By Alex Miller

My girlfriend Elizabeth sleeps over in my dorm room. It’s late and she’s curled up in the sheets, while I sit at a small desk, finishing a story for my creative writing class. Elizabeth is a math major and extremely logical. She says creative writing has no practical value in the job market. She says the glow from my laptop is keeping her awake. As usual, I can find no flaw in her reasoning. I shut the laptop and slide into bed beside her. To maximize space in the twin bed, I slip my arm beneath her, and she rests her head on my shoulder. We’ve developed this technique to avoid either of us having to prop our backs against the cinderblock wall. Before we fade into sleep, Elizabeth admits she sometimes has ideas she would like to write about, but she doesn’t know how to turn them into stories. I chuckle. I tell her it’s something all writers struggle with. How does anyone transform the stupid details of life into a coherent narrative? Something with a point? Something that makes sense? Elizabeth says writing is hard. I agree with her, like I always do. But I have a secret. Something I’m not ready to share with her yet. My secret is that writing is easy. Especially now that Elizabeth is part of my life. Every time I put fingers to the keyboard, I’m just finding new words to say I love you.

                                                               *   *   *

Alex Miller is the author of the novel White People on Vacation (Malarkey Books, 2022) and story collection How to Write an Emotionally Resonant Werewolf Novel (Unsolicited Press, 2019). His stories have been published in literary magazines including Flyway Journal, Bullshit Lit, and MoonPark Review. He lives in Denver.

 

 

By Chris Callard

“I’ve never believed that story,” Louise said. “Why bring it up?”

We were at the kitchen table. I was relating that, as a summer job in my 20s, I’d played the bearded lady in a carnival sideshow, a story I sometimes told after a second glass of wine when conversation lagged. To me it was a running gag, presented with an arched eyebrow, hoping it would tickle her. Tonight she was not amused. She hadn’t been amused for months. Repetition, admittedly, was not charming. But sometimes it was tough to find new material.

“Did they even have sideshows 20 years ago? You’re just lying.” She went and splashed her drink in the sink.

I stared sadly at my drink, then glanced around the kitchen. It was mostly yellow, with orange curtains covering the windows. The refrigerator was studded with a forest of magnets,  varied images. Vacations, gifts, crap. Just magnets that held no photos or anything else in place.

She looked at the orange curtains. “Such a schmuck.” 

I surveyed the profile of her nose; straight and long with dried skin at the base of the nostrils. 

“I don’t know why I make you so angry,” I said.

She turned, studied my face, ears, chest, legs. “I’m taking my walk.”

“I’ll go with you.”

She started to say one thing but shifted gears. “You don’t need to.”

“I want to. Let me get my shoes.”

We lived in a large condominium complex and often walked its perimeter, along the road that fed the carports and parking spaces and garages. She was waiting, barely, outside in the chilly air. The bottom of my right foot itched terribly. I stamped it to try and stop the tingling. 

“What are you doing?” Louise asked. 

“My arch itches. The walk’ll help.”

We made two circles of the place at a pretty good pace without conversation. I was sweating to keep up, watching the crows that seemed to be following us, flying from tree to tree. 

Back inside, Louise put a Lean Cuisine in the microwave while I poured another glass of wine and found an Audie Murphy western from the 1960s on cable. 

Carrying the lasagna, she passed the living room, then stopped to say “good night” while Audie clomped along a wooden sidewalk. 

“Are you really watching this?” she asked, disappointed.

I nodded like a bobble-head. She might’ve thought I was saying yes, but I was simply moving my head. “This stuff is classic.”

She left. I poured another glass from the bottle on the TV tray. It hit me out of the blue that the itch in my foot had stopped some time ago. I removed both shoes and socks, lifted and laid my right leg over my left, and grasped the foot. Held onto it, in fact, for dear life.

                                                                 *   *   *

Chris Callard lives in Long Beach, CA, and has never blocked his number. Wouldn’t, in fact, even know how to. His poems have appeared in Ariel Chart, Cadence Collective, One Sentence Poems. His short fiction has been published in Gemini Magazine, Flash Fiction Magazine, A Story in 100 Words, and ZZyZxWriterZ. He has had work nominated for Best of the Net and Best Small Fictions.

