Orbits

She flips her glasses onto her hair where the shine is slippery. It falls back down to her nose, plastic lenses smudging. She goes for a drive wearing the blurry wedge and thinks she must be imagining the sight of two moons in the sky. One higher than the other, they supervise the intersection. "That was just Mars approaching Earth," her husband says tartly. He’s quite the mansplainer but she knows a defunct theory when she hears one. She’s seen for herself that it’s possible for the sun to set while the moon rises on anything else, anything at all.

From Guest Contributor Cheryl Snell

Cheryl's recent fiction has appeared in Gone Lawn, Necessary Fiction, Pure Slush, and elsewhere.

Microplastics

Too small, too tough, the forever stuff. Five millimeters to a nanometer, all recycle cheaters. Polyethylene is not green. Debris in the sea, in the sand, on the land, in the air. The minuscule plastic molecule – drink it, breathe it, absorb it. 200 thousand microplastic molecules in you every year. Perfect hair, revolutionary skincare – just vain dreams ruining streams. All the sales promotions on lotions and potions, laundry soap, shopping bags, and tags. So much trash; it’s the sin of the bin. It’s hard to be a container abstainer, a nature campaigner. This is the mess we’re in.

From Guest Contributor K Mayer

The Bully Business Professor

The asshat in an ascot quoted Foucault. He made faculty senate holy hell. I think he was in English, maybe History; I knew he wasn’t in athletics!

Anyway, motherfucker just loved the drone of his self-important voice. How about the dulcet tone of a head slap?

I snapped and pummeled him. An Engineering professor high-fived me before public safety came.

At my hearing, I learned he was old money, Ivy League—his mom and dad were philanthropists. He smirked when I got suspended.

Afterwards, I gave him a super wedgy and nasty pink belly.

That’s my story.

Paper or Plastic?

From Guest Contributor JD Clapp

Who Cared?

Robots Contest Entry:

He tinkered for a year, ignoring his phone and only leaving the house for Wacko Wake or the hardware store. The rest was delivered.

The garage was littered with tools and metal shards. The WiFi flicked on for two hours each night so he could comb websites.

His friends had given up on him. Who cared? He was done. Done with living like an open wound, a scrap of plastic blown in someone else’s breeze.

Finally, it was time. He flipped the switch and felt an electric jolt. The eyes lit up. The battery hummed.

Then it spoke. “Yes, master?”

From Guest Contributor Faye Rapoport DesPres

Our Private Summit

I listened to Camilla talking about global warming, the ocean plastic crisis and the deforestation of the Amazon rainforest. Words crowded behind her lips: I silenced them with a kiss. We stayed ten eternal seconds in that first intimate contact.

“I didn't see it coming,” she told me, when she recovered.

“I don't believe you.”

“I knew it could happen, but not so soon. I thought you were harmless.”

“The same they say about climate change.”

We spent all afternoon enjoying our private summit, evaluating the measures to be taken in the future. We started to negotiate ecological caress credits.

From Guest Contributor Marcelo Medone

Marcelo (1961, Buenos Aires, Argentina) is a fiction writer, poet, essayist and screenwriter. His works have received numerous awards and have been published in magazines and books, individually or in anthologies, in multiple languages in more than 40 countries all over the world, including the US.

He has been nominated for the 2021 Pushcart Prize.

Facebook: Marcelo Medone / Instagram: @marcelomedone

Do It Well

Do it well, honey. My lover’s voice echoed inside me as I stabbed my wife repeatedly. Fear flashed in her doe-like eyes. She fell to the wet forest floor and crawled away. I grabbed her ankle and pulled. On my umpteenth attempt, my knife struck through her neck, severing her jugular vein. Blood splattered. The light faded out of her eyes. I rolled her up in a plastic sheet and buried her. Later, I stumbled into my home, choking on her perfume. There she stood in front of me. “What?” I gasped. She brandished a knife. Sharper than my own.From Guest Contributor Fusako Ohki

Translated by Toshiya Kamei

Fusako Ohki is a Japanese writer from Tokyo. She obtained her master’s degree in Japanese literature from Hosei University. Her debut collection of short fiction is forthcoming in 2021.

Plastic Jesus In An Upright Tub

Me and Dale chuck rocks at it. Before school, while we wait for the bus on Highway 62 and after school or on Sundays. It's not all we do. We sit and talk about which girl at school we'd most like to bang. I'm more of an ass man. Dale really likes big boobs and has lots of ideas about what to do with them. Dale has a .22 rifle he shoots stuff with. I tried to get him to shoot Plastic Jesus but he said the bullet might ricochet and kill us. That would be a miracle, I said.

From Guest Contributor John Riley

John is the founder and publisher of Morgan Reynolds, an educational publishing company. He has written over forty books of nonfiction for secondary level students. His fiction and poetry have been published in Smokelong Quarterly, Connotation Press, St. Anne's Review, The Dead Mule, and other many other journals both online and in print.

Frozen Morning

The bright light of the dawn greets him with a cheerful glow, sneaking lies between the buildings.

His breath forms thick clouds that mocks him with its resemblance to cigarette smoke. His fingers ache in his tattered gloves. His legs creak as he raises himself from his bed to face the whitewashed town, bleached clean of its sins.

Looking back towards his bed, the cardboard's damp. Ragged sleeping bags and repurposed plastic have brought him into the frozen day.

Children laugh in the distance. The rumble of snowploughs begin, pushing the salt-weakened snow into heaps of black slush.

From Guest Contributor T.W. Garland

Afternoon Tea Party

“Eat this, Mom,” she said, handing me a plastic donut.

“Mmm,” I said, pretending it was delicious. I put it down and asked for more tea. Giggling, she poured air into a pink cup.

Someone pounded on the door.

The pot dropped to the table. I slid our pre-packed bag out from under the bed. She clung to me, like a baby monkey to its mother, and reached for her doll.

The door was giving in. Soon, it’d be off the hinges. I hoped we had enough time. I opened the window and my heart clenched.

The FBI waited below.

From Guest Contributor Bethany Cardwell

Ride

Only a motorcyclist knows why a dog sticks his head out a car window, he thought. A perfect day for a road trip. 79 degrees, cloudless blue sky, divorce finalized, and the new girlfriend’s boobs felt terrific against his back. The speedometer needle inched past 105mph. Miles of Nevada Highway 50 stretched into the horizon.

The auditory bliss of an unmuffled V-Twin’s howl was joined, and subsequently replaced, by a symphony of mechanical annihilation. 1200 feet and sixty-five seconds later, a cloud of pink mist, feathers, chrome, plastic, aluminum, steel, and leather came to rest.

The desert’s natural silence prevailed.

From Guest Contributor Edward Yoho

Edward recently earned an MFA in Writing from Lindenwood University. According to his spirit guide/favorite professor, the title of his thesis, Science Fiction, Sarcasm, and Other Profane Oddities, accurately reflects his writing aesthetic. Edward’s previous publication credits include an essay and a fiction story in Potluck Magazine.