Correcting Errors

My wife was a good woman but controlling. One night, wearing old cut-offs, I found an urn on the beach. I shook it.

A small piece of paper issued. Do not agitate.

“What’s this?”

Another paper. “Voice recognition printer. I can grant wishes. Just speak. It will be printed and granted.”

“This is a bad joke.”

Another sheet. “This is not a yoke.”

Yoke? Voice recognition? I asked for a good life.

Moments later, a woman walked toward me. “Why are you wearing those rags. You have nice shorts.”

Another sheet. “Your good wife.”

“No, no,” I said. Life. L-I-F-E.”

From Guest Contributor Mel Goldberg

A Teddy-Bear Reunion

It’s been twenty -seven years since I’ve seen his face.

White and fluffy, hiding an adorable black button nose that invites a desperate need to boop.

Life descended into chaos not long after we met, and the spiral took decades to settle.

House to house, the bounce of instability, the gathering of no moss. None of them were home, just a place to be, until the next one.

But I’ve been here a while now. And can no longer ignore the roots that have sprouted. It's finally time to release my childhood friend from his black plastic prison.

We’re home.

From Guest Contributor Kamran Connelly

Kam’s Novelette DEATH BED INC is due for publication by Twisted Dreams Press. He has features in anthologies by Hollowpoint Press, Wolfsinger Publications RDG Books Press and UnpopularPublications. Is currently shopping around his debut novel, The Extinction Process. And his Vampire novella BLOOD BANK. Is published online at The Horror Tree, Trembling with Fear, Flash Phantoms, and WitCraft for his works of fiction. Has poetry featured in three anthologies, and a novella featured in the Paul Cave Prize for literature.

Prevail

The Nazis took drastic measures to make me obey their cause. I had been beaten so badly, it took weeks for my swollen eye and broken arm to heal, and that wasn’t the worst of it. They threatened my wife and daughter. If I didn’t do what the Nazis wanted, they would kill my only family.

My parents were shot dead in their home because they hid Jewish friends, and I had been told they begged for their life.

If I continue to refuse, my wife and daughter will be next. I had to prevail; I wouldn’t let that happen.

From Guest Contributor Lisa M. Scuderi-Burkimsher

Sacrifice

I freeze when they emerge: two cubs accompanying their mother out of the woods, nosing the lanky grass, their progress benign but intent. In another life, another form, I could have been a bear lumbering languidly across the wilderness seeking sustenance for my brood. Then and now, I mean no harm. Then and now, neither does she. Yet I know she would fight to the death for the innocence beside her; at the dawn of life, they know nothing but her protection.

I step backwards slowly, grip my whistle, close the door, and watch as they tear down the birdfeeder.

From Guest Contributor Faye Rapoport DesPres

For the prompt Frontier

The Tomb At Starocel

The silence around the Thracian stones was so intense that Jamie could hear his footfalls on the sandy soil. What rites had taken place up here, to cast their memories down the future so? Magic tingled in the very air, the landscape not brooding, but waiting to be awakened once more, holding its breath in expectation of life restored. Climbing carved stone steps scaled to something slightly more than human, he approached the dark profundity of the beehive tomb lurking in the heart of the hill. Seeking to understand, he wondered if he could be more than just another tourist.

From Guest Contributor Alastair Millar

Instructions For Life After Life

Cast my ashes into an Atlantic gust alongside pelagic birds soaring, sleeping.

Watch them disappear over rogue waves.

Mourn me with salt-stung eyes and encyclopedias of words left unspoken.

Celebrate me with a frenzied fiddle and jittery jig.

Find me in the memory of a parting embrace.

Hear me in sweet words whispered in dark spaces.

Take solace knowing you, too, will one day suffer the pyre.

Picture your ashes strewn to the wind’s caprices.

Believe in an eternal afterlife of repurposed atoms.

Let us rest, not in peace, but spiraling together in an infinite universe pulsating with ancient energies.

From Guest Contributor Elizabeth Murphy

What’s In A Letter?

Uncle Max was as jovial in death as in life, Melinda chuckled.

One by one she discovered his letters by completing a series of navigational instructions from each. Midway through the fifth she froze. Right door, or left? Uncle wrote “the door”.

She decided on the right, but it did not lead her to the 6th letter, and there was no going back. Uncle’s rules.

“What’s in your bag?” she asked her brother.

“Candy, jokes, puzzles. You went through the wrong door,” brother grinned, popping gummy-bears into his mouth.

“Uncle Max should’ve written: Spying not allowed!” she squirmed, walking away.

From Guest Contributor Krystyna Fedosejevs

For the prompts Manuscript and Letter.

Mrs. Garvey

Tom mostly preferred to forget his high school years, but he did recall his senior English class. He spent an entire semester imagining his future married to Mrs. Garvey. As far as he was concerned, she was the most beautiful woman alive. The fact she was well versed in romantic literature only made their life together even more appealing.

Encountering his former crush at the grocery store should have provided the perfect opportunity to realize his dream. Unfortunately, despite being ten years older, he found himself just as incapable of forming a coherent sentence as when he was a student.

When Life Gives You Lemons

While Burt created a wedding cake, the radio crackled. “Evacuate, citizens!” a voice shouted. “An asteroid will hit us in ninety minutes and could flatten the town!”

“I’ve never let a bride down,” Burt muttered. “However, my notes are unclear on whether to do strawberry or lemon filling.”

The asteroid lowered itself through the clouds, blocking out the sun; its cratered face peered through the bakery’s window.

“Lemon,” it rumbled. “Bride not coming.”

“Okay,” Burt said.

When the cake was finished, it slipped through a sinkhole.

After the dust cleared, parts of the town were destroyed. The bakery remained standing.

From Guest Contributor Susmita Ramani

Normal Life

The hairdresser with a comb in between her teeth, mumbled, “Hey, Maxie, be with you in a few minutes.”

The hum of the blow dryer and the loud chatter filled the room with an abundance of life. Women flipped through magazines while waiting, and the owner turned on the television to the game show channel.

I went over to the coffee machine and made myself a cup. Steam rose and I sniffed the heat while sipping the hot liquid that warmed my insides.

I hadn’t been out in months with my treatments, and it felt great being around normalcy again.

From Guest Contributor Lisa M. Scuderi-Burkimsher