By Elizabeth Morse

The river glimmered between leaves by the road where Diana and Ben were running. He lagged slightly behind her. The athletic shape of his legs suggested that he should have been much faster.

Running was a shared interest. Also, they both were sober in AA and worked in technology. That was enough for two dinners and now a four-mile run. 

Maybe, for once, she’d met the right guy. Some of her AA friends finally had in their forties and fifties. Maybe romance would work out for her, too. It was so easy to distrust, having been singed many times. Her parents drank. Her ex used cocaine. But her therapist had proclaimed that she was healing.

She’d left behind Cody, her son, who was a freshman in high school, and his dad, her ex-husband. It was the guys’ weekend together. 

“You’re maintaining a good pace, but you’re beating me,” Ben said and panted. 

The run was less effort that she’d thought. Her breathing was even. But she hadn’t expected to beat him. He ran four miles every day. She just jogged around a little park a couple of times a week. 

Sweat was dripping from his chin. As he caught up, his fingers pressed her upper arm. 

“I used to run cross-country in high school,” he offered. With his height and build, he looked the part. “You?”

“I wasn’t athletic or even a cheerleader.” She turned to look at his rectangular face, his disarranged gray curls. 

“What were you, then?” 

“I was a nerd. Great at math.” She pushed her glasses further up on her nose. “You must have dated cheerleaders.” She thought of the high-pitched laughter and pink pom-poms she’d avoided.

“One of them had beautiful red hair. She couldn’t get enough of me.”

He had a type. Diana reached a hand up to her own auburn ringlets. He might have liked her then, despite a lack of interest in sports.

“You’d never think it, an attractive woman like you,” he said, “But maybe you were overweight since you were a nerd.” 

“I was,” Diana admitted. 

“I was overweight, too, in my twenties and thirties.” 

“Really?” 

“My mother’s rhubarb pies were the best.”  

Thinking of her own favorite desserts, Diana realized that he was on the level. She remembered a photo of him when he was younger that showed a slight paunch. 

“It’s like alcohol,” she commiserated. “Exercise helped me lose the weight,” 

There was comfort in this. Some men wouldn’t have made themselves vulnerable. Still, she couldn’t help wondering if Ben was just telling her what she wanted to hear. 

The afternoon was inching toward twilight. Through a gap in the trees, the sky was like a filmy pink and blue scarf. 

They came to a bridge with an alternate road under it. A rusty chain stretched across uneven gravel. 

“This is the old path,” Ben explained. “The one I used to take when I was growing up here. If we go that way, we’ll add another mile.”

Diana nodded. Adding distance meant more of a workout.

They hopped over the chain. The road had not been maintained and it was dark under the bridge. Overgrown tree branches dangled above their heads. 

She thought of her son riding his bike with his father. What if Cody had a seizure? His epilepsy was controlled, but what if his dad forgot the medicine as he sometimes did? 

She pulled her phone out of the pocket of her sweatpants. No messages, at least not yet. 

Ben still ran behind. Was he just slowing down in middle age?  Did he have an illness he hadn’t told her about? No, he looked too vigorous. Still, there was something. She’d have to ask another time. 

He’d never been married, didn’t have any kids. That might be a red flag, but at least he didn’t have a recent ex. Hers was difficult enough. 

She grabbed her phone. There were no messages. 

“Maybe Cody had a seizure,” she said. 

“I’m sure it’s nothing,” Ben insisted, “Put your phone away.” 

For a moment, it lit up the gloom before she stopped to stick it back in her pocket.

Gasping, she tripped, her knee meeting the ground hard. She had to accept that a woman her age could easily break a bone. 

When she looked up, she saw that he was yards ahead of her. The path was shadowy, thick with low-hanging branches. Suddenly, she couldn’t see him. His footfalls were the only sign that he was still there. 

“Ben!” she shouted. Luckily, the pain was only from scraped skin. 

Alone, she sat in the dim light, calling his name. Her phone showed that she’d been waiting two minutes. 

Finally, his steps got louder. He was coming back. 

Dripping with sweat, he reached out an arm to help her up. “You’re okay?”

She nodded, brushing tiny bits of gravel from her bloodied knee. 

