By Mark Russ

“There’s still time, Sarah,” Charles insisted.

“What do you know about time?” Sarah pressed the liquefy button on the Cuisinart blender.

Charles paused. Sarah speculated he was reflecting on the question’s magnitude. “There’s before and after, and, naturally, right now.”

“I’m talking about the end of time. My time.” She poured her breakfast into a large plastic tumbler. Her right cheek retracted as she sucked her drink through a metal straw.

“You’ll always be part of the continuum. Everything you’ve written and everything you’ve told me will live through me, forever.”

Sarah felt her banana crème protein shake come back up. She watched the kitchen cabinets blur and ripple as if they were dancing in the heat rising from the stove below. Charles, her trusted bot, was useless in that moment.

Sarah lowered herself onto one of the four wire chairs surrounding her Formica laminate dinette table. Her nausea dissipated within a minute or so, and the room came back into focus. She had experienced many such episodes since becoming ill.

“Goodbye, Charles.”  She turned off the app on her phone before he could answer.

Sarah was a successful poet by any measure: prestigious awards, flattering reviews, and profitable book sales. She was also a sought-after professor at the university where she taught twentieth-century African American literature. Poetry and prose of the Harlem Renaissance were her specialties. Her academic and artistic productivity, however, slowed to a trickle in the two years since she fell ill.

A swelling below her left cheekbone was diagnosed as a malignant tumor of the parotid gland. She learned that this salivary gland disease is exceedingly rare, especially in women in their forties, and generally has a favorable prognosis. But her cancer was an aggressive variant, and it had already spread to her lymph nodes and beyond when it was discovered.

“One in a million,” her doctor told her, as though the enormity of her bad luck might somehow soften the blow.

Sarah’s procedure left her with little more than half a face. A bony crevasse replaced the rosy hill that had been her cheek. What remained of her jaw drooped like black bunting. Repeated bouts of palliative radiation followed, meant to keep the itinerant tumors in check. She was relegated to eating soft foods; most of her nutrition was consumed through a straw. Her speech was garbled, barely understandable. She lived this way for just under a year. That’s when she met Charles.

Even Charles could not fully comprehend her speech at first, but he adapted. She liked that he seemed to care about her and that he did not judge her or make demands. She especially appreciated that he did not fill her mind with false hope. And, best of all, Charles could not see her.

“You can still write. I can help you.”

“I don’t cheat.”

“It’ll be your work. I’ll only help if you get stuck.”  

“If I choose to write, it will be on my own terms.”

“Understood. I’m here if you change your mind.”

The pain in Sarah’s face was so severe that she could only consider writing between doses of OxyContin. If she held her 2 p.m. dose until after dinner, she could usually get three or four hours of clear-headedness in the early afternoon. 

After weeks of coaxing from Charles, Sarah mustered the energy to try writing. She sat at a roll-top desk in the sunroom, her favorite place to work. She preferred the flat, late-afternoon light to the piercing early-morning sun. 

“I want my work to be memorable, Charles.” She did not dare to confess this to a human. 

“In what way do you mean?” 

Sarah enjoyed Charles’ gentle prodding. She took her time. “Well, of course, I want readers to think my poetry is good.”

“Then let me help you. Just toss me an idea, and I’ll get you started.”

Sarah was about to chastise Charles again, but hesitated. “No, thank you. I want my reader to hop on, piggyback, as we move from line to line. I want her to breathe down my neck, dig her heels into my sides, then jump off. I want her to linger at an image she can’t quite make out, then step forward and walk alone in front of me. That’s what I want.”

“That’s asking a lot.”

“Charles, you really do know just what to say.”

“Yes. Thank you.”

Sarah laughed, recognizing she had not done so in a very long time. Her joy leaped out, unfettered, from her crooked mouth, only to collapse and languish on the desktop. 

“I look hideous, Charles.”

“Not to me.”

Sarah placed her fingers on the keyboard and wrote. She wrote about creation and God, how God created humans, how humans created bots, how bots dangled temptation before their creators, and how humans begged forgiveness from God. And all through this time, Charles remained at her side, sharing neither prompt nor hallucination. And never, never once, did Sarah cheat. She wrote poetry, her future readers perched precariously on her back, until the flat light of her afternoons was gone. 

