Captain

The captain’s mother decided to prepare her son for a watery death. She took the boy to the seaside and held his head underwater. The captain screamed and thrashed, for the Mer people mocked him. They said you’re a Man O’ War: a floating bag of gas. But then the captain fell in love with the Mer king. One day when his mother held him under, he made to kiss the king. The king accepted his kiss by filling the boy’s lungs with water. Then he approached the mother and said, “I will be your captain.” “I accept,” she said.

From Guest Contributor Jeremy Nathan Marks

How To Know If Your Boyfriend's A Narcissist (And Other Dating Advice For Women In 2025)

Linda hated the way Roger drew so much attention. If he wasn't bantering with a server or making bad jokes to a cashier, he was serenading her on the subway at the top of his lungs.

Linda had always been an introvert. While in the early days dating Roger brought a perverse thrill to someone who'd spent most of her life unnoticed, she now realized her preference for remaining incognito.

But breaking up with Roger was proving more difficult than she'd imagined. She'd assumed that if she completely stopped talking he'd eventually get the hint.

That was six months ago.

Smog Moon

It's one of those days when the pollution's so thick, you can stare directly at the sun and it looks like the old Japanese flag. We call it the smog moon.

We used to get away with a lot on smog moon days because most sensible people staid indoors. But as the pollution got worse, and the blue sky days less common, people stopped thinking about what the air was doing to their lungs and just went about their business.

Now, most of the gang are either dead, in jail, or under contract, and smog moons make me sad remembering.

Echo Of Inevitability

Sounds become muffled. All she hears is an echo bouncing off the walls. For an infinitesimal moment her soul levitates, detaching from the present. She looks at the doctor’s face as words grow inaudible. A silent scream explodes from her lungs into an invisible body spasm. A voice in her head continues unrestrained: ‘She’ll be alone” but her mind allows her to compose herself as she kisses minuscule freckles on her daughter’s face. As chubby little fingers wipe off her tears, she peers into the eyes of Innocence, so intrinsic, untainted.

The headstone inscribes: ‘RIP Innocence. Your life starts anew.’

From Guest Contributor Andrea Damic

Amateur photographer and author of micro and flash fiction, Andrea Damic, born in Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina, lives in Sydney, Australia. Her words have been published or are forthcoming in 50-Word Stories, Friday Flash Fiction, Microfiction Monday Magazine, Paragraph Planet, 100 Word Project & TDDR with her art featuring or forthcoming in Rejection Letters, Door Is A Jar Magazine, and Fusion Art’s Exhibitions. One day she hopes to finish and publish her novel. You can find her on TW @DamicAndrea, Facebook or Instagram.

Buried

HISTORICAL FICTION ENTRY:

Quintus, uncomfortably warm, found himself staring blankly at the frescoes on his wall of intertwined naked ladies and men. Startled out of his daydream when the floor shook and the walls cracked, he ran through the atrium to the front wooden door and opened it. People scrambled the streets, colliding into one another screaming in terror. Mount Vesuvius had erupted into fiery lava, ash and pumice.

Quintus ran, but the roof collapsed and buried him in a pile of burning rocks. With shallow breathing, and his lungs collapsed, he bid farewell to Pompeii as the sound of dying screams faded.

From Guest Contributor Lisa M. Scuderi-Burkimsher

Through The Looking Glass

I opened my eyes and saw everything in a new light. The worries of the past few months seemed to have just vanished into thin air. The constant throbbing pain in the back of my head was now gone. I felt like dancing and singing at the top of my lungs. Suddenly I heard some raised voices and the sound of weeping. Intrigued, I walked a few paces and entered the room from where the sobbing came. There was a woman in a blue dress crying, looking at something on the bed. I glanced at the bed and saw myself.

From Guest Contributor Madhavi Agnihotri

Just A Cigarette

Sometimes I wish I smoked just to have something else to do. While I watch you paint the bodies of other women with your electrifying and magical fingertips, it feels almost natural to have a cigarette between my fingers. Yet I do not set my lungs on fire. I suspect it has something to do with your disapproval. You say smoking is a sign of suicidal behavior. You will not go out with a mental patient. So I quietly sit and watch as you caress and trace the contours of other women, happy not to be in a coffin instead.From Guest Contributor Suhasini Patni

Suhasini is a second year undergraduate at Ashoka University, in India, studying English literature. She has previously published a book review in The Tishman Review and a micro-fiction piece with A Quiet Courage, and hopes to publish many more. She is new to the publishing world but loves to write.

Patchwork

I was eighteen when I met you. I did not like you. When I was nineteen - I kissed you. My feelings changed. When I was twenty - I slept in your arms. My heart changed. When I was twenty-one I slept with you. I did not love you. You broke my heart for the first time. It healed.

Twenty years later, you still call. My heart has been sewn, ripped apart, and patched back together. It has been systematically desensitized from your ploys and is now just existing somewhere between my stomach and lungs. Biological in space yet empty in soul.

From Guest Contributor Lindsey Stevens

The Passing Of A Friend

Migrant storekeeper Piero Altobelli met word of his old friend’s recent passing with great consternation. Upon hearing, he leapt from his desk in the backroom of his little grocery and flew into a rage. He swatted the week’s receipts into the floor, ripped the telephone from the wall, and yanked the office door from its hinges. All the while bemoaning at the top of his lungs. So uncontrollable was he, not even his wife Maria, could calm him.

“Somebody better tell that summabitch next time he pass a by my store,” cried Piero. “He better pay me what he owes.”

From Guest Contributor Russ Sparks

Russ is currently an MFA student attending Lindenwood University.

The Beer Has Two Inches Of Foam, Not One.

Pushing too hard. Pushing too fast. Wanting something with such veracity that the world disseminates into popping bubbles. I have poured myself into us with too much speed; I am breathless. You are smothered. As the air escapes into a toxic atmosphere, I gulp your aroma into my lungs. I clutch your being until the oxygen releases into the air, and you die beneath my affections. My sorrow does not reconstitute you; my grief does not call you from beyond. Can you hear the lack, the absence of hope? Slow is not for the desperate. I drown in your absence.

From Guest Contributor, Karen Burton

Karen Burton is an MFA student at Lindenwood University in St. Charles, MO