Preparing For Landing

Do we have to visit them?” the eight-year-old asked. “Grandma is weird and...”

“Grandpa is mean,” added her older brother.

Elsa observed the linear perfection of farmland below, largely ignoring her children.

At their age, she rode a tractor alongside her grandfather. They made rows into which other tractors dropped seed potatoes and covered them with soil.

By summer, when Elsa returned from the city, those fields were lush green having absorbed spring rainfalls.

As the plane prepared for landing, she knew her children would experience a different summer vacation.

The farm was no longer a property her family owned.From Guest Contributor Krystyna Fedosejevs

Krystyna writes poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction regardless of the season, although she prefers spring.

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

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

Displacement

Love at first sight, different people from different cultures.

Driving my Pajero along the rugged coastline of Mayo. A fortnight I had lived in Ireland. Banished for my own safety; a key witness in court against something dark, dangerous. Displaced from my family for doing what was right, exiled into the night. The previous eve I lost myself in similar lanes, crying.

In daylight the shadows dispersed. He was in his tractor, he belonged, descendant of families forever etched in the Irish soil. Appointed by chance as my gardener, meeting by fate. I never once doubted. Three years married. Aliens.

From Guest Contributor Kerry Valkyrie Kelly

Tepid

6:17 am. Chilly out. Her teeth, against the pink roses on the gold-leafed rim of her chipped tea cup with matching saucer cradling renegade drops of Lipton's--headquarters in Hoboken--clink and chatter. Behind her, tractor wheels first crunch and smash the little stick fence, cracking like femurs, then pummel the daisies, until finally the front door splinters apart. Empty Campbell cans and Hellman’s jars, lost tin and remnant timber crash the family photo, not hers, from a Sears’ catalog, but nonetheless... Miss Dallyworth takes the last sip, while the gentrification continues on, at her new address: the curb.

From Guest Contributor, Jennnifer Sarah Cooper