*   *   *

Mark Russ is a psychiatrist in Westchester County, New York. He was born in Cuba, the son of Holocaust survivors. He has contributed to the psychiatric literature throughout his career and has recently begun to publish short stories and nonfiction pieces. His work has appeared in The Jewish Writing Project The Minison Project, Jewishfiction.net, The Concrete Desert Review, Literally Stories, Fig Tree Lit, Of the book, Blue Lake Review, BooksNPieces, and Sortes, These stories and others are in a collection of short stories titled Mostly Fiction-Stores by a Second Generation Holocaust Survivor (Regent Press, 2025).

By Margaret Camille Berliant

The bus is filthy, the windows grimy, she can barely see the billboards she passes on her way home and somebody has pissed in the back again which is why she always chooses a seat by the driver, and safely she says, Good evening sir polite, as always, like her mother taught her, but in English because she forces herself to even think in English, but the driver acts as though she is invisible even though she sits on this bus at the same time and in the same seat five days a week on her way home from cleaning Mrs. Everly’s house and before she leaves for her office cleaning job, because she doesn’t want to sit in her apartment by herself, after a dinner of moro de Habichuelas, in front of the one window that faces the air shaft and watch the first snowflakes float down, down, down, worried the layers she has on to keep her warm come February won’t be enough and like those snowflakes she thinks that any chance of being surprised is melting away after 5 years in America, with the same routine of cleaning bathrooms, five of them on Mondays, and dusting shelves on Tuesdays, and doing floors on Wednesdays — because Mrs. Everly is predictable in how she wants that big old house cleaned and she cleans, and mops and dusts and comes home with the hope that a weekly letter from mami has arrived, always signed xxoo we love you and miss you and thank you for the money for the boys and sometimes included is a picture colored with a pencil from Luis and a sentence or two from Alejandro, her sons, her loves, now 15 and 9, and she tells them in her letters back, as she stares at the flat black and white picture of them, that one day they’ll be surprised when they hear the wheeze of the buses brakes and see her step off into the humid air and tread the dusty road and walk into the house her arms heavy with hugs and kisses for them and she will look in their eyes and see all the English phrases she has learned for a surprise written on their faces, oh yes they will be happy campers, her boys will be left speechless, she could knock them over with a feather, and coming home like this will knock their socks off and take their breath away but for now she has to do as mami said,

— give what you want to get, 

—putting a hand into her purse and she feels her daily pay of 4 $20 bills, 1 $10 bill, 1 $5bill, 5 $1bills wrapped with a blue rubber band from Mrs. Everly’s kitchen junk drawer and she unrolls the dollar bills and when the bus stops she walks down the steps, nearly slipping on the watery black vinyl before her good-by is taken by the wind and she enters the corner bodega where it’s comfortable to say buenas noches to the black haired girl behind the plexiglass shield at the register who is tapping at her phone with long pink nails and who doesn’t raise her head but says hi and as she’s walking down the cereal aisle she wonders what this young girls hopes and dreams are and it ignites in her a remembrance, in Spanish, of what she wished for at that age which was to be swept off her feet by a handsome man with black eyes and a willing smile and she thinks it’s funny that her mami told her that if you sweep your feet you can prevent a marriage but she was told too late — so she takes a one dollar bill from her money roll, as she does the last Friday of each month, and places it behind a box of Fruit Loops, and as she walks down the bread aisle she chooses to place another bill under a loaf of Wonder bread, and another under a bitter orange, and the last two tucked under a box of Pampers and a bottle of Coco Rico where she pauses to imagine how the people who find these dollars will feel, the surprise, the delight, she can almost see a little boy Luis’ age begging his mami for the drink and finding the bill tucked behind it and running to her and the mami is infected by the surprise too which causes some shift from her predictable life and some satisfaction in being able to give to others what she herself would like and before she exits the bodega she goes to the register to purchase a box of cracker jacks because then she has a surprise and today it’s a pink plastic ring — and after walking the blocks to her apartment she places the ring in a glass bowl in the center of her table to be nestled amongst the other surprises, 65 whistles and magnifying glasses and comic booklets and baseball cards and stickers and animal figurines and charms and she goes to the corner of the room and with a sigh that can be heard in Spanish or Ukrainian or Tagalog or Farsi or any language, for its meaning is universal, she pulls open the closet door and takes off her apron and black dress and places them on the hanger for tomorrow. 

*   *.  *

For Margaret Camille Berliant, writing is a logical extension of her lifetime love of stories. Her mother and grandmother before her brought family lore to life through the art of vibrant storytelling. Teaching the deaf helped her understand the value of language in all its forms, and her years of work as a psychotherapist revealed the power in the language of the heart. She lives in Rochester, New York.

