By JB Lowe

The sun is low and mean, casting long shadows across the busted asphalt. The hoop leans just slightly to the left, and the backboard is cracked but still standing. The rim—crooked, rusted—endures. The net’s long gone.

Score’s 20 to 20. This isn’t just a game. It’s ritual.
One-on-one. First to 21. No subs. No fans. No mercy. Just that final point.

He’s dribbling slow, deliberate. Palming the ball like it’s made of glass, watching me with that grin that says he’s got a trick loaded and ready to fire. The heat rolls off the blacktop in waves, warping the air between us.

We’re both drenched in sweat. My shirt is plastered to me. My legs are jelly. My hands feel numb. My knees—traitorous at best. But none of it matters.

This isn’t just a game. It’s the game. 

One-on-one. First to 21. For pride. For pain. For peace.

“You look tired,” he says.

“You look slow,” I shoot back.

He chuckles. Fakes left. Drives hard right.

I follow…. late. A step, maybe two. He’s at the rim. He goes up for the layup.

I launch.

Time slows. I feel my fingers brush leather…just enough. The ball kisses the backboard, spins off the rim.

He curses. I hit the ground hard, ribs jolting. The ball rolls free.

Still alive.

I scramble up, snag the ball, start dribbling. Left hand. Slow. My pulse is thunder. My legs ache.

He’s bent at the waist, hands on his knees, chest heaving. Still smiling.

We circle. Just the two of us. No fans. No music. Just breath and sneakers and the distant hum of the generator.

I drive left. He bites.

Step back. Rise.

“Don’t do it,” he says, voice low, pointing at me. He already knows.

I do it anyway.

The ball leaves my hand—perfect backspin, clean release, rising into the heat.

“YES—”

The ball hangs in the air—

“9-LINE INCOMING!”

—then the war called it down.

The voice rips across the compound, sharp and certain.

We freeze.

The ball bounces away into nothing. Forgotten.

The front gate opens. Headlights cut through the dust.

“Litters inbound!” someone yells.

Boots thunder past us.

He doesn’t speak. Neither do I.

We run.

Moments later, chaos meets us under the light of the trauma tent. It smells like blood and diesel and fear. The kind of fear that’s silent. 

Four patients. Two conscious. Two not. One missing half a leg. Another has a hole in his chest you could fit a clenched fist inside.

We’ve done this dance too many times.

I grab another tourniquet and cinch it tight, just above the one failing to hold. The blood pulses once…high and red…then halts like a switch was flipped. His eyes lock onto mine, wide and unblinking, pleading without sound.

“You’re gonna be okay,” I lie. My voice is calm. Steady. Practiced. 

My hands are already slick with someone else’s life.

Across from me, my opponent—my almost-vanquished foe—is cutting into someone’s chest, sliding a tube between collapsed lungs. His sleeves are still soaked from the game. He doesn’t even notice.

The game has changed. But it’s still about winning. 

“Get that line started!” I shout. “Bag’s dry. We need another unit, now!”

I look down the row of NATO litters at my 4 patients.

Someone vomits. Someone screams. Someone doesn’t make a sound at all.

And so it goes.

Hours later, when the last patient is loaded onto a bird bound for further stabilization and surgery, when the blood is rinsed off the floor and the adrenaline wears off, we sit outside the tent. Two overturned crates. One shared box of cigars.

The court is empty now. Just shadows. Just the rim, crooked in the dark.

“You missed,” he says, ember glowing at the end of his cigar.

I shrug. “Maybe.”

Smoke curls from my lips. “Hell of a shot, though.”

I think of the way the ball arced through the sky. The silence just before the shout. The weightlessness of the moment before the world called us back.

“We’ll never know,” he says.

And we won’t.

But maybe that’s okay.

Because when the world breaks open, when the screaming fades into routine, it’s the moments like these that matter. Moments of joy. Stolen, small, and sacred. The laughter, the game, the illusion of something normal—those are the true miracles.

Even if it only lasts to 20.

                                                               *   *   *

JB Lowe is a physician, veteran, and author whose fiction explores the intersections of trauma, duty, and what it means to survive. He served over two decades in the U.S. military as both a combat medic and emergency physician, deploying to multiple regions and working in both field hospitals and civilian trauma centers. His experience lends visceral authenticity to stories that examine moral injury, memory, and the quiet aftermath of war. He writes fiction under a pseudonym to maintain separation from his professional identity and continues to serve in the military.

By Allison Whittenberg

Carla led the life of an actress, which mostly meant waiting tables and auditioning for roles that never came. The rejections piled up like takeout containers in her cramped studio apartment. Such was the quiet tragedy she’d become.

She often thought about giving up—leaving L.A., getting a real job, buying a house, and living a life that didn’t feel like a holding pattern. But two years passed, and she hadn’t done any of those things.

One afternoon, while scrolling through emails, a subject line caught her eye:

Immediate Casting Opportunity — Confidential

She almost deleted it, thinking it was a scam. But then she saw the same message again, farther down her inbox. Her curiosity piqued. Still, she resisted, kept browsing through social media.

Then she saw it a third time.

This time, she clicked.

The email was from a director named Stan Staged?—someone she’d never heard 

of—requesting her immediate presence for “a private audition. No résumé needed.”

This sounds sketchy, she thought, but she kept reading.