By Sarah R. New

Laika, how did it feel on that tantalizingly long ascent to the stars? Were you bright eyed, bushy tailed, electricity collecting in your fur and sparking with excitement? Did you think about the places you’d go, the things you’d see, how important and respected and loved you would become? Were you excited for the adventures to come, the long road ahead, the glass ceilings you’d shatter as you leapt to touch the unknown?

Laika, did it hurt to find out why you were chosen? To find out they had fallen in love with another dog, which led you to your fatal flight? Did you ever wonder what would have happened if you were the cuter one, the more lovable one, the one who had become a mother to the fragile puppies who couldn’t yet be separated? Would you have been saved as well?

Laika, is this what you would have wanted? When the scientist took you home, to play with his children, did you think you would stay there? Did you hope that? Did you realize what was happening, the next day when he put you back in the car? Did you think you were home, only for all your hopes and dreams to be ripped apart, unable to ever be fixed?

Laika, did it hurt you to hear of Félicette? Did you feel relief to hear that they had done that awful act to another girl too? Or did you just feel sadness, grief, relief? Did you dream of flying together betwixt the stars? Did you resent her, for being allowed to return to Earth? For not dying alone, scared, overheating, in a tiny metal box spinning miles above the horizon? For being allowed to come home? Or did you feel like she had been tricked, to triumphantly return but then to be used in experiments, scrapped for parts? Did you realize you’d both been used?

Laika, cosmonaut, do you know that we mourn you? Do you know that we tell tales of the brave girl who was let down by so many? Are you glad that you remain in the sky, flying and free, able to travel and explore forever, with no one left to hurt you? Are you aware that you’ve passed into myth and constellation, inspiring us to venture to the stars? Do you play in the stars forever? 

*   *   *

Sarah R. New (she/her) has recently been published in journals including Wishbone Words, Gastropoda, and in Broken Olive Branches, a Palestinian charity anthology. Her Gothic horror novella, Amissis Liberis, was published by Alien Buddha Press in May 2024. Her travel memoir, The Great European Escape is available for free from https://sarahrnew.wordpress.com/.

By Michael Minassian

My neighbor Bob believes in UFO’s. After a few beers, he talks about how the government was hiding information. “They have a flying saucer just outside Roswell, New Mexico. And everyone knows about Area 51,” he whispers. He paid $3000.00 for a high powered telescope and set it up in his attic. Last year, he and his wife Sara went to a UFO convention in Miami and came back wearing matching tie-dyed t-shirts with a little green man driving a beach buggy on the front. 

A few days ago, Bob banged on my door at 6 AM. He said Sara was missing, probably abducted by aliens. “Her purse is still there and her phone. She never goes anywhere without her phone. She must have been levitated right out of our bed while I was sleeping.” Bob bent over at the waist and sucked in big gulps of breath.

“Take it easy, Bob. You don’t want to hyperventilate.”

“What am I gonna do? I can’t go to the cops. They won’t believe me.”

“Wait until she comes home. You can stay with me.”

“No, no, thanks. I better stay home in case she comes back. I mean, when she comes back.”

She was gone for two days. Bob told me she came home in an Uber, stumbled out of the car with torn stockings, minus her shoes, and wearing a red dress two sizes too small. “And her hair was cut short,” Bob whined. “She loved her long hair, spent hours brushing it. Now it’s chopped around her ears, like, what you call it, a pixie cut.”

At first, I thought his story about alien abduction was a cover for a case of infidelity or some other domestic issue. But Sara seemed different. I’d see her wandering around looking up at the sky. When I said good morning, she smiled and stared at me as if we had never met. I never heard her say another word again except for the night she looked up at the top branches of the tree on the corner and screeched at the green parrots that had built a nest there. No words, really, just a steady squawk that quieted the parrots. 