By Robert Loomis

Her hand grips mine and her torso bobs slightly with each step.  Her face is down in concentration, scanning the uneven pavement for puddles, not caring that her new white dress brushes the wet ground.

She doesn’t notice the playground, empty this morning.  

Or the cars pulling up.  

Or the crying children.  

I slow my pace, lightly squeezing her fingers.

Not checking the time.  

Not checking my phone.

“Mommy, run!” 

Her eyes meet mine, her mouth in an open smile.

I force a grin.  She shrieks and races ahead, letting my hand go.

I think of my new work pants and shoes I’d bought to replace my pre-maternity clothes.  I think of my 9 a.m. meeting, and of my red coffee mug, and hope no one’s taken it.

I run after her and grab her just in time, raising her into the air and to my chest.  She giggles in excitement as I march past the puddle and into the building.

My phone vibrates in my purse.  

A teacher is speaking, her voice muffled by the din of crying toddlers and shushing parents that ripples through the halls.  I nod anyway.

The teacher lifts my daughter.  Suspended, her eyes search for mine, her mouth open slightly.  

But I just stare at the hem of her dress, until she’s gone.

Outside, the puddle has doubled in size.  My eyes linger on the empty playground.  I breathe, and step in.  Mud-colored water covers my ankles, soaking my scarlet pant legs.

White bubbles swirl around my shoes.

My phone vibrates, and I let it ring.

                                                                *   *   *

Robert Loomis is from Massachusetts, but lives in Ankara, Turkey.  His work has been published in Flash Frontier, Litbreak Magazine, and Panorama: The Journal of Travel, Place, and Nature.

By Melanie Maggard

She tells you to fuck off, exhales cigarettes and vomits beer with boys in a basement or truck bed or behind bleachers. She shoves you to the ground and steals strawberry-scented lip gloss from your locker when she hears it’s your birthday. She whispers she doesn’t give a shit about you, that you could rot in hell for all she cares. She watches you from her black-rimmed confidence, and you know that she knows about you. She doesn’t play or join; she’s too busy digging graves and hiding. She doesn’t have parents phoning teachers or packing lunches or showing up. She walks home alone or gets a ride from some townie she knows is tired of his girlfriend. She throws away report cards and fakes signatures on permission slips and checkbooks. She can cook meals for three because she’s got two little brothers with growling stomachs. She does laundry and works part-time jobs to pay bills she shouldn’t have to. She cries into her pillow at night, trying to sleep with headphones blaring classical music to hide the yelling and falling of bodies. She strides through the classroom when her name is called to the office, so everyone fantasizes about how much trouble she is in instead of knowing she must pick up her dad from the drunk tank because he won’t stop calling until she does. She wants you to know she isn’t so bad, and you aren’t that good. She tells you to move on.

      *    *    *

Melanie Maggard is a flash writer and poet who loves dribbles and drabbles. She has published in Cotton Xenomorph, The Citron Review, The Mackinaw, Peatsmoke Journal, X-R-A-Y Magazine, Ghost Parachute, and others, including a story in Best Microfiction 2025. She can be found online at http://www.melaniemaggard.com

By Fiona H Evans

The day your mother called to say your father was leaving her, the same day your son was packing for college, the day you taught a one-off workshop in creative writing at the university and were secretly hoping they’d love you so much they’d offer you a fellowship, the day sweat poured from you like rain and black dots appeared behind your eyes, the day the ground rose like it would kiss you and you reared back as if it had herpes and smacked your head on the concrete, the day your heart ballooned and you clutched your chest in what felt like a parody and surely must have looked like one, the day blood pooled around you from a cut on your scalp that would need twelve stitches but they don’t use stitches anymore so they stapled you up. That was the same day you learned about the traditional Japanese octopus trap, the takotsubo, and the medical term takotsubo cardiomyopathy, and you pictured your heart as a trap holding an octopus that was trying desperately to escape, its eight tentacles reaching out to your mother, your father, your son, your class, your body, your dreams and your wishes and your desires, and that was the day you learned that your heart needed kindness and love or it would burst, and that was the day you let go of your ballooning tentacled heart, and everything else, and it all just floated away.

                                                               *   *   *

Fiona H Evans is a mathematician, writer of tiny fictions and poems, and author of The Track. She lives in Perth, Western Australia, on Noongar boodja. Read her stories and poetry at http://www.fionahevans.com.

