Wanderlust

The pulse of the city is becoming my own. I woke up with a thrumming headache this morning. The night and the dawn are a patchwork in my aching head. When I walk down the street, steam ripples off the pavement, as intangible as my disintegrating memories. How is my stranger? I wonder. The one from last night’s club. Gone now. He’s returned back to his own life after our brief collision: my drunken frame hung off his neck. His glassy brown gaze still holds me. Power lines cross my heart. My eyes swim in the summer sweat and rain.

From Guest Contributor Siri Harrison

We Lost A Room Last Night

We found a house out on the dunes, beyond the golf course. The conservatory had crumbled already but soon a jagged fissure opened up across the living-room floor. Soon the front door burst from its hinges and other people started to show up. A tramp slept on the wrong side of the crack one night; he was gone in the morning but we didn't know where. You know we'll have to leave here soon, she said one night as she held me. Maybe head up the coast? I squeezed her back and we watched a window slip from its frame.

From Guest Contributor Geoff Sawers

The Portrait

The Duke of Westland stared down from his portrait. Walter studied the painting, admiring the duke’s powdered wig and frilled cravat.

Walter’s eyes widened as the duke stepped out of the gilded frame and strode towards him, extending a bejeweled hand. Walter grasped the duke’s icy palm and noticed that the lavish rings now adorned his own fingers. Puzzled, he looked up and met his own gaze. His other self winked, turned, and left the room.

Walter called out and raised his hands but his glittering rings thrashed against the inside of the canvas, causing his powdered wig to slip.

From Guest Contributor Cate Vance

Cate Vance writes from the mountains of Montana where she is inspired by misty mornings, brilliant days, and starry nights. Her short fiction has been featured in Sky Island Journal.

The World Is Nothing But Chaos And Entropy

Brian stared at the devastation. Where once stood his immaculately kept garage, packed with 45-years worth of careful philatelic curation, was a skeletal frame and mound of black cinders. His eye would be diverted by what momentarily struck him as an envelope floating on the breeze, but turned out was nothing but ash.

His wife attempted consoling him. Imagine the insurance payout! But his devotion had never been about money. Only now, staring at the remains of his life's work, did he truly understand his need for the comfort of a well-aligned stamp in a world of chaos and entropy.

Preserved

It floated in a four-foot cube glass case with runes etched into the gold frame and tiger’s eye gems set into all eight corners.

Connor found his gaze drawn to their chatoyant lustre and wondered if the sphere was only an optical illusion.

“It must be,” he verbalized. “There’s no such thing­–”

“Ah, ah...unnatural,” the mage corrected. “You were never going to get this from nature.”

The image of Claudia moved inside the time-bubble. Connor watched his daughter smile: a welcome change from the burial mask.

“I’ll take it,” he said, smearing tears with the back of his hand.

From Guest Contributor Perry McDaid

Absent Samaritan

He used the lamppost to drag himself to his feet, having groped for the muddy spectacles.

“Help,” he thought he called, clamping the damaged frame to his face to supplement the remaining arm. “I’ve been mugged.”

But he couldn’t have made a noise. Surely the trio who passed would have stopped if he had?

He steadied himself against pain and dizziness and tried to focus his remaining energy into a shout for aid.

He watched through smeared lenses as they faded into the rain: ghosts into oblivion.

He couldn’t be sure they’d heard.

The blood seemed the only irrefutable fact.

From Guest Contributor Perry McDaid

Her Note

The front door slammed.

Before leaving, she posted a note on its frame. Unlike the daily reminders she scribbled, this one was blank.

Her husband grasped at the sofa for comfort, nestling his body in her lingering perfume. Their terrier snuggled beside him.

His mind revisited their argument. Was he wrong to throw back insults at her?

When the doorknob turned, he looked up.

“I didn’t write you a note,” she said with her voice breaking.

“I noticed.”

For a while they sat together in silence watching the sunset.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I love you.”

“I love you, too.”

From Guest Contributor Krystyna Fedosejevs

Krystyna writes poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction. Her work has been published at: Nailpolish Stories, 50-Word Stories, 100 word story, 101 Words, Boston Literary Magazine, From the Depths (Haunted Waters Press), ShortbreadStories, SixWordMemoirs, and Espresso Stories.