Their Saturday Morning Walk

“How was it Ed?”

By 10:30, Ed returned with Frodo, after their Saturday morning walk. Frodo, a Labrador retriever, immediately went to his food dish.

“I played fetch with Frodo in the park. He chased a squirrel, Edna, and they ran into the middle of a parade. I caught him, then we went by Sawyer's place.”

“Was his forsythia in bloom?”

Cornelius Sawyer had an almost pathological attraction to his bush.

“Yeah...Frodo peed all over it, Edna. Then Sawyer threw a brick at him.”

“That was it?”

“No, he threw a tennis racket at me.”

“Oh...So, nothing unusual.”

From Guest Contributor David Sydney

Thinking Outside the Coop

In a quaint village beyond the hills, lived a scatterbrained chicken named Cluckers. Every morning, Cluckers would lay eggs and forget where she put them. The villagers chuckled, but Farmer Ben grumbled, "No eggs for breakfast!"

One day, Cluckers stumbled upon a stash of eggs hidden under a bush. "Eureka!" she screamed. Cluckers went to share her discovery with the other chickens, encouraging them to "think outside the coop."

Word spread. Soon, every chicken laid eggs in unexpected places. Farmer Ben's breakfasts improved, and the village learned: even mishaps teach valuable lessons.

And Cluckers? She never forgot that lesson again.

From Guest Contributor Chinmayi Goyal

Oliver's Army

Oliver was the first to notice.

He was enjoying a day off, determined to spend it in his garden, partly to work in it, partly to relax in a folding chair.

Leaning on a rake he called out to his wife:

“Would you look at that? I have never seen this many together on a single bush.”

She was just as surprised as he was.

"Remember? Last spring we didn’t mow the lawn for a month. Could this have something to do with it?”

Thousands, even millions of butterflies gave a clear forewarning: the new rulers were on the rise. From Guest Contributor Hervé Suys

Hervé Suys (°1968 – Ronse, Belgium) started writing short stories whilst recovering from a sports injury and he hasn’t stopped since. Generally he writes them hatless and barefooted.

Lay, Kitten

The desirable and exquisite souls always come at night—when the crescent moon shapes a bent halo around their stiff, floating bodies illuminated by the stars. Beautiful people are tough to kill, yet so impossible to resist. Their calm spirit invites the monster to the forest. Mothers hiding from their tormenting infants; lovers exploring their wild, rupturing hormones; broken people just seeking a place to sing along with the birds and dance to the tune of the wind—Everything leads to when the monster crawls out of the dim and spiny bush to say, “Do you want to play, Kitten?”

From Guest Contributor Annabelle Torkwase Ulaka

Annabelle lives with her mother and two siblings at a little town, north of Nasarawa state, Nigeria. She believes in the magical bond of family. Her days are spent reading anthologies, watching movies and writing stories and essays. She's a final year student in Benue State University, studying for a bachelor’s degree in Biology. Writing comes naturally to her, and her greatest aspirations have always been to become a respected writer, own three black cats, and finally learn how to dance. You can always find her on Twitter with the handle @Annyball1.

Mother

“Mother is upset,” a Wiradjuri tribal elder said. All heads nodded in agreement. Elders from the Ngungawal and Walgaulu tribes had traveled days to be at this meeting of Aboriginal peoples.

“Our sacred trees are gone,” he continued. “Our land is on fire; our mother is on fire.”

“She is hotter every year. More fires burn this year than ever,” a Ngungawal elder said. “We must appease our mother. We have perpetual grief, but the time is to focus on the mother, not us.”

Heads nodded.

Meeting was over and nothing was resolved. The elders returned to their burned-out bush.

From Guest Contributor NT Franklin