Early Bird Special

Doubled-masked and leaning into the pharmacy’s window, you answer questions that will later identify you immediately. It’s 11:59 a.m. and the Know-It-All Tech, with a bar code label on her wrist and seascape nails, is already sick of the routine: Fill out these papers, sign here and here; take papers around back & sit with arm exposed; face turned to the left, as a cool alcohol swab cleans an invisible bull’s eye. The outgoing pharmacist chats about snow & cold and you barely feel him stick you with the needle. Done, he says, pressing a circle band-aid over your future.

From Guest Contributor M.J.Iuppa

M.J.Iuppa lives on a small farm near the shores of lake Ontario. Her 100 word stories have appeared in 100 Word Story, Eunoia Review, Otoliths, Jellyfish Review, A Story in a 100 Words, The Dribble Drabble Review, The Drabble Review, Milk Candy Review, Lost Balloon, and others. . Check out her blog: mjiuppa.blogspot.com for her musings on writing, sustainability & life’s stew.

Survivors

They live presently. Now they tear the soft meat from the bone, now they hear the twang of resistant tendons. The vibration of it. A chorus of crows. Scudding wings of moths that search for the darkness just beyond. In the pit is hunger. We exist, hands pasted to rifle stocks, glimmering gunmetal eyes, rattle-boned. They know family born of teeth, defined by the low moans of their communes. Their tongues hang together. Our hands hang separately, our nails scratching our own stomachs, our thighs, our faces. But we are all hungry. We will all ooze the same black ichor.From Guest Contributor Carrie Cook

Carrie received her MA in Creative Writing from Kansas State University and is currently living in Colorado. Her work has appeared in The Columbia Review, Midwestern Gothic, Menacing Hedge, and Bartleby Snopes.

Names

"Mihir let us call our daughter Roja or else Shahad?"

I am now being dragged by my hair through the courtyard, then the terracotta floor of hanuman mandir, the broken scalps of which kept poking my menstrual pad. Crying hysterically, I pleaded "Only Hindu names from now. No Muslim.”

Nani, plastering dung cakes for the winter, Raja beta biting nails in anticipation, and Mantu my sister-in-law licking her middle finger out of the pickle jar as Mihir unburdened his hands off my hair with a thundering jolt of Indra.

Later, men smoking bidi took my bleeding body to Shamshan Ghat.

From Guest Contributor Noya Nirriti

Expired

Lucie hears the police officer’s voice so clearly in her memory. We’re sorry, your husband has been hit by a drunk driver and he’s unresponsive. Come to the hospital immediately.

She’s helpless, afraid, when she sees John still, and bleeding from his head.

Lucie stares out the window watching the birds fly, chirping in unison. The clouds give way to abundant sunshine and she waits for the doctor, impatiently biting her nails.

The doctor’s words are imprinted in her mind. Internal injuries. Needs surgery immediately.

“Mrs. Giovani, I’m very sorry. Your husband expired on the operating table.”

The sky darkens.

From Guest Contributor Lisa M. Scuderi-Burkimsher

To Have A Dress Made

He gently whispered in my ear: turn yourself around. Then he measured my waist with the corner of one eye. He said: “You are beautiful, my true!” You look like Venus coming of the foam with golden curls. I shall make you a dress that floats in the Sun. I shall make you an evening gown for your prince, The One. I shall dress you in purple and stick silver hairpins in your kirtle. I shall give you a mantle, and dress you in white. I shall draw stars upon you, your nails are painted, but you still walk naked.

From Guest Contributor Svetla Vasileva

Growth

I like watching my nails grow. I eat enough proteins to create dead cells to convert into nails and hair. Every week, I trim my nails, and every two weeks, my hair. But they grow back with a vengeance each time. When I forgot to trim my nails once, my infant brother got a large scratch on his face. I forgot to cut my hair, and my mother had a nasty fall entangled in them. No one comes near me now, except to cut my nails and hair. I’m the keratin child demon everyone has learnt to be scared of.

From Guest Contributor Namitha Varma

Namitha is a media professional based in Bengaluru, India. She has publishing credits in over 25 literary journals including Sahitya Akademi’s journal Indian Literature, eFiction India, Gone Lawn, Postcard Poems and Prose, 101 Words, Microfiction Monday Magazine, and Cafe Dissensus Everyday. Her micropoem has been read out on NPR Radio as part of the National Poetry Month 2014, and her works feature in two anthologies. Read more on her blog or follow her on Twitter.

Unwelcome

The skittering as her nails scrabbled at the tiles on the front door hall: impotent in the face of his grip on her favourite leash.

The desperate eyes and face as she strained against a collar she could have slipped off her wasted neck; had her limbs moved that way. That is my last image of Honey.

Her frenzied bark in the background of the terrible phone call I took from traction was the last noise and the reason I vowed never to have another dog.

I’m going to kill the spoiled little Shitzon which pisses on my book collection.

From Guest Contributor Perry McDaid