You’ve already been chosen. Just show up.

“This has to be a ruse,” she muttered in her low, smoky voice.

Her curiosity—or maybe desperation—won out. She took the subway to the edge of the city, to an abandoned soundstage beneath a flickering fluorescent light.

A woman in a green A-line dress greeted her. She was holding a clipboard and wearing a smile that didn’t quite reach her eyes.

“The actress who cried,” the woman said. “Cry on cue. Cry on demand. You’re perfect. Welcome to Cry-Sys.”

“Cry, Sis?”

“It’s short for Crisis Systems. We manufacture perception.”

“Perception of what?”

The woman didn’t answer. “Do you want the job or not?”

“Well…I’d like a job.”

“Right this way.”

A curtain slid open, revealing what looked like a war zone—only it wasn’t a set. It was real, or at least it looked real. Debris littered the ground. Dust filled the air. People screamed. 

Extras ran around in chaos.

Someone handed Carla a tattered coat and smeared soot across her cheeks.

“You’re Grieving Civilian Number 5,” the woman said flatly.

“I’m what?”

But there was no time to protest. The director shouted for quiet. Drones hovered overhead. Cameras moved in. A man whispered into a headset.

Then someone handed her a child—more prop than person. A toddler, limp in her arms, disturbingly lifelike.

“Listen, sweetheart,” a production assistant whispered. “Cry when the smoke hits.”

The smoke hit.

Carla cried.

It came out raw, from somewhere real. “That’s real,” she gasped, coughing through the smoke.

Later that night, she watched the footage on the news. Civilian caught in a blast, the anchor reported, gravely. Among them—her.

Carla tried to quit.

But every time she made the decision, another “assignment” appeared—always with her already in it.

A flood took out a backroad in some unnamed town. She stood chest-deep in water, holding a different child—also not real—crying tears that weren’t hers.

Then a courthouse shooting. Then riots in a foreign land.

Each time, she awoke in the middle of it, dazed, in a new costume, cameras already rolling.

Another call. Another crisis.

She couldn’t remember getting there, but she was always there.

Finally, she tried to reach her agent. Four times, before her agent actually picked up.

“Carla, you’re not seeing the big picture,” the woman sighed. “You’ve been in a rut. What’s it been—two years? All your roles dried up. You’re not getting any younger. You needed something new.”

“But this isn’t film. This is… something else.”

“It’s work.”

“I don’t want to be in one crisis after another. This is… wrong.”

“Carla,” her agent said gently, “beggars can’t be choosers. Listen—this is a Netflix world now.”

“This is on Netflix?”

“I’m telling you: whatever they’re filming, people are seeing it. The thing you shot yesterday—it’s in the paper today. Looks like real news. Just you and a bunch of ‘grieving civilians’ standing in smoke. It looks good.”

Carla’s voice cracked. “I don’t think this is legal. I thought the news was supposed to be true.”

“Don’t be naïve. Look, everyone compromises. Some people take off their clothes and don’t want to, but they do it for the role.”

“I have a no-nudity clause.”

“Exactly. And this is your niche. Crying, chaos, realism—this is what you do. You’re finally getting seen.”

She went quiet.

Her agent continued, “It’s on TV. It’s in the papers. Isn’t that where you wanted to be? 

You’re just… cutting out the middleman.”

“I don’t know,” Carla whispered. “I don’t know. I need to stop. These roles are taking over my life.”

“Too late. You signed the contract.”

That woman in the green A-line dress. Those men in gray pantsuits. The clipboard. The fake smile. The endless flickering lights.

“You signed,” her agent repeated. “Didn’t you?”

Carla said nothing.

She woke up again—this time in a marketplace. Smoke drifted. Sirens wailed. 

Something had exploded. She was already mid-scream.

She blinked, confused, tears already streaming.

Reality had slipped.

She wasn’t acting anymore. She was living these scripts.

Later, in her coat pocket, she found a note:

Congratulations. You’ve become indispensable to our production.

There was no escape.

She memorized her crisis lines.

And she just kept crying.

                                                                      *   *   *

Allison Whittenberg is an award winning novelist and playwright. Her poetry has appeared in Columbia Review, Obisidian, Feminist Studies,J Journal, and NewOrleans Review. Whittenberg is a ten-time Pushcart Prize nominee. They Were Horrible Cooks is her collection of poetry. Killing the Father of Our Country is her latest novel.

By Nolo Segundo 

At one of his 7 mansions [appraised at $77.5 million], the one close to the world famous hospital, he lay on the custom made hospital bed [$36,500] with IV’s in each arm. Classical music was playing on low volume on a stereophile’s dream of an audio system [quad speakers: $182,400; CD player: $ 7,800; pre-amp: $12,000; 300 watt-amp, $9150; a custom built turntable, $23,700, with a diamond needle, $4,250; hand-made cables, $8,400; custom built cabinet handmade from rare woods from Brazil, Sri Lanka, and Hungary, $62, 000]. 

The attendant nurse sat in a 17^th century French armchair [$ 45,000] quietly scrolling through her text messages and feeling a little sad that her patient was dying on his very expensive death bed. She was making over three times what she would get anywhere else as a hospice nurse and she couldn’t help wishing he would live a few months longer, long enough at least so she could get that luxury car she had long dreamt of. But the doctor had just said he did not have long now, a few hours at most. She sighed and thought to count her blessings. 

