Haunted

Megan watched Max watch TV. This went on for days. Max was too sad to do anything else. He'd stopped going to work. He wasn't seeing any friends. He even refused to answer the door. He just binged whatever old sitcom Netflix recommended next.

Max had always been stubborn. He refused to listen when anyone made a suggestion he hadn't thought of first.

But Megan was stubborn too. She'd keep haunting Max as long as it took to get him off the sofa and out of their house. She may be dead, but Max had a life still to lead.

Home For Christmas

I finished arranging the last of the ornaments on the Christmas tree. I pressed the switch and the bright red, green and blue lights lit the room, and the star topper sparkled.

The manger was arranged with Mary and Joseph beside the baby Jesus and the wise men holding their gifts.

My children were getting the milk and cookies ready for Santa Claus before going to bed and awakening to presents and my laughter, even though Hal wasn’t home.

I sat on the large sofa and sipped my hot cocoa when the doorbell rang.

My Hal, home from the war.

From Guest Contributor Lisa M. Scuderi-Burkimsher

Sofa Of Cycles

The sagging couch cushions are a trophy–evidence attesting to her self-discipline to stay situated.

She’s a chameleon in her contradictory custom office. An extension cord slithers around wooden legs, dressed with a black and blocky laptop vitalizer. The coffee table has been repurposed into a feet-book-pen desk, crowded with sacred guides to creation and the honing of creative crafts. No clocks tick, as time gives no counsel. Silence rears its head to the ears of the beholder, mouth perpetually packed by scribbles and click-clacks.

She forges life and death. A prolific puppet master.

Stay at home God of worlds.

From Guest Contributor Madeline van Batum

Madeline lives in Colorado with her cat and hopes that one day she can go back to her home country of the Netherlands to finally meet the Flying Dutchman.

Free

"Oooh, look!" Miriam slowed for a u-turn. They had been driving the county routes and dead ends. The third sofa. "Free" written on cardboard. A recliner.

Her daughters tumbled out. Mitzi leaped from the hatchback. The girls bounced. One bounced on the recliner.

"Here Mitzi!" Mitzi jumped.

"Over here!" One daughter bounced on the sofa. Cushion to cushion. Mitzi twirled.

Miriam pointed to the recliner. "This one?" One daughter squealed. "That one?" nodding to the sofa. The other squealed.

Mitzi spun.

Miriam placed two cushions into the far back. Mitzi jumped. The girls slid. Miriam drove.

"That's enough for today."

From Guest Contributor Rick Henry

'Tis My Life

A knock at the door jolts me off the sofa. I peek through the blinds then rush to the bedroom to throw on my favorite dress, hoping he’ll wait.

“I’m coming!”

I brush my hair and give myself a once-over in front of the mirror as I don my mask, careful to not snag my earrings. My phone dings. A text from him.

I dash to the door, but it’s too late. As he drives away, I feel sadness overtake me for a minute. Then I remember his purpose. Smiling, I look to the ground. My Amazon order has arrived.

From Guest Contributor Jennifer Lai

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

My Time

The smell of food wafted through the apartment. I groaned as I moved off the sofa. My old bones ached as I made my way to the small dining table. My wife smiled at something from behind me.

“It’s back isn’t it?” I asked her quietly.

She nodded and reached out her hand. I'd never seen what she had. Even so, she described it as a little girl, wearing a yellow sundress, and her eyes were always glossed over.

“It will be my time soon, Jacob. That’s what she had said.”

I just shook my head. I didn’t believe her.

From Guest Contributor Amber Brandau

Numb

“I’m so sick of pain, Gene. I wish I couldn’t feel at all.” With a shaky sniffle, Emily stroked the black fur of Gene’s chin, eliciting his tractor purr.

She may never fully recover, the doctors said. They called it transverse myelitis. Emily preferred less polite terms.

Gene‘s glowing eyes slid closed. Emily’s followed.

She awoke to a ringtone, heart pounding. Her thoughts reached for the phone inches away on the sofa.

Not a muscle twitched. No sensation, as though her nerves had died. The phone fell silent. Gene‘s stare blazed with yellow light.

Gene...

In her mind, Emily screamed.

From Guest Contributor Michelle Cook

Ned

Ned woke with a sore head. The boys would be bailing hay, might have a spare half-one of whiskey for him. Still wearing yesterday's overalls he yanked on wellie boots and moseyed along the pot-hole filled coast lane up to the farms. Fred and Slap-head saw him weaving in and out of the irritated cows. Sneakily Fred poured a laxative into his moonshine. Great craic!

After a few good slugs of the bottle Ned hobbled quickly through the gate back to his stone cottage. Aggie was furious. He didn't make it to the outhouse. Her mother's floral sofa was ruined.

From Guest Contributor Valkyrie Kerry Kelly

The Untimely Demise Of A Teenage Rebellion

Heather relaxed into the sofa. The best word to describe her sessions with Dr. Goldstein was therapeutic. She especially took pleasure in the way her stories shocked the old man.

Today, she was relating a particularly scandalous dream, one involving a milkman and a silk robe.

"I must interrupt, Heather. Isn't a milkman rather anachronistic for a teenager's dream?"

Heather tried piecing together an explanation that involved vintage reruns, but it eventually unraveled. Still, the umbrage her therapist took when he learned Heather had been sharing entries from her mother's diary all along made up for her deception's untimely demise.