On The Money Trail

Family members need help. I oblige. I’m their doer of tasks.

Why me? I’m between jobs, behind with payments and I haven’t shopped for new clothes in ages. I guess they trust me to deliver. I’m okay with that.

No time to linger. Housebound auntie wants her groceries.

As I hasten, sunshine glues sweaty polyester to my back. I spot sparkles on the sunlit lawn along my walkway.

Coins! Many coins, strewn in a line towards the space where a car had once parked.

I gather, add up their value, sigh.

Someone’s emptied change-purse or pocket. My bit of fortune. From Guest Contributor Krystyna Fedosejevs

Krystyna writes poetry, fiction and creative nonfiction regardless of the season or location she finds herself in.

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.

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

She Looked On The Bright Side

“Going to the wedding, are you?” The SuperValu cashier jigged the question as the wiry woman with blowzy white hair fished coins from her purse for the crossword lotto cards lying on the counter. “Here you go, exactly.” She plunked the coins down and scooped up her cards. “Hope you’re a winner. Spelling games are my pet picks,” quipped the cashier. “Yes, I deserve a good spell; even though these daily lotto spoil everything. I’ll be back in a short bit to bet on today’s talk of the town. I have a hunch the odds are running in my favor.”

From Guest Contributor M.J. Iuppa