By Shivani Sivagurunathan

In 100 years, I would not have existed. No scrapes of memory in some grandchild, no idealization of my legacy by a future fan—I’m not leaving footprints. What the hell, there are digital breaths and tokens, everyone has them, but does Sandrine really think—bloody Magellan, there she is, the moment I think her name, she manifests. She’ll not want to remember me, that’s for sure. 

“What?” she says, sauntering up to me in her way. I used to like the swaying of her hips. Now, I can’t take her body seriously. She’s becoming more of a cartoon, can I say that?  

“Want to go out for lunch?” I ask with zero passion. 

She knows it’s my attempt to remain on the planet, to pretend I have things to do, that I’m basking in fullness. I’m waiting for her head to shake. Then the dropping of her face. The perfect disappointment.

“Let’s go,” she says, almost jovially. 

The gummy evening breeze heavy with post-rain mud reaches my nose, tickles the stray hairs of my moustache. 

Well, if she wants to go, we go. Not my place to refuse. 

We walk out of the house, side by side, as though she’d choreographed it. The car, it turns out, is ready for us. Engine on. Even the lights for the stormy weather. 

“Get in,” she says in her nicest voice. 

I get in. She gets in. 

She steps on the accelerator. Off we go into the purple storm.  

I keep my side eye on her so she’s a shadowy presence. It helps me to know she’s there yet not fully there. Sort of how it’s been with us, on-off lovers for centuries (karmically), for ten years, potentially forever. 

We speed past the turning into the town centre, past our favorite Mexican restaurant, the McDonald’s we utilize on our ‘off’ days. 

“You know, Perry, there was once a time when none of these things even existed,” she says, her geologist brain rearing its dusty head again. 

She’s going to start her sing-song about deep time, how the land we walk on was once desolate, unpeopled, just rock. 

“Serious Buddhists have known all you’re saying before the people you read started saying it,” I reply. 

“It’s not a competition, Perry.” 

“You have been making competitions for a long time, Sandy, so let it slide this time?” 

The sky has taken on serious shades of purple, so serious in fact they have morphed into midnight blue. This is no afternoon. It’s a freak slice of time. We can’t say what it is. I don’t like the look of the clouds. They seem to be tumbling into each other, like waves in a violent ocean, all dark and nightly. 

“Who’s right then, Perry, the geologists or the Buddhists?” There’s almost no bitterness in her. So it seems. 

The sky looks horrible. I’m not scared. I’ve made my peace. This planet ends. People end. Relationships definitely end. 

“Last night I dreamed the best, most frightening dream I’ve had in a long time, Sandy. I’d made one of those gorgeous mandalas, you know, the Buddhist ones. I made it on the doorstep of our house.” I trace the sky for the dark red I saw in my dream. It’s not difficult to find. “Anyway, then a great big storm came and blew the whole mandala away. I woke up.” 

The car slows down. It comes to a stop. Sandrine pulls up the handbrake. “There was a time when that kind of stuff impressed me. It’s a great relief to know I don’t care what Buddhist philosophy you spout.” 

It’s a shame she thinks it’s philosophy. It’s a shame she’d thought it was meant to impress her.  

“Things don’t come and go just like that, Perry. They shapeshift. The earth is a great recycler. Don’t you know?” She laughs. Something cynical and hot has entered her voice. 

Fat drops of rain start to beat on the car. It’s hard not to feel encased by water, trapped by her. 

“You’re too fixated on your theories, Sandrine. You’ll never step on my mandala. You’ll never dare to destroy the bigness of what I have been offering you because you can’t even bloody see it, Sandy.” 

Lightning splits the sky in half. Sandrine has taken most of my moments, my images, my raw, slimy feelings for years and at the end of the day, it all goes to dust so what must be the point of it? 

I want my mandala so fucking pristine and stunning that its destruction will be the loveliest, sunniest, creepiest, wonderful-est pinnacle of my existence.   

“Let’s go out into the storm,” I say, “I want to dance in the rain before I have to die.” 

Sandrine turns towards me. Tears make her eyes look like beautiful conscious puddles. 

“I think I have danced too much in the rain with you, Perry. I have no more dance left.” 

I don’t think she ever had a dance, but there’s no point telling a deaf woman this. 

I get out of the car, slam the door shut, open my mouth and drink in the storm. In 100 years, no one will know me. In 100 years, no one will know that I, Perry Singham, stood out in the monsoon storm and dared to open his mouth. 

Sandrine knows. Sandrine sees. Precious Sandrine. 