He had fought the disease with all the money in the world, it seemed– well, he would have spent the tens of billions he had made through a life of high finance if money would have done the trick– but money was useless against his disease, powerless before the caprices of nature. He remembered a poem he once read by some underpaid and probably by now forgotten poet [he had a secret weakness for poetry] about Death smiling at the brave soldier on a deadly battlefield, or shrugging at the preacher in his pulpit moments before an earthquake leveled his church, or laughing uproariously at the rich man who thought he, Death, could be bought off. 

He realized now his folly in thinking that as a rich man he could bribe Death if he only saw the right doctors, spent enough money in the right hospitals. But it was all a waste– he was told it would be in the beginning, by the young pathologist who said he had six months at most, it didn’t matter what he did or did not do. Almost six months to the day, he thought—I shouldn’t have yelled at the kid. I was a jerk when I was poor, and I’m a jerk now I’m rich. 

But he was not a man given to regrets, so he didn’t think about the six wives he had had, how he would grow tired of one after another every few years. Each of them accepted the pre-nups but never seemed to think it would apply to her.

He looked at his hand holding the buzzer– he was not even 50 yet– how could he be dying? He wanted to shout it out the window but the nearest neighbor was 2 miles away. Of course his chauffeur, 4 maids, a butler, gardener, and 2 cooks would hear, since he required all of them to live on the estate. 

But none of them would answer him. Besides, they were all wondering where they could get their next job, and if they’d be left anything in his will. None of them were hopeful.

Then suddenly, with a bitterness he hadn’t felt much since his childhood, he remembered he had never gotten around to making a will! He felt like laughing at his own stupidity, but now even a good belly laugh might finish him off, he feared. Why didn’t he ever respond when his lawyer reminded him every few years he should draw up a will, or else the state would? ‘Do it for those you love’ his lawyer would tell him, and the rich man would smile his tight little smile, knowing he did not love anyone in the world, and no one in the world loved him.

That tight little smile was on his lips as death entered his body and so it froze. Afterwards his servants, nurses, doctors, all wondered why he was smiling at the end.

  *   *   *

Nolo Segundo is the pen name of a retired teacher who became published in his 8^th decade in over 240 literary journals in 21 countries on 4 continents and has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, thrice for Best of the Net. Cyberwit.net has published 3 poetry collections in softcover, the latest titled ‘Soul Songs’. 

By Jenny Severyn

Andi has, laboriously, reassembled her life into rituals. Like a conscientiously laid brick, each minute slots into each day to sire a citadel of comforting predictability, and it is by this routine that she advances.   

Fridays are her favorite. After twenty minutes of gentle yoga from a YouTube tutorial, she indulges in two runny eggs and two slices of whole grain toast with blueberry jam. Most of the week, she eats cinnamon raisin oatmeal for her cholesterol, a meal she once thought bland but now appreciates. Then, with a cup of tea in hand, she settles into her mother’s armchair and talks on the phone with Kerry, same as she has the last seven years’ worth of Fridays.

Today, though, Kerry rings at minute sixteen of yoga.

“I can’t talk long today,” Kerry says post-pleasantries. Andi lingers on her mat and stares at the instructor’s child’s pose on the television. “We’re going to Natalie’s soon. She’s had a miscarriage.”

“Oh,” Andi says. Kerry always delivers news so blasély. Abruptly. “I didn’t know she was pregnant.”

“We didn’t either.”

“I’m sorry about Natalie. Is she doing okay?”

“Oh, she’ll be fine,” Kerry dismisses, ever even keeled. Andi’s never certain what that even keel masks, or if it’s masking anything at all. “She’ll get through it. I had a miscarriage before Natalie was born. Lots of women do.”

Andi can’t remember if Kerry has shared her own miscarriage before, a memory lapse that inspires guilt, though she reassures herself that it’s her friend’s persistently unfazed demeanor that’s confused her. Kerry’s tricky, never letting on when her words warrant greater attention. Is this a protective skill Kerry’s honed over her lifetime, or is it authentic impregnability? Andi isn’t sure.

She tells Kerry she’s sorry again and the phone call ends. Andi looks at the whitewashed shiplap behind the yoga instructor and decides to scrap the rest of her session. She eats her eggs and toast with little enthusiasm. As she rinses yolk and jam from her plate, she watches her husband Ted watering the backyard pansies and geraniums, one fist on his hip as he observes a robin hopping through the lawn. He’s smiling. 

Ted’s a good man. He doesn’t do routines. And maybe that’s good for Andi, she thinks, to have someone so differently built. She settles into her mother’s high-back armchair and imagines a whiff of Mom’s perfume pluming from the disturbed cushion. Stiff, she caresses the velvet. And it’s a peculiar feeling drafting up as she thinks how she will never guide her own daughter through a miscarriage. The feeling isn’t jealousy—certainly not—nor is it that nameless sense of missing what she never had, because she doesn’t want that experience. Maybe it’s not even a feeling in its own right: more so an observation. 

A macabre observation that’s stoked those macabre embers that simmer eternal a touch below her awareness: Kacy is dead.