“We’ll just get that taken care of back at the house. You have my word.”

Reassured, she took his arm, and they began walking slowly, toward what she realized was a clearing. She could see car headlights in the distance. Holding onto him, she knew she just had to keep moving forward, though she wasn’t entirely sure what direction she was going. 

                                                                   *   *   *

Elizabeth Morse is a writer who lives in New York’s East Village. Her fiction has been published in literary magazines such as Blue Lake Review, The Raven’s Perch, and Scoundrel Time. Her full-length poetry collection “Unreasonable Weather” is forthcoming from Kelsay Books in 2025. She has her MFA from Brooklyn College. A job in information technology supports her writing.

By Daniel DiStasio

The Fairlane’s brakes squealed as it pulled to the curb. Held together by rust and stubbornness—built Ford tough—it seemed determined to outlive its inhabitants, Ruby and Stubbs, who shared the front seat.  The backseat carried their worldly possessions, blankets from Our Lady of Peace, plastic shopping bags filled with more plastic shopping bags, clothes, mostly soiled and torn, and two jugs of water.

Ruby hesitated, her hand on the door handle.

“More. They’ll bring more.”

“It’s just that….”

Stubbs rolled the stem of a crack pipe between his fingers.

“Just grab the stuff we’ll get out of here.”

Ruby didn’t like the idea. In fact, she hated it, but disagreeing with Stubbs was not in her dictionary.

The door opened with a creak. The street was dark except for the hundreds of votives illuminating the sidewalk. A blanket of flowers surrounded teddy bears, a unicorn, and–oh my god–a brand new pair of Nikes.  She stepped out and began filling bags. A basketball. A jewelry box with a ballerina that spun when you opened it. T-shirts.  A bracelet of wooden hearts.  There were photographs: a blonde girl in a cheerleading outfit; a nerdy-looking kid with clunky black glasses; a round-faced boy with big white teeth.  All smiles. Eyes shining.

“Hurry the fuck up, we ain’t shopping here.”

 She reached between the photos, careful not to burn her sleeves.  This was one of her good blouses. Bags filled, she stopped and plucked a rose from a bouquet and held it to her chest.

“Come on, I hear a car coming.”

A momentary freeze like a deer in the headlights, then she ran to the car, jumped in, and slid across the cracked leather seat. Stubbs sniffed at the bags.

“Let’s get out of here and sell that shit.”

The rose was crushed, its stem bent, its petals disheveled. She squeezed the stem to try and make it stand straight, but it toppled over like a drunk. She held the bloom to her nose and breathed in. Its scent had faded. The perfect heart shape–gone.

“Throw that piece of shit out of here.”  

The Rolling Stones blared on the radio, as she rolled down the window and tossed the flower into the night.  

*   *   *

Daniel DiStasio’s work has appeared in The Louisville Review, Summerset Review, Reed, Bodega, 45th Parallel and many others. His first novel “Facing the Furies” was published in 2012. He earned his MFA in fiction at Spalding University. He is currently working on a historical novel based on the 1897 Gold Rush in Alaska, and a collection of short stories focused on the magic influence of bears. His obsession has led him to trekking bears in Alaska, India, Greece, Peru, and numerous US states. When not working or writing, he cares for his Shetland Sheepdogs: Nikolai Gogol, and James Joyce.

Nonfiction by Wendy A. Warren

My childhood home is for sale. I frisk the house through the online window of technology, a voyeur. The real estate website reveals renovations made by the people who bought the place from my parents. They’re reselling it for more than twice the price for which Mom and Dad sold. The photos stir in me a dust-covered nostalgia for the place—and the ghost who lived there. I think of returning for a live look.

When I tell my parents the asking price, they are impressed and appalled, proudly scandalized in the frail way of the elderly. But the sale of the home has afforded them a stable, ghost-free late-retirement. 

I don’t ask my parents if they would buy back the house if they could; their memories are buried under a thin layer of dementia. I imagine they’re relived to be free of the house and its attendant ghost. They must have seen the little boy everywhere after he died. I only heard about him, never saw him. But he was there. Hearing about a ghost is different than seeing one; sometimes the competition you imagine is worse than the real version.

