Normal Life

The hairdresser with a comb in between her teeth, mumbled, “Hey, Maxie, be with you in a few minutes.”

The hum of the blow dryer and the loud chatter filled the room with an abundance of life. Women flipped through magazines while waiting, and the owner turned on the television to the game show channel.

I went over to the coffee machine and made myself a cup. Steam rose and I sniffed the heat while sipping the hot liquid that warmed my insides.

I hadn’t been out in months with my treatments, and it felt great being around normalcy again.

From Guest Contributor Lisa M. Scuderi-Burkimsher

Mountain

Eons ago I was born in a cauldron of lava and steam. When I finally cooled off, tectonic plates shifted, lifting me upward thousands of feet. The ages passed and I was molded by the rain, wind, and cold. Eventually I was dressed in vegetation and scarred by rivers. My face has developed wrinkles and I have shrunk. Through the geological ages I have looked down upon a parade of flora, sea creatures, and mammals.

Modern man sends in his bulldozers, cuts down my trees, and mines my ores. Despite this, I will be here long after they have gone.

From Guest Contributor Janice Siderius

Working Theory

He has a fear of hot Danish. When the bakery shop opens its accusing awning in the morning, he retreats to avoid notice by the shop’s pastries. Open-air breakfast shops infuriate him. In his infrequent sleep, he is haunted by the idea of smothering icing, steam welling into a wall of baker’s avenging anger. The syrup run-off loitering in the pan. He wakes with his cheeks and tongue burning, the rift of his nose aflame, a gooey lump of heat assaulting his eyes from the backside. He tells himself: they will cool. When they do, he will conquer them all.

From Guest Contributor Ken Poyner

Wanderlust

The pulse of the city is becoming my own. I woke up with a thrumming headache this morning. The night and the dawn are a patchwork in my aching head. When I walk down the street, steam ripples off the pavement, as intangible as my disintegrating memories. How is my stranger? I wonder. The one from last night’s club. Gone now. He’s returned back to his own life after our brief collision: my drunken frame hung off his neck. His glassy brown gaze still holds me. Power lines cross my heart. My eyes swim in the summer sweat and rain.

From Guest Contributor Siri Harrison

You Are The Method

I met the man with the train face at a strawberry picking. Where you buy the basket, scatter into the field, pick as many as you like or as will fit. He moved in a straight line, boring ever farther ahead, picking with one hand, then the other, then engineering the basket forward along the ground. When I was beside him, I could feel his breath like steam; his eyes seemed to let out more light than they took in. Full basket, he passed it to his wife. Her face was a station. She handed him a new, empty basket.

From Guest Contributor Ken Poyner

Ophelia Takes A Bath

Ophelia under the water; kneecap mountains poking out dwarf the dipping hills of her breasts. The ragged, brown seaweed strands of her hair move gently as her hot kettle sighs ring around the steam-shrouded bathroom.

She finds brash or delicate things expose her madness—the rough lyrics of a Pogues’ song or the fragrance of a flower bomb. Silver chains on her thighs, bright relics of dejection, shackle her to the past but aren't enough to save her. So she piles his words as pebbles on her heart and in this way she doesn't float away—at least not today.

From Guest Contributor Adele Evershed

Rebellion

The pale-eyed, reed-thin child had asked a question, timidly, adding a please.

"No, you can't," said a stern voice.

“But why?” inquired the child. Her feeble voice squeaked.

“You needn’t know why. When I said no, it means no,” replied the gruff tones of the elder.

Silence settled down as uncomfortably as the calm before an impending storm. Resentment rose like gushing steam from a kettle and condensed as tears in those little eyes, now shining with indignation.

A rebel was born.

She clenched the stone paperweight tightly in her fist.

The elder, blissfully ignorant, failed to imagine the aftermath.

From Guest Contributor Sayantika Mandal

An avid reader and an aspiring writer, Sayantika Mandal graduated with honors in English from Presidency College, Kolkata and pursued a post-graduate diploma in English Journalism. After a two-year stint as a copy editor in the national daily Hindustan Times, she left to pursue her dream of being a full-time author.

Founding Father

The first documented invasion of Earth occurred prior to the Revolutionary War in the mid-eighteenth century. The aliens had achieved interstellar flight through a complicated series of hydraulics powered by steam. They were an industrious species but their eagerness to rule Earth was not matched by their technology.

The invasion began in less populated parts of North America and mainly affected the natives. The first major settlement they entered was Adamsville, which was completely burned to the ground.

The new world might have been destroyed then and there had it not been for Benjamin Franklin and his invention of electricity.