But if the church bereavement group has taught her anything, it’s that she doesn’t have to label, analyze, or wrangle this feeling. She can simply sit with it. She can sit with this feeling alone in her mother’s armchair, or across from Ted in a vinyl IHOP booth as they study the overfamiliar menu in tempered silence, or in a cold metal folding chair in the church undercroft, staring vacantly at the old peeling flyers on the bulletin board, trapped as thrice-divorced Molly cries over her first husband for the fourth week in a row.

Yes, Andi can sit with this feeling and allow it to happen without consequence. To float inside her, then float away, like a cloud that passes over the horizon. This feeling don’t require deconstruction. 

The mantel clock tells her that her next ritual is overdue. She fetches a fresh dust cloth and opens the curio cabinet that stores her teapot collection, which started with the porcelain tea set she played with as a child. The undersized pot, hand-painted with delicate yet decadent roses, claims a central spot in her cabinet, alongside a novelty teapot fashioned like an elegant hexagonal birdhouse and her luxurious Victorian-style Christmas Fitz and Floyd. 

Ted tromps in from the garden. He peels off his shoes and kisses her cheek.

“But when I’m gone, who will inherit my teapots?” she wants to ask. The unbidden question arises placidly at first, a wispy breath in frigid air—then it suddenly surges and bucks in her throat, desperate, thrashing, splintering—and then, at the last, she bridles it and smothers. She’s asked the question many times to varied answers, all unsatisfying. Nothing new will come of asking it now. Nothing new, and nothing good.

So, Andi smiles. Andi kisses Ted’s cheek. Andi implements the triangle breathing method she learned from a yoga video. Andi dusts the teapots. Andi advances.

*  *  *

Jenny Severyn lives in Ohio with her husband. She holds a BA in English from Loyola University Chicago and an MS in library and information science from Simmons University. Her work has appeared in Apricity Press, flashglass, Eunoia Review, and Litbreak.

By Geoff Naumann

September manifested life’s lushest strawberries. Picked from beds of straw before the sun’s awakening in New Zealand’s southern sky, their dazzling red concealed nature’s sins. 

Here she comes. Carrying that big bowl. Per usual. And the tray of smaller ones. One just for herself. No doubt. Which communal garden fruits did she procure this month? She’s wearing that sparkly crimson shawl. Again. Always a second layer with that girl. Must feel the cold. What’s to hide? It’s a nice figure. Voluptuous, some would say. Discerning who said what proved difficult as voices ricocheted against the bay windows.

By spring, fruit fools constituted a recurring joke. However five months earlier, when April had arrived to the Lifestyle Village slash Nursing Home, residents labelled her first delectable fool a treat. During initial counselling sessions with April, the taste sensation appeased residents who complained they suffered at the ‘slash end’, as their gardens and windows appeared infrequently on the work schedule.

The manager, Mrs Call-me-Pam Sloane, instigated staff accommodation as incentive to attract superior employees. Attendants’ quarters were cosy, certainly too small to swing a cat. Pets were understandably not allowed. Mrs Sloane encouraged pastimes to occupy employees’ spare hours. They talked of knitting, jigsaws, tv series blitzing, reading, even poetry writing. Many employees discussed their private activities displaying completed pullovers, offering up cosy mystery novels for loan, handing on a highlighted television guide. Those attendants without hobbies played games: draughts, scrabble, poker, charades. April kept her cards close to her chest, expressed a dislike of board games, and a disdain for charades. Generating fools occupied April’s time.

Residents regarded listening April’s secondary forte, advancing her status as their favourite. April’s sprinkles of ‘ooh aah’ and ‘of course’ added flair to discussions. 

And, she always positioned a fool beside her. Along with a napkin and spoon to savour her whipped-up creamy diversion.Offering her addiction to others appeared an addiction for April  —  however residents did not judge a pusher of fruit fools a crummy trait.

Families, as the preferred topic, breathed life into conversations. April scrutinised residents’ fingers drawing family trees across rugs, across legs, as tales extended to great-great-grandchildren. Many residents showed genuine interest in April. Tell me about yours, they’d ask. April’s reply comprised variations of the refrain — Mine? Not so interesting. Scattered here there. My mother, we talk. Talk talk. Tick tick. Her time is running short. But back to you and your daughters; they must love you as I love my mother. I help where I can. 

And off she would amble to the next bed, in the next room, in the next week. In May’s room, attendants offered next level care. There is always sickness. If not in here. Out there. May spoke little so listening provided joy. She pressed April for news – My mother? April habitually clutched her shawl, believing it necessary to convey the combined effort of working here; there her mother. What to do? Work was essential. Send the little I can spare. Thank you. 

April always ended her resident chats with ‘Thank You’. An expected conclusion, in response  to the loving thoughts offered. 

June’s warmth was exemplary. Her room flowed with excitement when the monthly wine club carton of Red arrived. Inner warmth supplied. April’s phone dinged. That phone dings and pings, the residents registered. June looked. April looked. She looked every minute of every day of every month. That phone is like her third hand, the busier bodies decided. Who sends that many dings? questioning minds pondered. A plethora of pings, the poets pronounced. Always stated with care. Nothing malicious, oh my, never malicious regarding April. Think it’s her mother, not well, she confided in me, numerous residents divulged behind covered mouths. But she puts on a cheery persona. Well, she has her sip slurp fool and her ding ping phone occupying her. 