The house has been on the market for a week. It’s expected to sell soon. Would I buy it if I had the money? There’s a button on the website to schedule an in-person tour. The 1960s architecture and the spiders await demolition. It’s an old house, after all. This is my last chance to see my childhood home. Perhaps the real estate agent’s narrated tour would include the boy’s haunts; the places I kept living after he was dead.

“Here’s the breakfast nook,” the agent might say, gesturing to the space where I once ate oatmeal before catching the school bus, or did my homework—all the while listening to my parents wistfully talk of the ghost-boy. Maybe the agent would say, “Notice the view of the lush landscaping,” which is really the over-pruned white camellia my parents planted after he died. If he’s still there, that’s where I would find him.

Before they sold, Mom and Dad allowed the camellia to grow to towering proportions, the way their boy should have grown up. It was cut down before the house went on the market, the shrub a ghost of its former self. Just like my brother.

In wintertime, as an only-child, I collected the camellia’s white blossoms that fell in the snow, and counted them as miracles. I thought they were proof of the ghost that lived in our house, or in the impressions of the snow angels I made at the base of the memorial camellia. I would set the blossoms on my eyes and play dead along with my brother, wishing there were two of us. And, occasionally, wishing to trade places with him.

I take a last look at the real estate listing and decide not to visit my childhood home. If I went, I would nod and smile at the agent, and say, “It’s a lovely place, but I’m no longer looking for ghosts.” I close the browser and kick dust over the past.

                                                                  *   *   *

Wendy A. Warren writes fiction set in the Inland and Pacific Northwest. She grew-up on a small family farm in the barn-dotted foothills of Washington State. Her short fiction and essays have appeared in HerStry, Hare’s Paw Literary Journal, Birdland Journal, and elsewhere. Wendy is a member and student of numerous writing and historical organizations, including the Horror Writers Association, Women Writing The West, WA State Historical Society, PNWA, Hugo House, and Grub Street. She lives in Seattle, WA. Learn more at WendyAWarren.com.

By Margo Griffin

The perfect mother bakes cookies in her image, soft and velvety outside with a slightly crispy edge and hardened inside. She signs up for an ideal number of committees, her hands stirring many pots, whispering in ears of other mothers her concerns about your imperfect life. She senses your openness and interest so she keeps her distance, avoiding imperfections like the clothes you wear and those you don’t, like the ten-year-old car you drive and the one you’ll never have. She has the ideal husband, former college quarterback, handsome and brilliant, holds high expectations, perhaps a perfectionist, and earns triple digits at a stressful but highly sought-after firm, all while managing to coach their perfect son’s undefeated football team. Her flawless children make the honor roll; they’re captains of their teams and presidents of their clubs and have more friends than they can count so they never accept your kids’ invitations over to the house for dinner, to shoot hoops or hang out. She lives in a perfectly situated house surrounded by the ultimate species of flowers for the climate, on a beautiful, tree-lined street surrounded by the best possible neighbors who are perfectly willing to walk her dog or bring in the mail when she calls them out of the blue saying she and her children will be gone for another unanticipated visit with her sister for a week or more. She exits her high-performance vehicle several spots away from your car, and you let her walk a few feet ahead of you, watching her elegantly move across the lot, poised in her Italian leather heels, carrying her rare designer bag in her exquisitely manicured hand as she enters the clinic and you follow behind. You look at her life and wish you could stop biting your nails, put your clumsy, chubby, but well-meaning husband on a diet, and afford math tutors and the clear kind of braces for your imperfect kids. You wish you could swap your whole life for hers until you notice the three perfectly round, purple, plum-sized bruises on her exceptionally toned arm when she slides off her superbly tailored coat.

                                                                 *   *   *

Margo has worked in public education for over thirty years and is the mother of two daughters and the best rescue dog ever, Harley. Her work has appeared in Bending Genres, Maudlin House, Dillydoun Review, MER, HAD, and Roi Fainéant Press. You can find her on Twitter @67MGriffin

By Phebe Jewell

The nurses tell Sally she’ll go home once she can count all the ceiling tiles in the room. Each morning Sally starts the count, but as soon as she makes it past the first row, she forgets the number and has to start again, especially the days her fever climbs to 104. Her roommate Alice tells her it’s impossible, but Sally keeps on. Alice has cross eyes, so no wonder she’s stopped trying. 

