The Ascent

The door heaves open. Light floods me while darkness retreats inside me. The guards shove me outside my cell. On the stairs, my heart beats like a war drum. One step. Two. Many more. While my chains gently clink. At the summit, I look down and the people cheer. I see their mouths moving but I can’t hear a sound. All I hear is my panicked breath. As they take off my chains, the darkness escapes. I feel so light that I lose the ground under my feet. I smile, in the twenty-five meters that separate me from the abyss.

From Guest Contributor Davide Risso

Davide grew up in Italy, but his itchy feet led him to live in Ireland, Germany, the United States, and travel around the globe. Scientist by training, writer by passion, rock climber by vocation, his fiction has appeared in Flash Fiction Magazine, RumbleFish Press, Literary Yard, and Cranked Anvil among others.

Huff It Your Way

“They’re moving Poe from the County jail to the Big House in the morning,” Dink Delmonico, head of the notorious Delmonico Crime Syndicate said. “Grub, you and Chub are gonna’ bust him out tonight.”

“How, Boss,” Grub asked. “There’s only two of us and at least a dozen guards.”

“With these,” Dink said, putting two pesticide spray canisters on the table. “They’re filled with quick-acting knockout gas. One whiff and the guards will hit the floor like bags of horse manure. Just don’t spray Poe.”

“Right, Boss,” Chub said.

“Remember,” Dink said. “Go directly to jail, and don’t gas Poe.”

From Guest Contributor Lee Hammerschmidt

Lee is a Visual Artist/Writer/Troubadour. He is the author of the short story collections, A Hole Of My Own, It’s Noir O’clock Somewhere, For Richer or Noirer, and Flash Wounds. Check out his hit parade on YouTube!

Emigration 2.0

The latest Derry crowd had established quite a community inside Grianan Fort, refugees from a Northern Ireland under British administration, ostensibly governed by a partnership of Republican and Unionist parties.

Tory privatisation of social housing, using the ubiquitous Brexit scapegoat, had only been introduced three years before a combination of it and repeal of benefits had forced Jimmy’s family, and thousands like them, across the border.

He pitied those who hadn’t escaped the shutdown..“Lights out!” Someone called from the ramparts.

Pointless warning. One way in and out. Guards knew the drill.

Jimmy reckoned they’d have a week’s grace.

From Guest Contributor Perry McDaid

The Button

Blake sat alone in the cell. He only had the bar of soap his guards had given him, and a button he'd smuggled under his tongue.

Alone. Alone. It had been 17 days now. He knew it was 17 days, because each morning, he made a mark in the soap with his button. There were 17 marks for 17 days.

For those 17 days, his only contact with the outside world was the metal plate they slid through the door at mealtime.

17 days to contemplate his crime, his smuggled button the only thing keeping his sanity from slipping away.