April returned to Heather’s room having stepped into the ensuite to take a call. 

“Who was that man?” Heather had perceived the baritone.

“Man?”

“On the phone, dear,” concerned April may soon migrate from attendant to resident.

“Oh. My brother.”

“Brother, dear?” The first Heather knew.

“Well, not family, as such. Like family. We call him brother.” 

“And he won?” 

A private detective’s observational skills would note surprise in April’s eyes realizing the auditory powers of Heather’s ears. 

“Won. Yes. His football team. Came first.” 

“And second? Second seemed of interest too,” Heather probed. 

April’s words darted with the skill her brother apparently possessed: “Yes, second place, a team they never beat, getting the win was a surprise, especially relegating that other team, in the stripes, to second place, their win was quite the show, put the others in their place.” 

September’s strawberry fool was prize-worthy, though tingled with a bitter aftertaste. The choir of female voices moved from the windows to the entry doors – April, hello. Oh, the fool looks wonderful. Strawberry. An especial flummery. And on our first-of-the-month springtime garden party. 

April placed the decorative serving bowl and matching dishes on the spring buffet. The gardening club had collected blooming bunches now displayed in vases which the Friday Pottery Club had created — the vases required the occasional coaster to level and plastic wrap to seal. Light classical notes played, creating a descant to swelling chat. 

Standing in the corner, the mouth of April achieved a terse configuration. Wary. Concerned. Knowing. Heather was talking to Iris, who had just wandered from Rose’s room with a tissue and a rage. From her chair Heather shot signals, static like electricity, across the communal room to a nurse, then a duty manager, and also that Rose lady who rarely deigned venturing from her room to grace their garden of gossip. Serious.

April assumed; no — realised. Took a call. On that phone, which, in retrospect, no one said they heard ring. 

“Mama. Sick. Oh no, I’ll come. Hope I can,” April dramatically proclaimed at the coffee attendant, the receptionist, and then the gardener watering life in the foyer. Finally stationary facing Mrs Sloane, with a shaking hand covering the phone, April continued: “My mother, can I? I really must….” Mrs Sloane offered confirmation with one soothing hand on April’s shoulder and another showing her the exit. 

April packed. Required only five minutes. Eyes down, she drove through the gates, tears oozed. 

One week. Silence. Two weeks. Silence. No calls. No emails. Silence. 

By the ides of September, chattering ladies assembled their thoughts. Ordained spokesperson Heather sat opposite Mrs Call-me-Pam Sloane’s desk, the fanciful revelation bridging the divide. 

Mrs Sloane called April’s emergency number, listed as her mother’s. Silence. The Christchurch Lifestyle Association had a record, but no further contact details. The Auckland Nursing Home knew an Avril but not an April. The Human Resource department had not contacted international nursing homes for references despite overseas experience comprising the bulk of April’s résumé. Seemed so far away and so long ago, and too many digits to enter. An April? No. No April in any month of our records.

The fruits of April’s mix of rapport and charm jelled. Ten dollars, two hundred, even a thousand. Every amount was blessed with customary responses: Keep it between us; I’ll pay you back; You’re so kind; The best; Thank you.

Mrs Sloane closed her door and braved the call to Head Office. The company director knew Pam as an august manager allowing her time to unfold the discovery. April borrowed nearly twenty thousand dollars, Pam cited. Perhaps even more. She envisioned some residents fearful to out themselves as ‘fools’. Her air quotes unseen in Auckland.

October first, Mrs Sloane conducted a search. Adhering to the employee handbook, she required two weeks unexplained absence (explained!) and documented correspondence (unanswered!) before informing April she had abandoned her employment and thereby staff accommodation. With intrigue peaked, residents hovered beside pergola columns, hidden by overblown purple wisteria tentacles, watching Mrs Sloane march into April’s. 

The room reeked of secrecy splattered across the desk, within the wardrobe, and inside drawers. Congealed-red crosses on Lotto numbers stabbed her; she drowned in voluminous Rugby Pools bets; she suffocated under the weight of horse racing stubs as lengths of Scratchie Tickets, still adjoined in their hundreds, strangled her. A murderously long moment elapsed as the horror resonated. Her eyes widened, her hand clasped firmer to her mouth, her body turned without instruction towards the light. 

Those thousands of dollars were stolen, twice.

By the following autumn, April had dissolved into myth. She had turned over a new leaf, some declared, graciously. April turned back into Avril or transformed further into Aurora or Avery, many residents believed. After years of dedicated privacy, Rose’s unprecedented harrumph silenced the group: “April fools only herself if she believes she can survive this affliction. Counselling is required.” 

Shrugging off Rose’s pronouncement, the out-of-pocket villagers continued debating theories into the twilight hours, and years.

*   *   *

Geoff retired early from careers in the theatre, hospitality management, and marketing since “there wasn’t time to read”. Now in phase two of retirement Geoff is attempting to gather his own words into stories. His first published story was in CafeLit UK, February 2024. Two short stories were published in a Palmerston North (New Zealand) literary anthology “Versions” in October 2024. Geoff is an Australian who migrated in the atypical direction and now resides in New Zealand.

By Mark Russ

“Take what you want.” My sister slumped in the one available chair. 

