A Normal Day

Bree walked up the subway steps into the abundant sunshine. It was a beautiful fall day, and the streets were filled with pedestrians hurrying to work. Cars honked and buses came to a halt at their designated stops. It was a normal day in the city of Manhattan.

Bree stopped for a bagel and tea at the cart in front of her building. The owner greeted her good morning and handed her the lightly buttered bagel and tea, sweetened with Equal and skim milk. After paying, she turned.

The rumble under her feet would be a moment she’d never forget.

From Guest Contributor Lisa M. Scuderi-Burkimsher

The Way The World Ends

At first I thought it was a barrel of whiskey strapped to the back of the gangly old man, stooping him over to half in the parking lot. Snow swirled in orange light clouds. As he shuffled closer, I realized it was an egg, yellowish, enormous, bound with dirty ropes. There were scratches on it as long as my arm, and I wondered whether they came from the inside or the outside. I loaded the groceries into the car and pushed my cart at him.

“That’s not how it works,” he muttered, head down. “I have to carry it myself.”

From Guest Contributor Brook Bhagat

Plague

First little Amy was stricken, taking three days to die.

After collecting the body, the wardens painted the black cross on the door.

Then her husband and son Mark sickened. She could do nothing for their agonies.

A cart collected them to be buried in the pit.

Now the street is sealed off. No food arrives, and the water is almost gone.

She sneezes twice. She knows this is the end. But what is there to live for?

Thus the pauper Mary Wells died alone in London in 1665, with no priest to console her, no caring God above her.

From Guest Contributor Ian Fletcher

Born and raised in Cardiff, Wales, Ian has an MA in English from Oxford University. He has had poems and short stories published in The Ekphrastic Review, Tuck Magazine, 1947 A Literary Journal, Dead Snakes, Schlock! Webzine, Short-story.me, Anotherealm, Under the Bed, A Story In 100 Words, Poems and Poetry, Friday Flash Fiction, and in various anthologies.

Supermarket Sleep

Wednesdays, post-second shift, bone-marrow tired, Kyra grocery-shopped. To stay alert, she categorized customers, itemized their purchases.

First: class, marital status, number of kids, happiness level. Pony-tailed woman opposite Kyra? Pinching pants tight in the crotch? Must be married ten years; barely making do managing odd-lots store; two sucrose-loving preteens; miserable as a mutt, minus flea collar, August.

Cart contents: Pony tail and family down waffles, wings, PB & J, rolls, store-brand sherbet, Bud, Coke.

Kyra’d be sad, eating that.

Pulled leggings, smoothed hair. Double-take: her mirrored reflection! She’d best snap out of this, load check-out counter. Be on her way.

From Guest Contributor Iris N. Schwartz

Iris is a fiction and nonfiction writer, as well as a Pushcart-Prize-nominated poet. Her work has appeared, or is forthcoming, in such journals as Bindweed Magazine, Connotation Press, The Flash Fiction Press, Jellyfish Review, Quail Bell Magazine, and Random Sample Review.

That Holiday We All Supposedly Love

I push in my code: 437. The sound mocking me as I snatch the clipboard off of its peg—the check list of the unforgiving. My job today: revision in the main isle. I garb my lime-green box-cutter. Time to unpack the new merchandise. I fill the cart with cardboard boxes and scoot to the holiday shelves. I slit open the tape and a waft of rich-bitterness hits my nose. I pull out the advertisement holder that holds crimson candy boxes with cartoon dogs saying, “I ruff you! Give me a kiss!” Lurking within, little cones of so called yummy.

From Guest Contributor McKenzie A. Frey

The Final Indignity

At the start of every year, the Kingdom of Urbania elected a new monarch.

Of course, the old royals had to be disposed of in some way. They were driven away from the capital in an old cart owned by Farmer Putnam. They had already been stripped of most of their pomp and circumstance, though the former sovereigns were allowed to keep their scepters.

Farmer Putnam deposited his charges on the outskirts of the city where they would live out their remaining days. It was at this point he informed them that his transport fee was exactly one royal scepter.