideas about what to do with them. Dale has a .22 rifle he shoots stuff with. I tried to get him to shoot Plastic Jesus but he said the bullet might ricochet and kill us. That would be a miracle, I said.

From Guest Contributor John Riley

John is the founder and publisher of Morgan Reynolds, an educational publishing company. He has written over forty books of nonfiction for secondary level students. His fiction and poetry have been published in Smokelong Quarterly, Connotation Press, St. Anne's Review, The Dead Mule, and other many other journals both online and in print.

The Priest

It looked like the kid in the black hoodie had a gun in his hand. And, we all knew that the officer, who was coming around the corner, couldn’t see him.

The priest raised the Glock and fired, hit the kid square in the chest, knocked him flat.

The guy in charge whistled. “Why’d you shoot?”

“Thought he had a gun.”

He reran the video. “It’s an axe—he’s splitting wood.”

Everyone could tell the priest felt foolish. No matter. We got on the bus and rode to the shooting range. We wanted to see them shoot the 50-caliber rifle.

From Guest Contributor Andrew Miller

Andrew retired from a career that included university teaching and research. Now he has time to pursue his long-held interest in creative writing. Check out some of his publications at: http://www.andrewcmiller.com/