Alice and the TV mounted on the wall are the best part of the hospital. The TV is tilted at an angle so even Alice can follow what’s on the screen. Their favorite part of Laugh-In is when the girl in the miniskirt announces “Sock-It-To-Me Time.” What’ll be tonight? Water from a bucket? A trap door opening beneath her? 

Every day Sally is wheeled into a different room with a machine. The machines are never the same. Sometimes she is placed inside the machine. Sometimes she is laid on top. Sally lets her body fit each machine. 

Tomorrow Alice will have surgery to correct her cross eyes. There’s almost always at least three people sitting by Alice’s bed, joking, holding her hands, their fingers sticky from the pizza and fried chicken they’ve smuggled in. Alice tells Sally that cross eyes run in her family, and now “It’s my turn,” giggling as if she’s going to Disneyland for the first time. Sally’s parents whisper with the doctors at the door, her mother trying not to look in Sally’s direction. 

One morning Sally is wheeled into a new room, crowded with nurses and doctors she’s never seen before. Beeps and bright lights and words she doesn’t understand. She stares up at the ceiling tiles as a nurse rubs her arm, tells her to count back from one hundred. Surrendering to 

the darkness, Sally hears Alice’s voice, a mocking “Sock it to me,” sure she’ll wake to Alice’s smile, both eyes steady as they hold her gaze. 

*   *   *

Phebe Jewell’s work appears in numerous journals, most recently Molotov Cocktail, Reckon Review, The Disappointed Housewife, JAKE, Does It Have Pockets?, and elsewhere. A teacher at Seattle Central College, she also volunteers for the Freedom Education Project Puget Sound, a nonprofit providing college courses for incarcerated women, trans-identified and gender nonconforming people in Washington State. Read her at https://phebejewellwrites.com. 

By Marina Richards

She doesn’t care that he has one and a half lungs. She knows she’ll hate him when she sees him. What he didn’t do for her. How he wasn’t there.

She knows she hears the rattling hiss of his voice. Just like through the cell phone static when she should have hung up.

She knows that’s him in the airport lounge, swathed in plumes of smoke from his expensive American cigarette. A curdled, faded man. Tall like her, their edges matching like two forensic chalk outlines.

She wishes she could turn and run, vanish with the smoke. Wishes he wouldn’t hug her. Doesn’t want him to be kind to her while burning poison down his throat.

Doesn’t want anything she can feel deeper than the root of a fingernail.

She tries not to listen to the cavern of his broken chest, beneath his scars where the surgeons cut away the diseased tissue.

For his heart beat.

She fights the urge to put him back together. Paste the torn black and white photos into the dusty picture albums hidden under her mother’s bed. 

Weave silk threads around his heart. Knot the wounds. Connect the veins so his blood flows in rhythm with hers. 

They enter a church and he dips his hand into the water. Sweeps her brow, just like when he left her here swaddled in her cotton gown.

Before she was taken across the sea to another land.

His face blooms with pride. 

She doesn’t care. She’s not staying long at his villa on the sand where the ocean plays songs and they catch fish from his stone patio. Grow flowers. Play guitar.

And she’s not impressed when he paints her name on his boat. Takes her sailing, the wind flicking his silver hair. Summer’s over. She’s going home.

When he voyages across the water, sail cloth rippling under stormy seas, and never returns, she doesn’t cry. Doesn’t search for him. Doesn’t call for rescue.

She grows flowers. Teaches guitar. Fishes. Sails her own boat.

Becomes an old woman. Lighting his smokes, inhaling poison into the crevices of her pink lungs.

Because she knows it’s the only way she’ll ever see her father again.

                                                                *   *   *

Marina Richards has been published in Fictive Dream, The Hooghly Review, Verdant Journal, Waccamaw Journal, Flash Fiction Magazine, Mystery Tribune, The Hawaii Pacific Review, Up The Staircase, and more. She has won writing awards and was shortlisted in several literary contests. She can be found on​ Twitter/X @marinarichards​ Facebook @marina.richards.79 and Instagram @marinawrite

By Marcelo Medone

Roberto wakes up in the middle of the night, upset and sweaty. It is the same nightmare as always, although the images are fading quickly: on a starry summer night, he is naked in the water, in the middle of the calm lake in which a slight breeze produces small waves that gently rock the surface. Suddenly, he hears desperate screams coming from everywhere. The screams echo above and below the surface of the water, calling out to him. He recognizes the familiar voice of Isabella, which gradually diminishes until it blends with the gentle sound of the waves. She is drowning, again.