The next day, Bob knocked on my door again and asked me if I had seen, Jonah, their black lab. Bob’s theory was that the same aliens that had abducted Sara had come back for their dog. A couple of days later,  Jonah showed up in the middle of the night, howling at the full moon and waking up half the neighborhood.

In the morning as I was leaving for my run, Bob sprinted over. “You gotta come see this,” he blurted. “Come on, follow me.” We walked into his house into the small den where he had a desk, computer, and a built-in shelves crammed with books.

“You see that? Do you see?” pointing at the shelves.

“Jeez, Bob, you finally organized your library.” The last time I had been here, the shelves were a hopeless jumble of books. Now they were neatly arranged.

“It wasn’t me…it was Jonah.”

“C’mon, Bob. How could a dog? Are you sure Sara didn’t sneak in here while you were asleep?”

“I saw him. I came in here and saw him put the last few books on the shelf. Spilled my damn coffee all over myself. He had a book in his mouth, put it on the shelf, then another, then another.”

“Did Sara see this?”

“Sara? Sara hasn’t been the same since she came back. Do you know where she is now? In the backyard, watching the sky. Do you want to see what she did in our bedroom?”

I followed him and stopped short in the doorway. The bed was unmade, Sara’s bras and panties were strewn all over the floor, and one wall was covered in a mathematical formula.

“What do you make of that?” Bob asked.

I looked at the numbers scrawled on the wall and shook my head. “I don’t know Bob, I’m no math genius.” I took another look and pointed. “See that on the left, E = mc², Einstein’s theory of relativity. I don’t know what Sara is doing with it. Maybe she’s proving it. Or maybe she’s deconstructing it?”

Bob sobbed. “She always said she was never any good at Math and Science. She teaches French at Broward College, you know that.” 

I didn’t know what to say. If Sara wasn’t capable of these complicated formulas, I didn’t think Bob had done it. He sold cars at the Mazda dealer on State Road 7.

That night, I woke up to a low pitched humming sound. It felt like the whole house was vibrating. Then it stopped and everything was quiet. In the morning, it was a typical summer day in South Florida: hot and humid. The only thing that seemed odd was that the green parrots had moved from the tree in front of Bob and Sara’s house to the palm tree on my front lawn. I could hear them squawking and complaining to each other right outside my window. 

I wondered what was going on at Bob’s. After lunch, I knocked on the door, and it swung open. I walked around, then checked the bedrooms upstairs. It looked the same as it had the day before, but there was no sign of anyone. When I left, I shut the door tight. The parrots in front of my house were strangely quiet until I got back to my house. 

A few days later, I went back, knocked, waited, then opened the door and went inside. Still no one. I found my way up to the attic and carried Bob’s telescope to my house. Most nights now I spend a couple of hours looking through the telescope, searching and waiting, watching for someone or something to show up. The humming in my ear gets a little louder every day.

  *   *   *

Michael Minassisan is a Contributing Editor for Verse-Virtual, an online poetry journal. His short stories have appeared recently in Impspired, Flash Boulevard, and 10 by 10. He is the author of three poetry collections as well as a chapbook of poems Jack Pays a Visit, released in 2022. For more information: https://michaelminassian.com

 

By Lynne Curry

I broke…and discovered I could bend. 

The ground beneath my feet crumbled…I was born to fly.

I drowned in fear…and learned to breathe under water.

I fell apart…when I put the pieces together in a new way they mirrored my heart.

I hit bottom…and danced.

Her words cut me…until I learned they described her.

I lost everything…and discovered the freedom in starting over.

Silence swallowed me…until I heard my own voice.

I walked away…and found my way to something much better.

They shut the door…so I built my own house.

I hit the wall…and decided to paint it lavender. I’ve always loved lavender.

Others forgot me…I discovered myself.

