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.

Through The Looking Glass

I opened my eyes and saw everything in a new light. The worries of the past few months seemed to have just vanished into thin air. The constant throbbing pain in the back of my head was now gone. I felt like dancing and singing at the top of my lungs. Suddenly I heard some raised voices and the sound of weeping. Intrigued, I walked a few paces and entered the room from where the sobbing came. There was a woman in a blue dress crying, looking at something on the bed. I glanced at the bed and saw myself.

From Guest Contributor Madhavi Agnihotri

Candlelight Song

The first night we moved into our new home, we heard singing from the house next door. I went to the window and saw a woman singing on the second floor. She held a single candle in her hand.

As the weeks passed, we heard the singing every night, the same song, the same window, the same candlelight. I might have imagined it, but the singing seemed to be becoming louder.

Now, each night, I sit at my window and sing that song, a single candle my only source of light. I have not seen my wife in many years.

Love Be The Devil, But It Won’t Get Me

We were watching the show from a splintered, weathered picnic table in front of the big stage at The Shack when she told me she was leaving me. It was midnight, but it was still a hundred degrees out and sweat rolled down my face and into my eyes as she walked away. The Burnside boys were singing their brand of gritty, corn liquor soaked blues. My heart thudded in my chest like it was threatening to make an appearance but the toes of my boots kept tapping the dirt and eventually I threw my head back and sang along.

From Guest Contributor Sarah Reddick

Sarah Reddick is a writer who is currently in the MFA program at Lindenwood University in St. Charles, Missouri. Her work has appeared in Cattywampus Magazine, Salt Zine, The Local Voice, and the Mid Rivers Review.

The Songbird

There's a songbird outside my house that knows the tune to every standard of the last fifty years. He drives me crazy.

He never stops singing, not while I'm at home anyway. How sexually frustrated does this bird have to be to tweet Paul Simon and Barry Manilow all day long? Visitors find him quaint and always want to take video, and then they make me watch their posts on YouTube. I'm thinking of shooting myself.

He says he'll keep at it until I do, because of how I shot his wife last winter. It's a decision I regret now.

Genie: The Musical

So Naomi found this old lamp in the attic. When she was cleaning it off, a genie appeared and granted her one wish. Before anyone could stop her, she wishes for her life to become just like in a musical.

That's all well and good for her. She's married to a handsome tenor (though I reckon he's probably gay) and every dramatic moment in her life gets played out in song form.

I, on the other hand, never get to say (or sing) anything. I'm just the guy in the back trying to keep time during all the dance numbers.

Alice Who Sings

Alice couldn't speak. She could only sing. Even as a baby, her cries came out as melodies. Her parents were afraid to send her to school because not only the other kids, but also several teachers, made fun of her and treated her as an outcast.

Alice wasn't the only strange one in her family. Her brother was obsessed with astronomy and convinced they weren't alone in the universe.

When the invasion began and they learned that the only way to appease the aliens was through song, that's when everyone realized they were trapped inside an M. Night Shymalan movie.