Roberto swims feverishly in the warm water, stroke after stroke, lifting his head from time to time to locate where he thinks she is. With less than ten meters to go, he watches her sink. The last thing he sees is her long blonde hair disappearing like the water down a drain.

Anguished, he takes a deep breath and dives, but the water is pitch black. He stretches his hands in every direction looking for his beloved, but all he achieves is that for just a second her long hair slips between his fingers to continue traveling towards the deep abyss. This is where he wakes up.

He remembers last summer together, a year ago. The diagnosis of lung cancer had been devastating. Despite chemotherapy, Isabella’s condition was deteriorating rapidly. She began to feel short of breath, first to make some effort, then to the simplest and everyday tasks.

The call for help when she was drowning in the lake was equal to the drowning that Isabella suffered every day and every night. The difference was that she had lost all her hair for months and was wearing a surgical cap with multicolored flowers.

Before being so bad, at the beginning of therapy, they would go for a walk on the beach. They went out every night, hand in hand, to gaze at the stars. Clear, moonless nights were the best. Isabella knew all the constellations, pointed out and named the most notable stars. Roberto had never been too interested in astronomical questions, but he listened and nodded, madly in love.

Isabella proclaimed that she had a cosmic connection to Deneb, the brightest star in the constellation Lyra, that each of us has a destiny beyond earthly finitude and that the stars teach us to be humble.

“I have little time left in this world,” Isabella said, looking at Deneb.

“Don’t talk nonsense! You are going to come out of this as you have come out of so many other difficulties before. And I will accompany you all the way.”

“The doctor …”

“Doctors are always pessimistic. It is part of their protocol.”

The oncologist had been crude with his diagnosis: “It is the worst type of carcinoma. The deterioration is going to be fast. We will do our best, of course, but the statistics are tough.”

This time, the statistics did not fail. Within three months, Isabella started needing oxygen with a nasal cannula. Therefore, she went out with a small oxygen tube in her backpack. Roberto encouraged her to walk a little but not to exhaust herself, because she was getting more and more tired.

Nevertheless, she was stubborn.

“I want to climb these dunes and get to the water’s edge as much as possible. I don’t want to surrender so fast.”

After the first few weeks, Roberto began carrying the oxygen tube himself. Then they had to give up walks on the beach.

Inexorably, her need for oxygen increased. From the cannula, she went to a special mask. Roberto had to move the bedroom from upstairs to the living room. Instead of a double bed, he placed two single beds next to each other facing the beach through the large picture window. On both sides of the bed, Roberto carefully arranged bouquets of fresh lavender to lift her spirits.

Isabella could no longer get out of bed. However, she could watch the stars from her bed and repeat her star recognition ritual. Invariably, she would find Deneb and keep looking at it.

“There I am, brilliant, eternal, immortal,” she would tell Roberto.

Moreover, when Isabella was not so tired, they kissed tenderly and made love, with the slow times of those who have no hurry because they have already achieved eternity.

Roberto still has not put the upstairs bedroom back together. He keeps the two single beds facing the picture window, her bed neatly tended with its lavender-scented sheets.

Every night, Roberto lies in front of the large window, holds the surgical cap close to his heart, and gazes at the stars. He looks for the constellation Lyra and then the star Deneb. He stares at it for an eternity, spellbound, until he falls asleep.

He knows that he will surely have an unpleasant nightmare, in which he will confront uselessly with the ghost of Isabella. He is ready to pay that price for her living memory.

