Heroes

The fire blew the windows into the street, and pedestrians ran from the area. I entered the house with my fellow firefighters, and the intense heat hit me like a weight. In the distance I could hear someone yelling for help.

“You check downstairs, I’m going upstairs, I hear someone.”

I followed the screams to the bedroom and kicked the door in. Smoke filled the room, but I could see the woman struggling for air. I lifted the tiny woman and took her down the stairs outside to the waiting EMTs.

I went back inside, and we extinguished the fire.

From Guest Contributor Lisa M. Scuderi-Burkimsher

No Paradise

We left our gear on the shore and braved the jungle. Verdant, mossy plants, swollen fruits, normal snakes and spiders. All expected. But that smell. Like sulfur. Why? As earth and rocks piled up it permeated everything. It coated our hair and settled into the weave of our clothes. Warnings went unheeded. When we summited, it was too late. The crag gave way to a cavernous cleft. It glared a stony glare. Then the ground shuttered. Then it trembled. In those final fleeing moments, choked in smoke, death raining down, we understood the island's ancient name: The Great Giant's Buttocks.

From Guest Contributor Nicholas De Marino

Orange Sky

The sky has turned a hazy orange from wildfires capable of creating their own weather. Pages are torn out of books to further feed the fires. Birds wildly flap their wings to escape, only to go round and round in circles. Everything that isn’t predator is prey. Sisters of Mercy are forced to strip naked on the edge of a burial pit, folding their arms over their breasts in misplaced concern for modesty. Today is without a tomorrow. The roof burns, and we let it. My eyes fill with tears from the smoke, but I have never seen more clearly.

From Guest Contributor Howie Good

Howie's newest poetry collection, Heart-Shaped Hole, which also includes examples of his handmade collages, is available from Laughing Ronin Press.

Platero And I: Smoke-Dry

There is El Boncalo, Platero. It is too late now to turn around without insulting him.

Look, that eternal hand-rolled cigarette is dangling from his lower lip again. It just smells awful.

Whenever I see him, I think of the time when I was a young man and thought I could impress the girls coming out of the sewing workshop in Calle de la Escula by lighting a cigarette with an American lighter, just like a movie star.

What a fool I was back then, Platero.

Frankly, I don't miss smoking, much like some other things aging makes superfluous.

Apparently.

From Guest Contributor Hervé Suys

Hervé (°1968 – Ronse, Belgium) started writing short stories whilst recovering from a sports injury and he hasn’t stopped since. Generally he writes them hatless and barefooted.

Escape Route

Nadia rushes through the streets. Gunfire and bombs go off in the near distance and people are scrambling, and screaming, knocking into her while sweat drips down the nape of her neck. Her breath is shallow from the heat and clouds of black smoke fill the air. She uses her sleeve to cover her face from breathing in the toxic fumes, but she coughs heavily. She prays her husband is safe, but she hasn’t heard a word since he left to fight for their country.

She reaches the bridge.

A bomb explodes creating darkness and the bridge collapses beneath her.

From Guest Contributor Lisa M. Scuderi-Burkimsher

My Death

This is a country you only hear about when there is a failed coup or a 7.2 magnitude earthquake or all the whales have syphilis. Most days I feel as if hundreds of tiny worms with razor teeth are whittling my bones. People who have seen me grab onto a wall to keep from falling down in pain sometimes suggest I try heat or special creams. I thank them just to be polite. Meanwhile, a figure in a long black coat lurking nearby sucks on a cigarette, then expels a mouthful of smoke like the monster in a fairy tale.

From Guest Contributor Howie Good

Howie's chapbook Famous Long Ago is forthcoming from Laughing Ronin Press.

The Second Death

You stare into the void but all you can see are ashes of human softness. The stars have succumbed to the flames and fires of an unnatural world you tried to hide from. Hell smells like spices, smoke, and sweetness. It welcomes you. Like the stars you stand at the edge, riveted by the darkness, knowing it is now time for you to join them. Heaven is but an illusory dream, and you know its false promises no longer hold grandeur. There will be no time to wish for a way out. You too will succumb. You too will fall.

From Guest Contributor Elizabeth Grace

Strange Sightings

HISTORICAL FICTION SUBMISSION:

Bill watched as fire tore the sky. Just as suddenly, the flame disappeared and a streak of dark smoke hit the ground. Whatever noise sounded at the impact was too distant for Bill to hear.

He hopped on his tractor and headed to the next field. He'd heard of airplanes in Albuquerque, but never actually seen one.

What Bill found at the crash site sent him running. As he drove to Roswell to inform the authorities, he was passed by a line of army trucks headed to his farm. By the time he returned home, the strange vehicle was gone.

From Guest Contributor Chris Thompson

Frozen Morning

The bright light of the dawn greets him with a cheerful glow, sneaking lies between the buildings.

His breath forms thick clouds that mocks him with its resemblance to cigarette smoke. His fingers ache in his tattered gloves. His legs creak as he raises himself from his bed to face the whitewashed town, bleached clean of its sins.

Looking back towards his bed, the cardboard's damp. Ragged sleeping bags and repurposed plastic have brought him into the frozen day.

Children laugh in the distance. The rumble of snowploughs begin, pushing the salt-weakened snow into heaps of black slush.

From Guest Contributor T.W. Garland

How It Was Is How It Will Be

No one claims to know how the Hebrew slaves came to be heaving the shriveled bodies of the dead into raging furnaces. Soon their throats swelled from the smoke, and they couldn’t swallow or eat, and then their eyes turned red, and everything looked blurry, as if seen through the sting of tears. I feel less certain every day about my own chances. I go to sleep afraid, and I wake up afraid. Sometimes I’m even chased down the street, shoes slapping the pavement, but when I glance back, I can’t quite see who it is that is chasing me.From Guest Contributor Howie Good

Howie is the author most recently of Stick Figure Opera: 99 100-word Prose Poems from Cajun Mutt Press. He co-edits the online journals Unbroken and UnLost.