Night Shift

When the wind blew really hard all the derricks had to be towed in off the lake. Usually it chased us off around ten. So my shift began with the promise of a shutdown. I would gather up the rangemen to go out in the skiff anyway, just to make a showing. I was home by one and could listen to the wind howl in my basement apartment till I fell asleep. The next night would be awful with me tired and everything. You should never get out of that night shift rhythm, no matter how good the wind sounds.

From Guest Contributor Paul Smith

Country Noir

A B-girl with sleepy, mud-colored eyes slipped onto the stool next to mine. “I am here to entertain you,” she said and then added as a tease, “but only during my shift.” At least she wasn’t the kind of woman who would refer to poetry as “verse.” I conspicuously returned my attention to the ball game on the TV over the bar. She leaned in closer and started to stay something. I cut her off. It’s not that I wasn’t tempted; it’s just that I’m cautious. Prison workshops and small rural cemeteries are filled with men who should have been.

From Guest Contributor Howie Good

Howie is the author of Failed Haiku, a poetry collection that is the co-winner of the 2021 Grey Book Press Chapbook Contest and scheduled for publication this summer.

Deep Dive

She lies nestled upon the seabed, in the depths almost beyond the sun; she calls to me, drawing me in ever closer since I first saw her.

Last time I dived, we almost touched fingertips, but I was forced to come up for air, empty-handed, so to speak.

Every time I’ve gotten near to her since—three times now—I’ve woken up flat on my back upon the pier, with Mitch giving me resuscitation and mouth-to-mouth.

Next time, I’ll reach her; I’ll dive when the lifeguards change their shift on the harbour wall—Mitch won’t stop me again.

She’s waiting for me there.

From Guest Contributor Andrew Anderson

Andrew (he/him) is a writer of fiction from Bathgate, Scotland. His work has previously been published by National Flash Fiction Day Press, Sampson Low Ltd., Selcouth Station Press, The Drabble, Black Hare Press, Eerie River Publishing, Paragraph Planet, Steering 23 Publications, and Blood Song Books.

Lonely Planet

Sometime after midnight I stepped into a smoky cellar bar, gave the miserable clientele the once-over, and located an empty stool toward the back. The bartender, a cigarette between his lips, was drying glasses with a dirty rag. In my beret and belted black raincoat, I might have been taken for a fugitive Trotskyite – or perhaps the assassin sent to execute him. A woman slipped onto the next stool. She had a face like that of a 13-year-old girl who died of heart failure following prolonged laughter. “I am here to entertain you,” she said, “but only during my shift.” From Guest Contributor Howie Good

Howie Good is the author of The Death Row Shuffle (Finishing Line Press, 2020) and The Trouble with Being Born (forthcoming from Ethel Micro-Press).

Wasted Time

A woman sighed and leaned over the cash register. “I wish I could travel through time and be done with this shift already,” she groaned.

Suddenly, there was a whoosh, and the woman’s short hair whipped around her face. Upon opening her eyes, she found herself sitting comfortably on her sofa at home. She grinned and turned on the television.

Days, month, and years passed at light speed. With just one wish, each mundane, terrifying or embarrassing moment blurred into the past.

The woman finally stopped when she lay sick and old on her bed, having never lived at all.

From Guest Contributor Caitlyn Palmer

Supermarket Sleep

Wednesdays, post-second shift, bone-marrow tired, Kyra grocery-shopped. To stay alert, she categorized customers, itemized their purchases.

First: class, marital status, number of kids, happiness level. Pony-tailed woman opposite Kyra? Pinching pants tight in the crotch? Must be married ten years; barely making do managing odd-lots store; two sucrose-loving preteens; miserable as a mutt, minus flea collar, August.

Cart contents: Pony tail and family down waffles, wings, PB & J, rolls, store-brand sherbet, Bud, Coke.

Kyra’d be sad, eating that.

Pulled leggings, smoothed hair. Double-take: her mirrored reflection! She’d best snap out of this, load check-out counter. Be on her way.

From Guest Contributor Iris N. Schwartz

Iris is a fiction and nonfiction writer, as well as a Pushcart-Prize-nominated poet. Her work has appeared, or is forthcoming, in such journals as Bindweed Magazine, Connotation Press, The Flash Fiction Press, Jellyfish Review, Quail Bell Magazine, and Random Sample Review.

Endeavor

Chet sat his desk daily in four-hour shifts from 6am to 7pm, with fifteen-minute breaks in between. The working conditions weren’t the worst he’d encountered. At least they had a ceiling fan.

Chet’s job was to type the word “endeavor.” When he was first hired, sixteen years ago, his word had been “the,” but then Peterson had died and so he got promoted.

Every fifteen seconds, a new page was handed to him, and he typed his word. Then the page was taken away, and a new page came. They were distributed randomly, going from station to station, until they had 120 pages. Mostly the scripts were incoherent gibberish, but every once in a while, they’d have a blockbuster.

Though Chet didn’t think it was a very efficient system, Hollywood found it cheaper than training monkeys to use a typewriter. Chet certainly wasn’t going to complain. It beat crunching numbers.

Today's story is exactly 150 words, but you get it for the same low price as always!