Traitor

The streets were eerily quiet, and I knew Nazis were lurking around. I stood in the woods and listened to the animals’ noises until I heard footsteps. It was the contact. He said the code word and I handed him the papers. He was gone as quickly as he came.

I was about to make my way back to the resistance when I heard another set of footsteps. I braced myself and reached for my weapon, but it was gone. Traitorous monster, I thought. He swiped my knife.

A Nazi appeared pointing a barrel of a gun to my head.

From Guest Contributor Lisa M. Scuderi-Burkimsher

Alive

Guns roared and bullets skyrocketed past my head. I ducked and took deep breaths. The man next to me bled out. There wasn’t anything I could do.

“Retreat,” the lieutenant yelled.

Retreat where, I wondered? I reloaded my weapon and aimed at anything coming toward me.

It was chaotic. Men screaming, bodies strewn everywhere. If I got out alive it would be a miracle.

Something hit me from behind. I looked and my stomach bled deep red. I crumpled to the ground, then everything went black.

When I awakened, I was on a stretcher in a helicopter.

I made it.

From Guest Contributor Lisa M. Scuderi-Burkimsher

Officer Down

The bullet tore through flesh and bone. The arm fell limp, and Officer Brady drew his weapon with his non-shooting hand. Their assailant continued to fire from outside the passenger window of the cruiser as his partner slumped unconscious and bleeding in the front seat. Her baby was born in spring. She returned to duty last week.

Placing his front sight on center mass, Brady squeezed the trigger and watched the attacker drop to the pavement. After screaming “officer down” into the microphone, he smashed his foot down on the accelerator, racing the mother of his child to New York-Presbyterian.

From Guest Contributor B.G. Smith

B.G. Smith enjoys writing flash fiction and drinking Kentucky straight bourbon, usually at the same time. B.G. is a married father of four boys and a lifelong fan of Philadelphia professional sports teams, which explains the affinity for bourbon. His stories have appeared in Pocket Fiction, Microfiction Monday Magazine, The Drabble, and Scribes*MICRO*Fiction.

Just Another Day

Officer Barrett aimed and fired his gun, hitting the man in the shoulder. The criminal dropped his weapon and screeched in pain.

“On your knees, hands behind your head,” Barrett said, cuffing the man’s hands.

“Take it easy, I have a bullet in my shoulder,” he wriggled as Barrett pushed him to his feet.

“Better than a bullet in your head, like you did to that poor woman’s husband. You’re going away for a very long time. This was your last house robbery.

Barrett put him in the squad car and slammed the door.

Just another day on the job.

From Guest Contributor Lisa M. Scuderi-Burkimsher

The Warrior's Path

The warrior sharpened his sword every day by slicing individual strands of grass. He started in the front of his house and worked his way, patch by patch, blade by blade, towards the back. When he finished the last corner, the grass in front had grown long again. Without pausing, he would get to his feet and return to the starting point, ready to start over.

In this way, his weapon remained sharp, always ready to draw blood. And in this way, time had nothing with which to compare itself to and became lost.

Such is the path to immortality.

There Hangs The Sword

There hangs the sword, the one handed down from father, to son, to me, the symbol of my family, the defender of our home, the weapon that has slain hundreds, that fought for our homeland in the long war, and struck fear into our enemies, the blade that was retired but never allowed to dull, that was laid to rest but never sheathed, that was put on display as a reminder to all future interlopers this house will forever be vigilant, there is the sword even now, still hanging there, as I slowly bleed out on the floor below it.

General Gelid

If Milton had a weakness, it was the cold. Anything below room temperature would make him start to shiver uncontrollably and if it got down to freezing, he'd begin vomiting.

Milton knew his comic books though. Every hero had a fatal flaw, his own personal kryptonite, so to speak. Milton's susceptibility to the cold would be his. Obviously, his mortal enemy, his arch-nemesis, would be a villain who used cold as a weapon. Maybe his name would be General Gelid or something like that.

Sadly for Milton, while he might have a weakness, he didn't have any discernible super powers.

Hyena

The boy, prescient and wise, child of a dove, knew this day was coming, when the neighborhood man would tear into his school and wave his weapon and laugh like a hyena and cut down everything that stood in his path. The man yearned to be young but lived encaged in the zoo of lost innocence, and given arms and a rare safari he had to take lives, lives that betrayed his by existing where he could no longer be. So the boy absented himself on the dreaded day, warned the principal, who wouldn't listen, watched the news, and cried.

From Guest Contributor, Curt Klinghoffer

There Lies The Gun

There lies the gun.

After years of gathering information, months of undercover work, weeks of planning tonight's sting, and hours of waiting for the motorcade to arrive, the situation has unravelled.

There lies the gun.

The gun is the only weapon within easy reach. They both know it. As soon as one of them makes a move, they'll both lunge for it, and then one of them will be shot.

There lies the gun.

A flinch, and they are fighting. Neither was quick enough.

There lies the gun.

By now the President is most likely dead.

There lies the gun.

Maximum Adrenalin

Jordan Acker feared nothing.

He attacked danger with his shirt off. He used any tool at hand as a weapon, whether a mop or a bottle of mustard, and his kung fu skills sent would-be criminals running and impressed every club bouncer and traffic cop he encountered. His heart beat pounded in his chest more loudly than his fists bounced off the walls. When he drove, people dove out of his way lest they be heedlessly run down. He was the latest breed of action star.

At least that's what he felt like while on one of his cocaine binges.