The Story Of An Artist

Troubled childhood, searching for escape. Persecuted for a vision of the world the world found uncomfortable.

One person called him a genius. Everyone called him a genius. His genius defined the zeitgeist of the moment. His genius transcended the moment and stood the test of time.

His paintings sold for millions. His paintings captured the hearts of millions. His paintings were copied by millions.

His influence was everywhere. His reputation cast a shadow over all the artists who followed. His fame is eternal.

Every person who knew him knew him to be an asshole. He was especially cruel to women.

Late Night Mystery

I'm at that point in my life where I need to wake up at least once in the middle of the night. Stumbling through the dark to the bathroom, the street lamp cast a shadow across the table, revealing a yellow envelope.

With groggy eyes, I opened the missive to find a short note on a scrap of aged paper.

"I miss you."

It wasn't signed, but the script was familiar. There was no mistaking this had been written by Beverly, my wife.

Dropping the note, I searched frantically throughout the house. Beverly had died exactly one year ago tonight.

Shadow Of A Doubt

Matthew had always been steadfast in his faith. What appealed to him most about God was the need to believe, as opposed to some sort of certainty born of evidence or innate awareness. The fact that we were blessed with the choice and allowed to entertain doubt was the beauty of existence.

Now, as he felt his life slipping away, Matthew found that his conviction in God was stronger than ever. He had no fear of what was to come, because he was completely at peace and ready to meet his maker.

Except what if he was wrong? Oh shit...

For Yulia Navalnaya

Beware, murderer. I know widows. I watched my mother become one, imagined how my face would bend and darken in the shadow of the word that means shroud, dusk, ash. What lies inside the bones of a woman who does not crumble before you—who wears this word to war, vowing not to yield? Something heavy: iron, redwoods. Oak, like him: an oak among reeds who knew he would be uprooted, just as she knows she will be. No, it is light, hydrogen fusion in the belly of a star, howling life, dawn, freedom. Beware of this widow on fire.

From Guest Contributor Brook Bhagat

Brook Bhagat (she/her) is the author of Only Flying, a Pushcart-nominated collection of surreal poetry and flash fiction on paradox, rebellion, transformation, and enlightenment from Unsolicited Press. Her work has won or placed in the top two in contests at Loud Coffee Press, A Story in 100 Words, and most recently, the Pikes Peak Library District 2023 fiction contest. It has been published in Monkeybicycle, Empty Mirror, Soundings East, The Alien Buddha Goes Pop, Anthem: A Tribute to Leonard Cohen, and elsewhere. She is a founding editor of Blue Planet Journal and a professor of creative writing Read her work and learn more about Only Flying at https://brook-bhagat.com/.

Wandering Star

I killed the crew of the Wandering Star, humanity’s last hope.

A desperate mission to find a new home. The ship crashed into this lonesome planet of obsidian.

Maybe I’ve lost my mind. But I heard a voice calling me here. A soft whisper in the dark. They called me insane, said I’d gone AWOL. Tried to lock me up.

I wandered the surface, guided by the whisper, until I stood in its shadow, a great five-pointed upside-down black star floating high above.

I wept when I realized why I’d been led here. The leviathan declaring the end of humanity.

From Guest Contributor Rick Ansell Pearson

Rick lives and works in central Mexico. His fiction can be found forthcoming in Year Five: Dark Moments and Patreons, published by Black Hare Press.

One Step

On the borders of this serene land lay a dark shadow formed from a massive structure built on the ruins of another once-great civilization. It often feels like an ominous storm cloud in an otherwise starry sky.

The people of this land continue to work on the tower in the hope of one day reaching the heavens. To be reunited with their ancestors dancing within constellations.

On this glorious night, as the sun sets, dark clouds dissipate; the moon rises on the horizon, filling the entire night sky with dangerous possibilities as they come one step closer to the stars.From Guest Contributor J. Iner Souster

A Moment In The Sun

He couldn't believe how amazing it felt to be free of the anguish and suffering he'd endured for so long. He fled this hellhole!

On an outcropping he sat, legs dangling over, watching the tiny ripples in the lake below. Looking towards the rising sun, it seemed to have sped up as it moved across the sky, a shadow of some type, nearly black, just behind it.

He watched as they raced above him, sun in the lead with shadow in tow, heading to the far side of the world. Now motionless, the darkness grew until the sun vanished entirely.

From Guest Contributor J. Iner Souster

I Overhear My Grandmother In A Dream

I knew about the tarpaper roof torn in the shape of the mountains she had just left, the shape of her youth spent in birthing a dozen children. I did not know she sang only to the sons, who arrived looking like wrinkled old men. When I asked her why she wouldn’t sing to her daughters, I already knew the answer: the girls would just leave her for strangers.

I saved my voice for prayer. The light flinched under the lie, but it was only my shadow. That light came from some distance, she said. You really shouldn’t impede it.

From Guest Contributor Cheryl Snell

Cheryl is a classically trained pianist who writes by ear. Author of several collections of poetry, she has also written a series of novels called Bombay Trilogy; and been published in hundreds of literary journals and anthologies, including a Best of the Net. Look her up on Facebook.

In The Shadow

Nighttime, people strode past him in pursuit of merriment at the city’s main square.

In a high rise apartment across the street, flamenco pulsed from an open window. Singing and clapping erupted. Smells of warm foods being prepared at tapas bars flavored the humid, tepid air.

He pulled a quilt over his head when a nearby nightclub closed and rowdy customers zigzagged into the light of a new day.

There’d be coins dropping into the cup by him on a bankrupt store’s doorstep he called ‘home.’

Someone would throw him an empanada. He sometimes found one, after footsteps scurried away.

From Guest Contributor Krystyna Fedosejevs

Krystyna writes poetry, fiction and creative nonfiction regardless of the season, although she prefers spring.

Angels And Crows

I was eight, maybe nine, when my little cousin stuck out her foot and tripped me, and my father, in a red rage because I had chipped a tooth, whacked me across the face. Forty years later, my cousin would be found dead on the floor from a drug overdose. If there were actually angels, would they fly in a V-formation like geese, you think? Someone was just telling me that crows can hold a grudge for a year or longer against a person who has mistreated them. When I walk, wherever I walk, my shadow walks ahead of me.From Guest Contributor Howie Good

Howie is the author most recently of the poetry collections Gunmetal Sky (Thirty West Publishing) and Famous Long Ago (Laughing Ronin Press).