*   *   *

Alaska/Washington author Lynne Curry founded “Real-life Writing,” https://bit.ly/45lNbVo (Lynnecurryauthor.com) and publishes a weekly “dear Abby of the workplace” newspaper column and a monthly “Writing from the Cabin” blog, https://bit.ly/3tazJpW. Curry has published seven short stories; three poems; one article on writing craft, and six books, including Navigating Conflict, Managing for Accountability, Beating the Workplace Bully, and Solutions. She posts articles weekly on http://www.workplacecoachblog http://www.workplacecoachblog .

 

By Brett Pribble

This is Sal, strapped to a bed to keep from falling. This diapered war veteran whose words drip onto a napkin while feeding, who used to have savings, a wife, memories, who now finds himself in a room with a stranger who howls all night on the cot next to him. 

The VA wouldn’t pay for a private room, his home already sold to pay for his wife’s chemo. After three military tours and fifty years of work at the factory, here lies our hero, the nurses putting a tiny flag in a vase to commemorate him. They float up to him dressed as elves for the holiday, force food into his mouth, and change him, their faces the apparitions that haunt his days, their arms the cranes that lift him off the floor—following hours unattended and face down after falling off the sack. Merry Christmas! Happy Veteran’s Day! Please don’t make me hurt you when I change your dirty diaper! 

Here is our hero blinking in and out of existence as the TV meant to subdue him flashes with football teams he doesn’t remember, scores he loses track of—young men in uniforms grunting and growling in the mud as he once did across the ocean—himself a young man. 

When Sal departs this earth, he’ll be cremated and unclaimed, his ashes dumped in a collective grave, mixing with the ashes of many who lived the same, somewhere in the distance a flag waving.

                                                                   *   *   *

Brett Pribble’s work has appeared in Aquifer: The Florida Review Online, decomP, Stirring: A Literary Collection, Saw Palm, The Molotov Cocktail, Five on the Fifth, Maudlin House, Bending Genres, Bright Flash Literary Review, and other places. He is the Founder and Editor-in-Chief of Ghost Parachute. Follow him on Instagram/X/Bluesky @brettpribble.

By David Larsen

     Trent Conover couldn’t believe his luck, bad as it was. What next? he asked himself as the dozen or so customers at the tables around him buzzed amicably about this or that—nothing, he assumed, of any importance. How much worse can things get? Really? 

     And bad, things were. That was for sure. First, there was the matter of the dissolution of his marriage. After three years of living with Willa, followed by two not-so-great, but not-really-all-that-terribly-bad years of marriage, Willa had convinced him that they should forego having children, what with the world being such as it was. And since it would be easier, far less costly, less of a fuss, for Trent to get a vasectomy than for Willa to have her tubes tied, he agreed to undergo the “simple” procedure. 

     For some reason Willa detested condoms. Why? Trent hadn’t a clue. She just did, and she was more than happy to let her feelings be known. Trent wasn’t all that crazy about rubbers himself. They seemed bothersome, a nuisance. The pill? Well, Willa had told him rather emphatically that they made her queasy.

     Second, there was his getting sacked at work. 

     Then, to top it all off, not more than a month after his appointment with the urologist, of all things, on a Tuesday, before he and Willa turned in for the night after watching Jimmy Kimmel and putting Clyde, their schnauzer, out to take care of his business, Willa announced, calmly, matter-of-factly, as if she was discussing the next day’s itinerary, that she was leaving him—for someone she’d met at Gold’s Gym—and then, holy cow, she had the temerity to suggest that “just for the hell of it” they could make love one last time. 

     Surprisingly, that final tussle had turned out better than any of their recent episodes, as few and far between as they had been. Trent, of course, had always blamed himself for their failure to perform all that theatrically in bed. She had been his second, preceded by a brief fiasco with a holier-than-thou, generously-endowed blond he’d met at the First Presbyterian Church where his mother attended without fail every Sunday morning. Also, Trent had suspected right from the get-go that Willa was already frightfully experienced and that she therefore found her husband, not merely somewhat of a novice, but, even worse, a bit of a dud. 