                                                                  *   *   *

Marcelo Medone (1961, Buenos Aires, Argentina) is a fiction writer, poet, essayist, playwright and screenwriter. His works have received numerous awards and have been published more than 500 times in multiple languages in more than 50 countries, including over 200 publications in the US. His first book, Nada Menos Que Juan (Nothing Less than John), an illustrated story of the fantastic genre, won an international award and was published in 2010 in Spanish and Portuguese. He was awarded the First Prize in the 2021 international contest by the American Academy of the Spanish Language with his short story La súbita impuntualidad del hombre del saco a rayas llamado Waldemar (The Sudden Unpunctuality of the Man in the Striped Jacket Named Waldemar). His flash fiction story Last Train to Nowhere Town was nominated for the 2021 Pushcart Prize. He is the author of Los que están en el aire (Those Who Are in the Air), an anthology of flash fiction and short stories (Editorial Rosalba, Asunción, Paraguay, 2023).

He has dual citizenship, Argentine and Uruguayan. He currently lives in Montevideo, Uruguay.

Facebook: Marcelo Medone / Instagram: @marcelomedone

By Katelyn Alcott

I met Her the summer I turned ten. I was staying at my Aunt Tara’s apartment complex, an island of concrete in the woods of Western Massachusetts.  My parents had ditched me for the month of July. They were taking the month to reconnect. They’d promised that Tara’s complex had a swimming pool, but they had dropped me off even after we saw that the pool was drained “Due to Drought”. So the pool was just a concrete ditch in the ground next to tennis courts that bubbled in the heat. 

Aunt Tara wasn’t even around that hot and windless month. Tara worked full time as a receptionist. Each day I’d get three dollars and instructions not to leave the complex. All morning I’d sit next to the old air conditioner, watching the satellite TV. When the 12 o’clock news came on, I’d walk across the dead grass lawns to the general store in the management building. I’d buy an orange creamsicle from the case. Then I’d melt on the tennis courts, sweat pooling through my camisole, waiting for a breeze that never came.  

It was during one of those endless and still days that I first saw Her. She was older than I was, and had a red bike and a leather bracelet. She had a gap between Her teeth, and was always sticking Her tongue through it. She’d ride by with a group of four boys who followed Her around like ducklings. She’d look around, never seeing me, with Her black-brown eyes. I’d watch Her, my creamsicle dripping onto my legs, as She pulled open the window of the ice cream case.The air would ripple off the tennis courts, hot and stagnant, and I’d watch Her sit down, hanging Her feet over the edge of the pool, while the boys whistled at passing cars. 

I never talked to Her. Weeks passed in this fashion. Watching the boys follow Her, watching the ice cream melt down Her hands, feeling my creamsicle sticky in my lap. The wind did not come, but every day I would wait for Her. And everyday, She came.

Aunt Tara said I was getting too much sun. My face was burnt. I should stick to the treeline when I was outside. But I couldn’t watch Her from the trees. I would have felt wrong to watch Her in any light other than the shimmering heat of the tennis court. 

The afternoon when the heat finally broke, I was waiting for Her as I always did, on the scalding tennis courts. I stood there as the temperature dropped, the rain soaking through my clothes. I waited. I watched. She didn’t come.  

I walked back to my aunt’s building, rain on my back, my creamsicle tossed. Then a flash of red, a splash of mud. I saw Her. The Girl and Her four boys, racing their bikes through the quickly forming puddles, mud splattering up the backs of their legs.

I ran,  chasing the wild sight of Her. The rising wind split me open. The heat of the summer broke around me in warm pools. I followed Her down the road, out of the apartment complex, into the woods beyond. 

I watched as the five of them thrust their bikes to the side of the path. I watched as She disappeared into the underbrush. I crawled after Her. Through the bushes, I saw a pond trembling beneath the raindrops. I watched as the boys scattered their clothes on the ground in front of me. I turned away as they dove naked into the pond. Where was She? I looked around. Breaking the surface of the water, four geese rose from the depths where the boys had vanished. One let out a great honk. 

I heard a laugh, and looked up. She stood in front of me, wearing only Her oversized t-shirt. Her chin slightly upturned in that confident way She had. She looked down at me and grinned, Her tongue poking through Her white teeth. She held out Her hand, soft as the summer rain, and pulled me to my feet. Then She flung off the black t-shirt and dove, headlong, into the pond. 

