Up The Hill

The new boy lived in the old house on top of the hill. The house was abandoned years ago and every kid knew it was seriously haunted. If you rode your bike by at night, a witch could be seen standing in the window.

The new boy was shunned at school. He seemed normal enough, the first clue something was wrong. Only Ricky Landover sat with him at lunch, so he was shunned too.

When it turned out the new boy's parents were vampires, and every family in town was killed except the Landovers, it seemed a particularly harsh punishment.

Spooky Girlfriend

My friends don't like my girlfriend. They say all the same stereotypical bullshit, mostly revolving around how she's crazy and I'm crazy to be dating her. I think they're just intimidated by an older woman.

I should say they are ex-friends, because I rarely see them anymore. I spend most of the time at my girlfriend's house. Who wouldn't want to? She lives in the old mansion at the top of the hill. The same house we used to say was haunted when we were kids.

It's not really haunted. You just have to get used to all the ghosts.

Conspiracy Theory

Beyond porch lights, snow piles up, sealing in anxious women. They stand at windowsills watching the sky glower. Blinking in the fists of children are glo-stix to throw at the towering drifts, aiming where the eyes should go. Elsewhere, a child snaps his birthday gift of a bow-and-arrow in half. The moon rolls down a hill and thunder beats its metal chest, a rattling that distracts everyone from the whir of an incoming drone. It kicks up all the snow but means no harm, though some will insist the machine was an alien ship, come to take the glo-stix home.

From Guest Contributor Cheryl Snell

Gold

HISTORICAL FICTION SUBMISSION:

It was a scene out of a Joseph Heller novel. For three weeks, Nyhoff's platoon, at the behest of Colonel Walters, had driven them to take the god-damned hill. There was no apparent strategic value, and everyone assumed it was another cockamamie order from the generals. The generals rarely knew what they were doing.

But they eventually took the hill, and a lot of men died. Nyhoff wouldn't say they were good men, but they were men, and now they were dead. All because Colonel Walters had heard rumors of an abandoned cache of gold.

There was never any gold.

From Guest Contributor Gary Linehan

Prairie Phantom

Sand rolls steadily along the prairie with a wild wind. The fox finds his home between the sagebrush and through the sunflowers. He leaps airily at ease with his snout grinning. Atop the hill, he shimmies about and slides down while birds depart. Below he creeps to the cemetery and waits for night to lay a veil. A gentle chill glides along as starlight washes over weary stone. With a swift bark and a bound, he weaves among the graves. Moonlight tickles his whiskers and mist wanders in. Here the fox dances with ghosts who once called his prairie home.

From Guest Contributor Kristi Kerico

Kristi is a psychology major at Pikes Peak Community College. She is studying to become a horticultural therapist. She currently works at a bookstore and volunteers at a zoo and nature center. She began writing after enrolling in a creative writing course at PPCC. She enjoys poetry the most, considering it's brief yet complex beauty. She also loves writing with a focus on nature.

Confessions

Did she hear right?

The curtains are parted. It is naked black in the bedroom except for a slice of light exposing one hazel eye, the outline of his angular face. Clare knows how soft that eye-brow is to touch and how it is to be in the centre of that dark gaze.

Moving to the window, she peers outside: they will never be two names chiselled into a hill, hewn into rock. For months she wished she was that whisper of sunlight on his face. That and no more.

‘I’m married,’ Mike repeats.

‘I heard you. So am I.’

From Guest Contributor Louise Worthington

Art, Music, Philosophy

Our 5-year-old daughter, Celeste, was singing to herself. She suddenly stopped and said, "Why do I always fart when I sing?” Then a French farmer while plowing on a hill uncovered a rusted revolver that may be the very one Van Gogh used to shoot himself. I looked at my wife, who was looking back at me. I can’t keep drowning, I can’t. There are little children living without parents in freezing tents in detention camps. The ancient Greek stoics maintain a complicit silence. I just want it to end. Every kind of music is meant to be played loudly.From Guest Contributor Howie Good

Howie is the author most recently of Stick Figure Opera: 99 100-word Prose Poems from Cajun Mutt Press. He co-edits the online journals Unbroken and UnLost.

Evolution #9

Yesterday was scheduled to be a holiday. Then shoals of fish came creeping over the hill, having grown rudimentary arms and legs. “What the fuck?!” you said as you watched them begin to blend in with the surroundings. Despite the invasion, no one was coming to save us. Some people panicked and, in their impatience to escape, broke out windows or jumped from moving trains. Others were climbing up to their roofs. I think this might be the way of the future, and just in case it is, maybe you should be standing over there helping hold the ladder steady.

From Guest Contributor Howie Good

Howie co-edits the journals Unbroken and UnLost.

The Landing

Andy hears a strange hum. He walks up the hill. At the bottom he sees a flying saucer spinning.

The saucer shows signs of corrosion, dents and dings dot the worn skin. Dirt and grime blemish its surface.

Andy thinks the damaged craft is landing. Too his surprise the vehicle starts spinning faster and gains altitude. In seconds the ship is above him, then gone.

Andy didn’t know they landed three years ago. Moments before Andy arrives the saucer had emerged from the ground. After spending all that time under the earths’ crust exploring and meeting the inhabitants they leave.

From Guest Contributor Denny E. Marshall

Faith, Hope, Etc.

The next time you’re caught in a really bad place – the kind of place where people are always asking each other, “Oh why can't they get that baby out of the ground?” – take some frequently used verbs and combine them in a bowl with Hindu magnet incense, a bit of forgotten history, brain fluid, and warm dog’s breath, and then let the mixture sit for 20 minutes, after which you should be able to see a faint glow up there, see it coming over the hill, women wearing sky blue T-shirts that say “Quaker” and waving signs that say “Love.”

From Guest Contributor Howie Good

Howie's latest collections are I'm Not a Robot from Tolsun Books and A Room at the Heartbreak Hotel from Analog Submissions Press.