My father’s studio apartment in Alphabet City appeared as I had imagined, a dilapidated sofa bed with cigarette burns on the upholstery, a chrome dinette table and matching chair, a four-drawer chest, and a single lamp in the corner. I hadn’t seen my father in ten years and now he was dead.

Nothing in sight sparked my interest. I opened the single closet where his clothes hung. I ran my hand along the shelf above the clothes rack and found the multitool my wife, Ingrid, and I, had given him for his sixtieth birthday, just after our daughter was born. We saw the gizmo on TV. “Only $29.99. Call now. Operators are standing by.”  My father was handy when he wasn’t drunk. It seemed like the perfect gift.

I dropped it in a Gristede’s shopping bag. A Planters Peanut can, blue, abraded in spots, sat on the shelf across from the tool. I reached for it, curious to see what was inside. It was heavier than I had expected, filled nearly to the brim with screws, nails, nuts, washers, bolts, of every size. There were oddly shaped pieces of metal as well, likely scavenged from contraptions that outlived their usefulness. I placed the can in the bag, thanked my sister for taking care of the arrangements, and left for my home in Yonkers.

“What’s in the bag?” Ingrid, asked.

“You should’ve seen the place.”

“The bag.”

“Oh. I took back the tool we had given him years ago. Along with a can of junk he must have been collecting for decades.” I removed each from the bag for Ingrid to see.

“He must’ve used that stuff to fix kids’ bikes in the neighborhood. Remember your sister told us he did that from time to time?”  

“Yeah. I remember him fixing my bike growing up.” I retreated to the basement where I found a place above my workbench for the can and tool. 

Two weeks later Ingrid called me into the kitchen and pointed at a cabinet drawer. 

“The drawer pull fell off.”

I inspected the knob, the metal shaft, and screw threads.

“The nut’s missing. Did you hear it fall?”  

Ingrid shook her head. I searched the drawer and floor but couldn’t find the nut. I brought the drawer pull to my workbench in the basement and fumbled through my collection of screws and nuts which were neatly arranged by size in small plastic containers. None of the nuts fit. 

“My father’s stash,” I mumbled to myself and tried to remember where I put the can. “There it is.”

I emptied a portion of the contents onto the workbench counter with the motion of a gambler shooting craps. Then I sifted through the pile with my index finger and when a nut looked promising, I tested it.

“Damn. Close but no fit.”

I rummaged through the contents of the can for another three or four minutes.

“Got it. A bit rusty but it works!”

I shoved the nut in my pocket and carefully guided the mound of rejected pieces into the can using the side of my hand. I climbed the steps to the kitchen, and replaced the drawer pull.

“You fixed it. Nice.” 

“With a little help from my father,” I said, leaning against the laminate counter with my arms casually folded across my chest.

Ingrid looked baffled. 

“I found a nut in the stupid Planters Peanut can.”

Her expression did not change.

“The can of hardware bits and pieces I brought from my father’s apartment?”

“Oh, yeah. I remember. Your inheritance.”

Six weeks later, a similar thing happened. This time it was a hex screw I needed to adjust Ingrid’s seat post on her bike. I returned to the can at least a half dozen times during the next year, and each time I found just the right part. I shared my observation with Ingrid. 

“Uncanny,” she said, raising her left eyebrow. 

“Funny. What do you think it means?”      

“What do you think it means?”

I shrugged.

A year passed. The unveiling of my father’s gravestone was scheduled around the anniversary of his death. My sister had arranged for a simple inscription to be placed on the stone he shared with my mother; “Loving Husband, Father, and Grandfather.” 

“You left some things off,” I whispered to my sister. 

She glared at me, but her disapproving expression rapidly faded.

We were all gathered at the grave; my sister, wife, daughter, brother-in-law, nephew, and the rabbi we hired for the occasion. 

“Would you like to say a few words?” The rabbi looked at my sister and me after reciting several psalms in Hebrew. 

My sister cleared her throat. “Dad was a complicated man. It wasn’t always easy. My parents often didn’t get along, but they loved each other. And now they’re together forever. In peace, I hope. No arguments now about who will get the last word.”

The rabbi suppressed a chuckle.

“Truth be told, my brother got the worst of it. He and Dad fought all the time.”  My sister turned to me. “But he loved you. He once asked me for advice on how he could make things better with you. I told him not to drink so much. He smiled.”  

 “Rabbi, may I say something?” 

“Of course.”

I told the story of how I went to my father’s apartment after he died and found the blue Planters Peanuts can. I described what was in the can and how I always seemed to find just the right screw or nut or washer to fix whatever needed to be repaired. As I spoke, a quivering feeling started in my feet and climbed to my head. My eyes welled and tears streamed down my face and onto the crown of the monument. My sister, wife, and daughter embraced me. It was a perfect fit. 

*   *   *

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.

By Daniel R. Mangru

She’s twelve, almost thirteen, and keeps things to herself. 

I interrupt her video game. “Let’s go for a drive,” I say. 

We pass shopping complexes, parks, houses—a blur of normalcy. 

The warehouse parking lot is empty. 

I park the car. 

“Come around,” I tell her, opening my door. 

“Gas, brake, mirrors.” A quick lesson. 

She steers, accelerates, slows, and stops; reacting to phantom obstacles that I call out. 

I teach what I can. The doctor says I don’t have long. 

She glances at me, a question in her eyes. I just smile, soaking it all in. 

