As If

“Darling,” Burt said from the bedroom doorway to Anita, his wife of many decades. “You may get another email.”

“Oh?” Anita eyed him above her crossword puzzle.

“Random con artist,” Burt continued. “Claims about online activity. Sexual and whatnot. The usual.”

“Uh-huh,” Anita said.

“Totally fictitious, of course.” Burt waved a dismissive hand.

Anita blinked, laughed, and returned to her crossword. “As if you even have such thoughts these days, sweetheart!”

Burt laughed too. Then he returned to his private study where he transferred another cryptocurrency payment to the anonymous account, hoping this would resolve the matter at long last.From Guest Contributor John Sheirer

John lives in Western Massachusetts and is in his 30th year of teaching at Asnuntuck Community College in Northern Connecticut where he edits Freshwater Literary Journal (submission welcome). His work has appeared recently in Five Minutes, Wilderness House Literary Review, Meat for Tea, Poppy Road Review, Synkroniciti, Otherwise Engaged, 10 By 10 Flash Fiction, The Journal of Radical Wonder, Scribes*MICRO*Fiction, and Goldenrod Review, among others. His latest book is Stumbling Through Adulthood: Linked Stories. Forthcoming in fall 2023 is For Now: One Hundred 100-Word Stories. Find him at JohnSheirer.com.

Multiverse Question?

Wandering the multiverse. I find the concept of change the bi-word of everything. One day, the illusion spells the reality of a word one way. The next day, the reality spells it another. The definition of wisdom is to come to some understanding? Probably why I still have not mastered how to play the cord of C on a guitar.

If everything changes from one reality to the next. What is the purpose of study? Defining a reality for when the next moment you could be elsewhere seems the definition of absurdity. To waste time trying to understand. Try to succeed.

From Guest Contributor Clinton Siegle

The Benefit Of Integrity

He sat alone at lunch. The rest of the section gathered near the tea urn to create a susurration of disapproval, which reached for some sort of crescendo which might adequately protest his being promoted without due process.

The manager emerged from her office, paused at the door – interrupting her daily early escape – to absorb, glancing occasionally in his direction. Then she approached – a study in authority.

“Sean–”

A sudden gust whipped the vertical blinds inward, toppling a desk tidy perched atop an in-tray filled with unexamined client files. The clatter distracted.

“We’re public servants. They’re entitled. I told them.”

From Guest Contributor Perry McDaid

On Behalf Of A Boy

Dear Mr. Pankhurst:

As you know, my adopted son John Wesley is only the second American to have netted a clownfish with a single-flue toggle iron harpoon. As a result he has been offered a scholarship to the New Bedford Academy of Utter Disregard for Marine Life (formerly the Herman Melville Institute for Misplaced Revenge). To compliment his coursework, I'd like to inquire about an internship at the Pankhurst Center for the Study of Severe Saltwater Psychosis and Alarming Aquatic Aberrations. I believe you'll find John to be handsome, alert, and fond of ribbons.

Awaiting your response.

Elliot C. Balderdash

From Guest Contributor Amiel Rossin

What Should Have Been

She was my first kiss at seven, she had a crush on me. She moved away a year later and was forgotten until high school when she found me on social media. I was busy, having parties and ignored her texts. In university, she found me again, through a friend, but I had no time, as I needed to study. Years later, by fortune, we bumped on the street. We talked for a few minutes, but that was all. Once more we met, this time at a funeral. Here I realized my folly, as I said goodbye to my soulmate.

From Guest Contributor Jordan Altman