Consequences

My fate had been decided and I’m not sorry. The hunger in the pit of my stomach was more important than the consequences. When I barreled my fist into the man’s face and he fell to the ground motionless, I took the bread with my sore, bloody knuckles and ran. Within a day, the sheriff apprehended me.

I’m trapped in a cold, dank, cage, with crawling rats as my friends. I’ve heard other prisoners declaring innocence and then silence.

The sheriff led me outside to a chanting crowd, hands tied tightly behind me, to the noose that awaits my neck.

From Guest Contributor Lisa Scuderi-Burkimsher

Prisoners

Auntie asks my mother and I to move out of her house. She says I make too much noise when I sleepwalk and my rock albums are causing Uncle Herman more brain damage from his tour of duty in Afghanistan. Upstairs, I take down my posters of Geronimo, John Lennon, and James Dean from the finely cracked yellow walls. Exhausted, my mother sits on my bed and breaks down. “It’s all your fault,” she says. As if I had the power. At night tiny policemen march into my ears. I’m not sure it’s a dream. They say come with us.

From Guest Contributor Kyle Hemmings

Kyle's latest collection of text and art is Amnesiacs of Summer published by Yavanika Press. He loves street photography, French Impressionism, and 60s garage bands that never made it big.

Bad Escape

Alcatraz, 1938.

Prisoners Nick and Daryl were aboard a boat to Alcatraz. The boat collided with a rock and turned over. Nick and Daryl swam to shore followed by a guard. He knocked them out. Outside of the prison Daryl grabbed the guard's gun and shot him.

With Nick, Daryl ran from the loosened dogs and guards. They found a boat. The warden followed as the men stole the boat.

'This is the life' cried Nick.

'Hungry for bullets?' called the warden as he shot Daryl. Nick, an identity thief, shot back.

Nick lived another fifty years as a warden.

From Guest Contributor Bayley Kelly

Christmas Eve On The Eastern Front

Schmidt and I carry Braun into the church. Outside we’d freeze to death this Christmas Eve.

Icy wind blows through the shell hole in the cupola. We break up a pew for a fire.

It illuminates a statue of St. Michael.

We share a cup of schnapps.

Braun cannot partake. His stomach wound means he will die during the night.

We hear the squeaking of metal tracks.

“Tanks!”

Schmidt extinguishes the fire. If they’re T-34s we’re doomed. The Russians take no prisoners for what we’ve done to their land.

In the darkness I sense St. Michael’s eyes staring down unforgivingly.

From Guest Contributor Ian Fletcher

Kite Prisons

The state of Montana, hoping to profit on the nation's overcrowding problems, built the first kite prisons in 2036. They tied the prisoners to the backs of kites and let the wind take them hundreds of feet in the air. They saved millions on construction and maintenance costs. All you needed was a few old men who made sure no one came along and cut the strings.

The congressional hearings began in 2051, when it was discovered that the Montana DOC was allowing prisoners to starve to death rather than feed them.

Leave it to the liberals to ruin a good thing.