Safe?

The train came to a halt, and the platform filled with German police. They entered, and people quieted while my heart pounded.

“Papers!”

I handed my identification to the Nazi, and he scanned them, eyeing me at the same time as I sweated profusely. He tossed them on my lap and moved on, not noticing the forgery.

Screams ensued as the woman behind me beseeched the officer to let her husband go, and then I heard a thud. The Man had collapsed, presumably dead and the woman in hysterics was taken away.

A few more stops and I’ll be safe.

From Guest Contributor Lisa M. Scuderi-Burkimsher

In The Shadow

Nighttime, people strode past him in pursuit of merriment at the city’s main square.

In a high rise apartment across the street, flamenco pulsed from an open window. Singing and clapping erupted. Smells of warm foods being prepared at tapas bars flavored the humid, tepid air.

He pulled a quilt over his head when a nearby nightclub closed and rowdy customers zigzagged into the light of a new day.

There’d be coins dropping into the cup by him on a bankrupt store’s doorstep he called ‘home.’

Someone would throw him an empanada. He sometimes found one, after footsteps scurried away.

From Guest Contributor Krystyna Fedosejevs

Krystyna writes poetry, fiction and creative nonfiction regardless of the season, although she prefers spring.