Wish

I cannot tell you how long it’s been since my yacht sank and I wound up here. I remember the storm and jumping into the life boat, praying that the rain pelting on my head eased and a ship would find me. I must’ve passed out from the cold because when I awakened, my body was muddy, freezing and drenched from the water. Sand and ocean surrounded me, and the boat had floated back into the sea. I was stranded on an island.

I wanted to spend time sailing alone.

Every day I wish I went to a movie instead.

From Guest Contributor Lisa M. Scuderi-Burkimsher

No Paradise

We left our gear on the shore and braved the jungle. Verdant, mossy plants, swollen fruits, normal snakes and spiders. All expected. But that smell. Like sulfur. Why? As earth and rocks piled up it permeated everything. It coated our hair and settled into the weave of our clothes. Warnings went unheeded. When we summited, it was too late. The crag gave way to a cavernous cleft. It glared a stony glare. Then the ground shuttered. Then it trembled. In those final fleeing moments, choked in smoke, death raining down, we understood the island's ancient name: The Great Giant's Buttocks.

From Guest Contributor Nicholas De Marino

Quantum Entanglement

Like a string of fireflies, we were at first one, then two; then two paired and paired again until the dark spaces between us led us to mirror a necklace of uncountable stars. Now, as I float in a glass-bottomed boat on waves that meet the river's edge, I watch a scene unfolding: watercolor sunset over breaking waves, night wind in the willows and finally the gold sunrise through the green of this island where we once searched for Sirius among the stars, your voice in the breeze saying, the greatest illusion in the world is the illusion of separation.

From Guest Contributor Cheryl Snell

Island Of Souls

Simon woke up in the sand, waves lapping against his legs. For once his pants weren't soaking wet from urine.

He braced for a hangover to wash over him that never came. After a few moments he struggled to his feet, trying to piece together where he was and how he ended up here. Not the strangest place he's woken up, but he seemed far from a Starbucks. He'd even settle for a 7/11 at this point, but all he saw was the empty beach in either direction.

Maybe running away from his intervention had been a bad idea.

The Island

Emmett had one wish, a quiet place to call his own.

He found his island floating above the planes of a fractured, blackened Earth. A small, dark place, untouched by the sun as it hovers with a dizzying presence. This place does not feel like it belongs to the world that Emmett knows, but it has been here since time began and will continue even when the sun collapses, when all life on Earth ends.

It contains nothing except itself (nothing but pure consciousness), for this is space without form or substance, and it is a terrible sight to behold.

From Guest Contributor J. Iner Souster

The Pit

There is an island floating above a shattered and charred plane of earth. It's a little black island, untouched by the sun, hovering above with an unsettling presence. It is awaiting something.

An eerie cosmic wind sweeps into a bottomless chasm beneath the island, the deepest pit ever known to exist.

It stretches from the center of the planet to the edge of reality's outer realms, a limitless abyss that devours anything thrown into it.

Nature's laws do not apply here.

This pit is the only law. It will not be content until it has devoured everything in the world.

From Guest Contributor J. Iner Souster

Eye Of Beholder

Todd had always put others before himself, which had brought a sense of well-being and worth when he was young.

But the years and the takers had garnered their toll: the most recent family emergency leaving him stranded on an island of agoraphobia.

He’d just washed the dishes when the doorbell rang.

The wireless security camera bought online amid a bout of paranoia relayed the image of a stranger with a clipboard – practiced smile glued to his face.

Todd could just make out the logo of a phone company on the top sheet.

Another would-be taker.

Sunlight glinted off steak-knives.

From Guest Contributor Perry McDaid

Dreamland

The lake has an island that has a church on it with fine black cracks etched all over. It’s the place where disaster originated. Everything else has been declared safe for visitors. The sky is an orange I never experienced before. A smell like the rancid diapers of the spawn of Satan crawls through trees. A fox poses in front of a sign that says NO JEWS AND ANIMALS ALLOWED. Joggers, dog walkers, and parents with strollers slow down as they go past. I catch the expression on their faces, mostly a combination of surprise and puzzlement. Sometimes they smile.

From Guest Contributor Howie Good

Howie is the author of two new poetry collections, The Death Row Shuffle (Finishing Line Press, 2020) and The Trouble with Being Born (Ethel Micro-Press, 2020).

The Gift

Today the mailman came with a special delivery package. It was wrapped in plain brown paper and bore no return address. I was required to sign for it, which I did, and watched the mailman jump in an unmarked black van and speed away. I took the box inside and set it on the kitchen island. I wondered who might have sent it. I have no friends or family. It's a peaceful life. Then I heard the screaming—a man's screaming. Hard to make out at first, but once you keyed into it, you couldn't stop hearing it for anything.  

From Guest Contributor Meeah Williams

Future Perfect

It had taken some time to bring the fixer-upper to a standard he could happily call home.

He was in the company of all who cursed the pope amid the loyalist festivities.

He dusted and buffed his bowler unto that classy matt gleam. His sash shone with the pride of centuries.

“Why not be ‘triumphalist’?”

There was no response. None needed.

He wore long johns and fleece under the treasured regalia.

"A dry day," he affirmed.

He practiced a few tunes on his fife and strode purposefully from his front door.

Alone he trod the permafrost-patterned ground of Devon Island.

From Guest Contributor Perry McDaid