Spring Breakers

"I can't believe we're in Florida!" Jenny had been excessively excited the entire drive. All the begging and bargaining had totally been worth it.

"I can't believe your parents let you come." Jackson had laid money she'd be unable to convince her notoriously strict mom to let her spend an entire week unsupervised.

"They trust me."

"That's because you're the most boring girl in all of Michigan." This from Debbie, her equally boring best friend.

"Whatever. You're the one who brought the cards. I'm going alone by the way."

Everyone cheered. This was going to be the best week ever.

Escape

Jake and Emily look at each other dreadfully as they realize their apartment is on fire. Jake yells to Emily, “Grab Sarah out of her bed and I’ll get May out of her bedroom!” The fire is spreading quickly around the house so they have to think of a plan to get out. They end up thinking of a plan to get out. They use a crowbar to break the window. It shatters in the dead of night as pieces of glass go all over. Eventually, they reach a beach in Tampa Bay, Florida. Everyone is alive, safe, and happy.

From Guest Contributor Mikayla Wikoff

Written Florida

The hospital counter balanced the consequences of Chloe’s belief in radiological.

“Poise Samuel. It’s dosage and daydreaming. Don’t slam this shut, there’s no ambush in it.”

Samuel’s reptilian wheelchair spontaneously defended his ego with a damp pelvis moan.

“You need to explore your obsession with maintaining haste.”

And then Chloe was behind him, creating an exit.

Outside the gravity of habit drew dated windows and naked brick into Samuel’s response.

“Chloe, you are the answer to a whistle.”

Her blouse threw out naked holes of laughter until the urban inside her tongue finished the joke.

“But you have no teeth.”

From Guest Contributor Geoffrey Miller

Hawaiian Music

Before the visit to Florida, Jesse told him Elan was Hawaiian instead of black. You would think it shouldn’t matter but that would mean you didn’t know his father. During Katrina, people trying to survive, he couldn’t shut up on the phone of “the animals down there.” His take on Obama was that he was an “affirmative-action baby.”

They hadn’t been in the house fifteen minutes. His father had always loved music, especially classical, so he dropped that in, that Elan played the violin, string quartet.

His father handed Elan his old portable radio.

“Play something for me,” he said.

From Guest Contributor Jon Fain

The Century Plant

NATURE SUBMISSION:

People lined up around the block, masks on, cameras and children in hand. The news spread fast, as these things do in 2020, via Facebook and Instagram. Some thought it might be a hoax, but any excuse to leave the house was welcome.

The woman who planted the Agave was just ten years old when she and her dad had picked placed the little cactus in their front yard. She'd decided to hold onto the house after her parents moved to Florida hoping to see it flower someday. Now, despite the crowds and reporters, the long wait had been worth it.

From Guest Contributor Alice Ryder

How We All Found Out

Marlee couldn't sleep, what with all that worry over her mother moving into the senior home down in Florida. So she sat on her Maine back porch, sipping hot cider in the wee October hours, watching falling stars while Bill slept. She stopped thinking about her mother when she realized that way more stars were falling tonight than other worried nights. And then she noticed many of those falling stars changing direction, hovering over the woods, and slowly descending. Then she yelled for Bill and grabbed her fancy new camera phone. The next day, of course, we all found out.

From Guest Contributor John Sheirer

John lives in Northampton, Massachusetts, with his wonderful wife Betsy and happy dog Libby. He has taught writing and communications for 26 years at Asnuntuck Community College in Enfield, Connecticut, where he also serves as editor and faculty advisor for Freshwater Literary Journal (submissions welcome). He writes a monthly column on current events for his hometown newspaper, the Daily Hampshire Gazette, and his books include memoir, fiction, poetry, essays, political satire, and photography. Find him at JohnSheirer.com.

Dodge

Combined their ages were 106; they decided to celebrate their birthdays straight after her youngest sister's wedding in May. They would drive from Boca Grande, Florida all the way to Tampa and hop the first flight to London available. Only a few would be privy to their plan. The mother of the bride and her eldest daughter, whom many despised. They would celebrate the sixties and the end of thirties with the same trials and failures that they marked the twenties, fifties, forties, and tens. The zeros were so distant; neither woman could remember them. "Happy 106, us," they smirked.

From Guest Contributor E.B. Morrison

Hotspot

The lone imagineer of the radioactive sand cloud that froze Florida in death and time worked for Disney. Tourists, natives, gangsters, and gators were rendered untouchable beneath a toxic sheet of glass. The reflection burned up satellites and crisped drones mid-air, and it was agreed the whole place should be forgotten, for now. So they forgot the flamingos and the dancing girls and the cigar factories in Tampa where the son cubano played on. Nobody remembered to forget the island past Key West where an old man sold boat rides to Havana for five dollars and a bottle of rum.

From Guest Contributor Courtney Watson

Florida

Every morning, Tom Hopperwell awoke to find his garden in disarray. It looked as if a miniature battle had been fought among his tulips and vegetables.

Tom was a careful man, and it disturbed him greatly to see his garden did not share the sentiment. His wife urged him to call the exterminator, but Tom had a grander scheme.

Tom first set fire to the house, making sure the blaze completely incinerated the garden. Then he and his wife relocated to Florida. Some might call him extreme, but Tom had a hunch Florida would be too hot for the ants.