She’ll be fine.

*   *   *

Daniel R. Mangru is currently an MFA Creative Writing student at Dominican University of California, with a passion for exploring the unsettling beauty of everyday people. Influenced by the minimalist prose of Raymond Carver and the imaginative twists and social consciousness of Rod Serling, he writes literary, speculative, and gothic fiction.

A Memoir by Nadeen L. Kaufman

We flew in from New York City and landed back home in San Diego in the early afternoon, so there was enough time to rush over to the vet with Disco. One glance at her and I immediately knew her eyeball was swollen enough to burst any minute. What had happened?  The dog sitter said nothing about her eye looking strange. The vet took a pressure reading and sent us on to the Specialty Animal Hospital, where we saw a pet ophthalmologist right away.  Dr. Holmes was a quiet, no small talk kind of guy, maybe 5 feet tall, with a crisp British accent. He immediately knew it was glaucoma.  At first we tried the expensive human eye drops, many times each day, but it was continually getting worse.  My poor baby Disco suffered silently.  Dr. Holmes said we really needed to remove her eyeball and focus on saving the “good” one.

She lived the rest of her life with one eye socket sewed shut and getting eye drops in her one remaining eye. Three years after her surgery she lost sight in the other eye, but by this time she was desperately ill, so we euthanized her. Dr. Holmes sent a short letter of condolence. Years later, I still miss my sweet toy poodle terribly, but it is Dr. Holmes who haunts my thoughts.

Disco’s eye doctor visits with Dr. Holmes had been quick and startlingly simple:  a cotton ball held above her head, then dropped.  Did she follow the dropping ball with her eye?  Could she track anymore?  Always there was adjustment in her drops, usually more prescriptions added.  How did humans handle all the drops?  I couldn’t stand any eye drops and always missed, the liquid rolling down a cheek.

One day we came in for a different dog problem with one of our two puppies and in a hushed voice the receptionist told us that Dr. Holmes no longer worked there. I felt the instant sting of anxiety: what if one of the puppies needed his help someday? His nurse told me that he had been fired, of all surprises.  He was coming to work late, some days he didn’t show up at all… This was such a different story than the Dr. Holmes we had experienced for years.  We knew that he had graduated from the British Royal Veterinarian Academy and had the finest credentials here in California. People in his medical group spoke of him with respect for his surgical work. But he was impenetrable as a person. He never smiled or said an unnecessary word.

It must have been a few months after this that a local newspaper article reported that “CA vet dies in fire; suicide suspected.”  After researching him online I discovered that his 14-year-old daughter had committed suicide just a few months earlier, and he had subsequently been left by his wife.  I continue to be stunned by the unspoken, unknown personal life of the vet who had nearly been worshipped by me for treating Disco and giving us hope that a one-eyed dog could do fine, even a blind one.  But Dr. Holmes was given a much harder sentence in life and had no one to save him.

                                                                         *   *   * 

Dr. Nadeen L Kaufman earned her BS in Education from Hofstra University and her doctorate in Neuroscience from Columbia. From 1997-2023 she was Lecturer at Yale’s Child Study Center in the School of Medicine. She has been an elementary school teacher, university professor, learning disabilities specialist, and founder/director of Psychoeducational clinics. She has authored or coauthored 10 nonfiction books, 18 psychological tests, and 100+ articles, chapters, and case reports. Her tests are used worldwide.

By JS Apsley

His eyes, grey. There is a peace there, the peace of one at the shore of the sea. A full life, yes, and one well-lived. But calm is not inspired by a journey’s end, it is in knowing that his life is no longer his own. Now it breathes with his granddaughter, whom he loves so very much. She is with him; he is soothed. Knowing that his memory rests with her, his grey eyes are not weary. He sees her, and smiles. Her grey eyes glisten, and see him; cling to him. They will always remember; he is at peace.

                                                             *   *   *

JS Apsley is an fantasy and thriller author based in Glasgow, Scotland. He won the Ringwood Short Story Prize for his debut submission, “Immersion” which was published in January 2025.

By M.D. Smith  

Pamela Jo Hotchkins may have died screaming while her mouth was being sewn tightly shut with surgical thread. Then, the nose held shut to die from lack of oxygen.

Police found her body in the rusted shell of an abandoned freight depot outside of Kerrville, Texas. Locals called it “The Switchyard”—a haven for squatters, addicts, and the kind of people who see too much and say too little. She’d been missing for six days.

When Detective Arlen Stone arrived, he nearly vomited. And Stone hadn’t thrown up at a crime scene in fifteen years.

Pamela Jo’s limbs and body were bound with twisted barbed wire. The blood from the punctures on her clothing and the floor showed she was alive when someone wrapped the wire around her.

Stone looked at the victim’s stitched lips. “How on earth could that be done with the woman likely screaming her head off?” he asked a nearby officer.

“Beats me,” was the reply.

An object near the body—when opened, a vintage music box, cracked and bloodstained, played a distorted lullaby. It was “Hush, Little Baby.”  

Burned into the victim’s inner wrist, likely with a battery-powered wood-burning tool, carved delicately and meticulously post-mortem, was a perfect rendering of a cicada, wings outstretched. The same cicada symbol had appeared in an older cold case file from Austin—different method, same precision.