Something within me shifted then, as the black t-shirt piled in front of me and the soft curve of Her hips slipped below the surface of the water. I felt the whole of my life stretch out before me.I stepped into the pond. Walked forward, until I could feel the water rippling over my knees. The little hairs that I hadn’t yet learned to shave drifted up from my legs. The rain beaded on my face, and I wiped my eyes, clearing them, looking for Her in the water. Long moments passed. Still She didn’t come back to the surface. The four geese floated on the water where the boys had been. 

Then I felt Her beside me. I rose from the water.  Her deep brown eyes watched me from the slender face of a Goose. Her long dark hair exchanged for feathers. Transformed, She– the Goose– swam towards me. I almost pulled away. Or perhaps I did. 

She stopped; dipped Her neck; watched me. Watched as if She truly knew me. Or so it felt then. Like I was seen for the first time, through the dark pearls of Her eyes. 

And then Her wings shot out from either side, nearly as big as I was tall then. She lifted Her white belly over the surface of the water. With two great strokes of Her wings, She rose into the air above me. I could have reached out, and touched the soft plumes of Her chest as She flew from the pond. The other four followed. With a great rush of wings and water, they were off, forming a V behind Her. I swear, for a moment, I felt the absence of raindrops where they flew, Her great wings sheltering me. 

Then She was gone. 

*   *   *

Katelyn Alcott (she/her) is a fantasy and science fiction writer from Massachusetts. Katelyn is an ex-English Teacher and is currently studying for her MFA in Creative Writing at the Writer’s Foundry St. Joseph’s University in Brooklyn, where she lives with her wife and her cat.

By Nadja Maril

Why She Loves the Water

No one knows her legs refuse to kick. In the ocean she is floating. She rides the waves on her back, then flips on her belly to move her arms with powerful strokes. Her secret is safe. She is just another swimmer on a hot summer’s day.

Nondisclosure

Walter was a liar and a cheat. He overcharged them and never finished his work, but they can tell no one. Their lawyer negotiated a partial refund but, they must keep their experience a secret. The case is sealed. Walter is searching for his next victim.

Falling Through the Cracks

He doesn’t know how to read, but he’s good at pretending. His wife is happy to keep his secret.

She opens the mail and teaches him where to put his signature. He can scribble an “S” and an “X” that almost look like the signature of his children’s teacher on the bottom of their report cards. Maybe one day, he’ll have the time to go to school.

*   *   *

Nadja Maril’s writing appears in publications that include The Lumiere Review, Lunch Ticket, Spry Literary Journal, and The Sunlight Press. Nadja earned an MFA in Creative Writing from the Stonecoast Program at the University of Southern Maine and is a Contributing Editor to Old Scratch Press. She lives in Annapolis, Maryland. Her chapbook, Recipes From My Garden; Herb and Memoir Short Prose and Poetry, is scheduled for publication release in October. Follow her at Nadjamaril.com

By Lyn Fraser

My longtime haircutter Laguna, who’s a natural healer, said that I was having a soul-sink and needed some sweet basil.  This was after I’d tried a bereavement support group but was summarily dismissed because the leader said the group was for grieving the loss of a human, not a 15-year-old black Lab named Milagro, even though the brochure claimed the group offered support for adults grieving any loss of a loved one.

Wanting to know more about Laguna’s approach to healing, I stopped by the university library and high up on the top floor of the stacks, I found a book with all kinds of suggestions like shawl alignments, spiritual cleansings, and laugh therapy, as well as the preparation of herbal remedies.  I was so captivated that I lost track of the time, and when I looked up, the library had closed for the day, apparently no one having come to check this distant area of the stacks.  

Well past my dinner time, I decided to look for something to eat before calling campus security and located the employee kitchen, where I found in the refrigerator some thoughtful employee’s  microwavable organic ready-to-eat dinner of short penne with tomato and basil sauce, which I savored while reflecting on what I’d read about the healing of the soul.  Ever conscientious, I looked forward to my homework which promised to involve wailing, a raw egg, feathers, and flute music.  

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Lyn Fraser’s publications include short fiction in the American Literary Review and the Mid-American Review. She has an MFA from Bennington College and teaches in the New Dimensions Lifelong Learning Institute at Colorado Mesa University.  An avid walker, Lyn lives in western Colorado with her partner and two cats, Ginger and Pickles.