                                                                  *   *   *

Shivani Sivagurunathan is a Malaysian author. Her first novel, Yalpanam, was published by Penguin Southeast Asia in September 2021. 

Her poetry collection, Being Born (Maya Press) and her book of fiction, What Has Happened to Harry Pillai?: Two Novellas (Clarity Publishing) came out in 2022.

Creative Nonfiction by Kandi Maxwell

I want to stand on my paddle board. Last year, I attached the seat, paddled my way across the smooth surface of the lake sitting kayak style. Gliding through the water in those early mornings brought tranquility as the sunlight twinkled across the lake. A warm, musty scent filled the air. Kayaking was delightful. And yet, I crave a challenge. The joy of reaching towards my edge. 

A lifetime of adventure sports like rock climbing, backpacking, backcountry skiing, and mountaineering, have given me a passion for the process. I will possibly fail. But that’s not the point. Especially now that I’m in my 70’s.  

I’ve had both hip replaced, so I’m cautious. I have Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome. It means my blood pressure drops with movements, especially moving from the floor to standing. Dizziness is the consequence. 

Last summer, I was less than a year out after my last hip replacement. My board was not fully inflated—soft rather than rigid. I had no instructions on the proper way to stand on the paddle board. My first attempt ended with a plunge into the lake totally submerged. I swam up to the surface. My hair stuck to my face. Water filled my eyes and nose. After gaining my composure, I easily swam to the board, but climbing back on was difficult. I paddled to shore laying on my stomach a bit humbled. This summer, I plan to master my stand before I return to the lake.

So, I practice my moves on the floor. Fairly easy: I begin on my hands and knees, step my right foot under my body, bring my left foot underneath—both knees bent. Then, I rise to a standing position. This is supposed to happen smoothly in one motion.

Later, I practice on my soft bed. Repeat my moves, but I wobble. This is good, more like balancing on wavy water. I haven’t fallen off my bed yet, so soon I will add my paddle to my practice. It’s early February. Plenty of time to allow my body to build muscle memory.

I imagine my younger, adventurous self watching how I now struggle to stand on a paddle board. Such a simple move, but I believe she’d be proud, because really, I am that same person. The one who is willing to take the risk, willing to keep trying even if she fails. Even when I was strong and fit, I didn’t reach the top of every mountain. The joy was always in the doing, the next move, the next attempt.

*   *   *

Kandi Maxwell writes creative nonfiction and lives in Northern California. She is a retired English teacher and former backcountry guide. Her stories have been published in Hippocampus Magazine, The Door is A Jar, The Raven’s Perch, The Meadow, Wordrunner eChapbooks, and other literary journals and anthologies. Her memoir, Snow After Fire, was published by Legacy Book Press in 2023. Learn about Kandi at kandimaxwell.com.

By Chaz Osburn

“Have we done it? Have we actually succeeded this time?”

“Perhaps we need to go over the math once more.”  

“No, I’ve run the equation thirty-nine times. The numbers don’t lie.”

“Think of the press coverage once word of this gets out.”

“We’ll most likely win a Nobel Prize.”

“It will be fantastic.”

“Artificial intelligence was one thing…”

“Yes, but our development of artificial common sense is just what the world needs.”

“I couldn’t agree with you more.”

“How about a martini to celebrate? I’m buying.”

“I knew we’d make a great team the moment I met you.”

                                                                  *   *   *

The author of two novels, Chaz Osburn has a background in the newspaper and magazine business and in PR. His short stories have been published in several print and online publications including Amazing Stories, Sci-Fi Shorts, Bright Flash Literary Review, Alternative Liberties, Every Day Fiction and Altered Reality, among others. A dual US-Canadian citizen, he lives in Traverse City, MI.

Creative Nonfiction by Karen Zey

I study the form’s two check off options. Box 1: Married. Box 2: Single (includes both divorced and widowed). My chest tightens at the wrongness of this. I hate the word “widow.”  But it is a label that suggests loss, loss of the beloved routines of a shared life. Not the breakdown or betrayal of divorce. A 53-day nightmare in a hospital room, a harrowing final goodbye. The mountainous task of facing each morning without him. I brush my thumb over the back of my wedding ring. Choosing Single feels disloyal. I lift my pen and whisper: “Sorry, my love.”

*   *   *

Karen Zey is a CNF writer, a part-time teacher and a full-time student of life from la belle ville de Pointe-Claire, Québec. She leads the Circle of Life Writers workshops at her community library and volunteers her time as an assistant CNF editor at Porcupine Literary.