The killer left a note. Scrawled in a child’s handwriting, in charcoal on the wall:
“She promised and lied.”

Arlen Stone wasn’t new to darkness. He’d seen what men did to each other in the thick jungles of South America and in the alleys of Houston. He’d experienced another form in the wreckage of his own failed marriage and estranged kids. But this—this reeked of something personal. Something learned. Ritualistic. A desire to make this death painful.

Stone learned later there was a pinhole in the victim’s back and an animal tranquilizer in her blood, likely from a dart gun. That sedated her for the barbed wire wrap and lip stitching. Finally, it made some sense. Let the victim wake up, see her killer, try to scream, suffer—then a simple matter to hold her nose shut, effectively suffocating her. After death, the intricate cicada image burned into the wrist.

Pamela Jo was no saint. Besides three broken marriages, her past held secrets—some shameful, some hidden deep beneath the veneer of her polished political career. She had once prosecuted child abuse cases with a fire that bordered on vengeance. Some said she crossed lines—destroyed lives.

The killer’s second victim two weeks later was a priest—found in a dressing room behind the choir loft. Same pinhole in back, barbed wire, same lips sewn shut. Same cicada. On the wall. “He promised and lied.”

Stone knew it wasn’t about Pamela Jo anymore. This was a personal crusade. Twisted. Righteous. Personal.

But he never expected who the monster behind the murders would turn out to be.

Two more weeks after they found the priest, another female body, this time strung up like a grotesque marionette beneath the underpass on the south side of Corpus Christi.

Notified of similarities, including lip stitching, Detective Stone arrived. He had collected little more than hunches and coffee-fueled migraines. The killer left behind nothing usable—except their signature—the outstretched wings of a cicada burned on the inner wrist, like the others.

The killer was telling a story. Arlen just didn’t know how to read it. But the press sure did. It made gruesome headlines now, with three gruesome deaths in a month. The chief was screaming at men to find some clues and track this killer down. They just had no real clues to go on. The murder scenes had no DNA, prints, or anything. Everybody sold barbed-wire in Texas.

Until the murderer made a stupid mistake.

A woman named Mallory Gane, a registered nurse with no priors and a sterling reputation in her neighborhood, had been arrested in Harlingen for trespassing after being found behind a high school maintenance shed with what she called her ‘memory box.’ Inside were items tied to every murder: snippets of hair, scraps of clothing, a ring missing from the priest, and one picture of Pamela Jo in her prosecutor days—the photo cut clean through the eyes. 

Arlen was in Harlingen within the hour. A search by local authorities discovered her work area in her garage with a roll of barbed-wire, cutters, and heavy canvas gloves with bloodstains, though they had been washed. The wood-burning craft tool was inside her house.

He confronted Mallory in the local holding cell. Her lips twitched, not quite a smile.

“I wanted to see if you’d figure it out,” she said. “But you got a stupid, lucky break. Pamela Jo was a cruel woman. You know that, right? She had my two kids taken away from me for almost no reason. I’ll never find them.” She shifted in her seat. “And you know what that priest did to one of my patient’s little boy?”

Arlen had to ask. “And the underpass woman? What’d she do?”

“A common whore on the streets. She deserved no better.”

Mallory sighed, brushing invisible dust from her lap. “She ruined lives, just like they all did. I gave them what they gave me and others: pain. Now they’re all free to spread their cicada wings in the fires and halls of hell.”

Back in Corpus Christi, escorted by Arlen with an arrest warrant in hand, Mallory, handcuffed in the front, broke free of an officer’s hands. She made it as far as behind a shuttered pawn shop and grabbed a piece of steel pipe. Arlen was there—gun drawn. 

A scuffle. 

A shot fired.

Mallory dropped to the ground… with a bullet clean through her thigh.

Still, she smirked. “Bad shot, asshole. You missed my heart.”

“If I’d wanted you dead, you’d be dead,” Arlen replied.

Two days in the hospital and two days in county lockup were all Mallory gave them.

She used a string from her prison-issued sweatpants and a heating vent in the corner of her cell.

No note. Just the cicada carved into her uninjured thigh with the end of a broken plastic spoon, dried blood caked around the wings.

Justice came, but not without its price. 

Arlen Stone didn’t sleep the night after they pulled her body down. He sat in the interrogation room she had once smirked in, staring at the walls like they might bleed secrets.

All he could think of was the hollow pain in Pamela Jo’s mother’s voice when she talked about her daughter… and the way Mallory said “pain” like it was a hymn. 

There was justice, yes.

But no peace.

And the cicada? It still chirped often in the dark corners of his dreams.

*   *   *

M.D. Smith lives in Huntsville, AL, and has written over 150 non-fiction short stories for Old Huntsville Magazine in the past eighteen years and over 300 short fiction stories in the past seven years. Nationally published in Good Old Days and Reminisce print magazines, Like Sunshine After Rain short story anthology, and digitally in Frontier Times, Flash Fiction Magazine, 101words.org, Bewilderingstories.com, 10x10flash.com, 365tomorrows.com, smokingpenpress.com, brightflash1000.com, suburbanwitchcraftmagazine.com, suddenlyandwithoutwarning.com, and more. He’s published three romance novels and three flash fiction collections. His hobby is Ham Radio and talking to the world on voice and digital modes. Website: https://mdsmithiv.com/