Sunday Morning

Staying home sick from Church is the real blessing. The entire comics section all to myself. Mom leaves me hot chocolate with the hard marshmallows dissolving into pure sugar.

Sinking into the beanbag. Feet buried in the shag of the carpet, working knots with my toes. Sips of too hot chocolate that burn my tongue with sweetness

Calvin and Hobbes. Peanuts. The Far Side.

It's a perfect Sunday morning.

I don't hear my older brother come home early. Before I know it, he has me buried under the beanbag, smothering me so I can't breathe.

I hate my older brother.

Deep Shag

"Barry, is your homework finished?"

Barry started awake. His mom's muffled shout sounded a million miles away. His bedroom lay in total darkness.

He felt for his phone, but immediately encountered large woolly tendrils draped all around him. The only sensible explanation for the complete lack of light and the suffocating fabric was he'd been sleepwalking again and was nestled away in his closet.

Panic set in as he thrashed about searching for the door. He felt like he was drowning in an endless kelp forest.

It would be hours before he realized he'd been completely swallowed by his carpet.

The Rotary Phone

The butter-yellow rotary phone was sitting on the carpet in the living room of the empty apartment. It’s cord and wires were disconnected and curled around its body.

David walked into the room. His eyes began to water as grief overcame him. He had not made it home for his grandmother’s funeral. He was not there for the disposition of the contents of her home, the home that was his refuge growing up. Now it was too late to say goodbye.

“I love you, gramma,” he whispered.

David bent over, picked up the phone, and quietly walked out the door.

From Guest Contributor Janice Siderius

Tourist In My Own Mouth

I’m inside my own mouth, seeing what the dentist sees. I’m awed by the whiteness of my teeth – their lingual surfaces, anyway. I don’t notice the tongue, any more than a carpet under my feet. The teeth are like panels of marble. But they have labels on them, which seem to be just A4 sheets printed out and laminated, as we might stick up temporarily on an office door. Some of them seem to be self-praise for fillings and crowns: “Great Job!” and “Fabulous!” But there is criticism as well: “Lousy cap that she got in Italy in the 1990s.”

From Guest Contributor Cheryl Caesar

Cheryl lived in Paris, Tuscany and Sligo for 25 years; she earned her doctorate in comparative literature at the Sorbonne and taught literature and phonetics. She now teaches writing at Michigan State University. Last year she published over a hundred poems in the U.S., Germany, India, Bangladesh, Yemen and Zimbabwe, and won third prize in the Singapore Poetry Contest for her poem on global warming. Her chapbook Flatman: Poems of Protest in the Trump Era is now available from Amazon and Goodreads.

Hungry Hannah

"HUNGRY HANNAH EATS REAL FOOD!" I thought all robotic dolls were creepy, but my twin daughters loved that commercial.

And they loved Hannah.

At least until tonight. Tonight I find the babysitter's back gnawed down to her spine. Karen lays legless, dead mid-scream, a broken doll herself. Samantha's face is chewed to tattered strips of scarlet skin -- wet ribbons staining hectic red hieroglyphs across the carpet. Her eyes and scalp are gone.

I find Hannah looking up at me. Her painted eyes are flat black coins. Her plastic teeth, still moving, are soaked in violent crimson.

"Feed me," she bleats.

From Guest Contributor Eric Robert Nolan

Observations Of A Canadian Terrarium

Opulence surrounds me – magically tinted daguerreotype of warped idyll ­– mahogany and cast iron impressing their hubris upon the carpet, much as the armies to the south are scorching their indelible brand of gunpowder and blood upon the land.

Lace and silk give room warmth once provided by the pulsing hearts of Toronto sons; now fighting south west of Vancouver over some San Juan Island potato-eating pig.

You’d think our neighbors would have had their fill of war by now; or at least be spilling blood and stale sweat over nobler offenses than that of one hungry porker and careless farmer.

From Guest Contributor Perry McDaid

Queen Bee

Melissa, Greek for Queen bee, settled on soft grass. Her flaxen hair complementing an array of colorful flowers; crimson roses forming a perfect circle, stunning pink azaleas beckoning busy insects, clusters of lilac hyacinths and scatters of yellow, white and red chrysanthemums. Her lined hands picked lazily at the daisies strewn across the well-maintained green carpet as she listened to the animated gulls chattering overhead. To be part of nature was relaxing and relaxation healed. The river's lively current swooshed at the banks beyond. She was at peace, just like her beloved Jacob whose dreary grey head stone overshadowed her.

From Guest Contributor Kerry Valkyrie Baldock Kelly

Unreasonable Fear Of…

Jumbo jets are supposed to be safer, the new Airbus A380 the safest.

An unusual, annoying sound distracts me from the terrific in-flight entertainment system.

What is that sound? Where the hell is it coming from?

Running water? Yes, it’s the sound of running water. No one seems alarmed…yet.

Now water is cascading from the ceiling of this A380.

Water begins to pool in the carpet. The water rises, continues to rise. Frighteningly, water now laps at my sneakers. I can feel my socks becoming damp.

Suddenly any fear of flying turns to fear of drowning…at 35,000 feet.

From Guest Contributor Barry O'Farrell

Barry is an actor living in Brisbane, Australia. The acting experience has inspired a latent desire to write. Barry is enjoying the challenge of writing in 100 words.

A Turquoise Fish

When the brown moths would gather on the ceiling, you would take them up in your hands and set them loose outside. Yes, I miss that. And you are right. It is true that I was vengeful. It is true that I was impossible to pin to the carpet. And I used rhetoric to slip out of body. But what you wouldn't hear, what I tried to tell you, was that I felt like a fish on the shore, begging for water. Love me, please, hear me, please, see? You kept saying, “The sand is water, so swim in it.”

From Guest Contributor, Addy Evenson