Road Trip

The scale of the world is different here. Distances become impossible, the sky so expansive the Earth no longer fills it, the fence posts that line the highway fly by until they blur into a constant.

Yet I can't drive fast enough to forget about you.

Time used to be fleeting, elusive. Now it's all become relative, stretched out in every direction, empty of all matter and meaning. If I can just reach the end, I might find myself back where I started. Back by your side.

But no matter how long I keep driving, I never touch the horizon.

Teeth Of A Dragon

“Isn’t he great?” the mother asked amid clanging cymbals.

She looked down noticing that her toddler was no longer by her side.

The dragon who wiggled towards them, opening and closing its massive jaw, had danced its way into the crowd.

The mother searched frantically, calling out her son’s name. She passed grills barbecuing kebabs and performers playing folk music with pan flutes. In better times she enjoyed the ethnic celebration.

An intercom announcement prompted her to hurry to the admin office. Her child sat silently when she arrived.

“I got scared, Mommy. Did you see the dragon’s big teeth?”

From Guest Contributor Krystyna Fedosejevs

Gram’s Highest Calling

I hadn’t seen Gram at her normal function of serving since those days when I often joined her for her lemon pie. Not because she made it best, but because she needed me to receive it. Her God-given role of serving was dismissed when Gramps passed the nicer way; ‘Goodbye,” he’d whispered, then departed.

Time to let her go, service to others fulfilled. Her release not comforted with him at her side. She’d served her mission the best she could.

Mother phoned this morning. I heard the message in the ring. “She’s gone. It’s all done, but not all said.”

From Guest Contributor The Poet SPIEL

Established communicator of the arts, 81-year-old internationally published queer author/artist, storyteller, The Poet Spiel, writes of social conflict, satire noir, and personal hurdles.

East Of Deadwood

Off in the distance, hundreds of lifeless began to shuffle toward town. Vernon turned and saw the cowboy he'd killed staring at him with bloodshot eyes.

"We have to get out of here," Vernon said.

Emmett answered, "I agree. It'll only get worse."

Vernon patted him on the back. He was a good man to have on his side.

They watched them scurry about like insects surrounding the few remaining living. The corpses hadn't crossed a burned-out piece of road.

Vernon added, "West is our ticket out."

Hell-bent for leather on horseback, they left the living and the un-dead behind.

From Guest Contributor J. Iner Souster

Call Of The Deep

It was his first and last voyage to sea. An escape ship. His duty; to scrub the decks. He watched as jellyfish gathered around the keel, unnoticed by the experienced sailors. A simple extra hand. Days passed, or months.

Brine burned his lips, rum quelled his pains.

The jellyfish still gathered.

In the moonlight glow their beauty morphed into that of a woman, her tail flowing along the starboard side.

She called to him, and the dragon uncoiled. Drunk with thirst and madness he dove into her arms, and the dragon swallowed him whole. Only the birds’ song remembered him.

From Guest Contributor Valkyrie Kerry

Victory

The force of the sword against my shield knocked me to the ground. As the sword came toward me, I turned and pushed myself up. I could barely see through my protective head shield and the sweat dripped down my face. The man, large and fierce, came at me again, and the clanking of our swords filled the arena.

One of us would die, slaves no one cared about.

In one last attempt, I lunged, stuck my sword into his side and twisted. He moaned, collapsing to the ground face down. The crowd cheered.

I raised my hands in victory.

From Guest Contributor Lisa M. Scuderi-Burkimsher

April 1912

It is never quiet in the engine room of an ocean liner. I am on the night shift; the lights are bright and the boilers noisy. Suddenly I feel the ship shudder and hear a grinding noise on the starboard side. Something is very wrong. I make my way to the telephone to call the bridge, but no one answers.

Now I notice that water is beginning to flood the engine compartment. I order the bilge pumps activated but they cannot handle the incoming sea water. The sea is a fearsome master; I elect to remain with the foundering ship.

From Guest Contributor Janice Siderius

Waitress And The Ventriloquist

She had sun-streaked hair. I told her we could have a quickie after the show but she just looked blankly at Murphy, the doll. That night I jerked off with Murphy and cussed him for missing my chance with her. He looked on with the wooden smile, his wooden fingers clenched tight by his side. Murphy said cute things that day. People laughed at the stale jokes about slavery. I saw her reach out for the tip. And then she walked past me, with sad the ruffle of notes in her bodice. A little girl came up and hugged Murphy.From Guest Contributor Sreemanti Sengupta

Sreemanti writes fiction and poetry (Losing Friends - Alien Buddha Press 2.0) while occasionally dabbling in collage art. Some of her haikus have been translated to French and a poem read out at City Lights Bookstore, NY. She runs The Odd Magazine and Odd Books.

The Importance Of Listening

I went on my own because I couldn't get anyone to come with me. What had once been an orchard was now a graveyard for old tires, sprung mattresses, rusty paint cans, even broken microwaves, scattered over the slope like the indecipherable wreckage of some puzzling event. The trees, untended for years, had long since stopped producing apples and been twisted into painful shapes by time and storms and then overwhelmed by creeper vines and opportunistic birds and insects. I just stood with my head cocked to one side as if trying to catch every single word the crows said.

From Guest Contributor Howie Good

Howie co-edits the journals UnLost and Unbroken.

First Mate

The scream of the seagull broke the silence on the dock. His old dog looked at him and gave a soft whine. It was her fourteenth season and he wondered if it would be her last. Her coat had lightened over the years and little wasn’t gray on her muzzle. He rubbed her head as they walked to his boat.

She struggled to climb over the starboard side of the boat, so he lifted her in. She made it by herself every time last year.

The traditional start of main lobstering season was underway. It might be her last season.

From Guest Contributor NT Franklin