     Before that night, and certainly not since the night when they had been introduced at the home of the Shanks, Tom and Evelyn, a decadently funky couple, mutual friends of both of them, had he and Willa really been all that spectacular in the sack. That initial encounter, on the very night they met, was pretty extraordinary, or so Trent thought at the time. But, after that night, their lovemaking seemed to somehow lack pizzazz, and, sadly, he sensed that Willa had lost interest in him, sexually, if not completely.  

     Unaccustomed to Starbucks, not much of a coffee drinker, let alone a connoisseur when it came to caffeine, Trent sat, fiddling with a troublesome hangnail, at a table smack dab in the middle of the downtown coffee shop while Willa argued with the young woman behind the counter about the inadequacy of her latte, whatever a latte was. In her purse his soon-to-be ex-wife had papers for Trent to deliver to Bill Gaither, his lawyer, a fraternity brother from fifteen years earlier. It’s bad enough, thought Trent, that I’m getting dumped, but to add insult to my grievous injury I have to go to Bill in the hopes that he can give me a break on his normally exorbitant fees. Layoffs due to Covid hit the Sparks Book Store hard, my job. Whatever happened to last hired, first fired? he wondered as everyone around him guzzled down their expensive drinks and guffawed as if everything was just hunky-dory in the world, which, any fool could plainly see, it wasn’t.

     “That nitwit,” said Willa when she plopped down across the table from Trent, “she wouldn’t know a latte from an espresso. I told her to use half-and-half. I don’t think she’s ever heard of half-and-half.”

     Trent smiled, then shrugged. What could he say? He didn’t know the difference.

     Willa glared at him for the longest moment. Finally, she asked, “What are you drinking? Is that iced tea?”

     Trent nodded.

     “For God’s sake, we’re in Starbucks. And all you can do is sip a stupid iced tea.” She paused. “I’ll give you the papers, then I’m out of here. I’m meeting Raoul for lunch.”

     “How is Mr. Muscles?”

     Willa laughed. “Do you really care? I’m sorry, Trent, but Raoul makes me happy. You and I were never quite right together.” She chuckled. “Except for that last night.”

     Trent blinked. “That was the only time?”

     Willa grinned. “You did your best.”

     Trent sighed. Was anyone eavesdropping? “I tried.”

     Willa took a sip, then grimaced. “I guess you should hear it from me, before someone else lets the cat out of the bag.” She glanced suspiciously at the couple at the nearest table, young people, obviously content with each other. “Trent, I’m pregnant.” She glared at him, then continued. “It’s a good thing. I think. Raoul’s happy.”

     “What about your principles? You didn’t want to bring a child into this screwed-up world.”

     Willa nodded. “I know. But we’ve made it, this far. So will the kid.”

     His wife gone, Trent thought about it. What are the odds? Just what are my responsibilities in this? Shouldn’t I have told Willa about my low sperm count? About faking it with the bag of frozen peas on my balls to prevent the swelling from the vasectomy that I chickened out of? About Dr. Taylor telling me that the likelihood of my knocking someone up was slight, but not impossible? I guess I can just play it by ear. Who knows? Things have a way of working out. Even in this God-forsaken world.

*   *   *

David Larsen is a writer who lives in El Paso, Texas. His stories and poems have been published in numerous literary journals and magazines including Cholla Needles, The Heartland Review, Floyd County Moonshine, The Mantelpiece, Oakwood, Nude Bruce Review, Canyon Voices, Change Seven, Literary Heist, Coneflower Café, The Raven Review, Voices, Sand Canyon Review, The Rush, El Portal, Bright Flash Literary Review, and Cowboy Jamboree.

     

     

     

By Huina Zheng

It was a freezing night as I trudged home, my steps heavy with exhaustion after an eight-hour shift as a temp worker at the factory. The dim streetlights on either side of the road cast a yellow glow, stretching my shadow long across the ground. Passing through the park, my gaze fell upon a young boy curled up under the shadow of a slide. He wore only a thin long-sleeve shirt, utterly inadequate against the biting cold, and his small body trembled uncontrollably.

I walked toward him. “Are you okay?”

He lifted his tear-streaked face. His eyes brimmed with helplessness, and it stirred something within me, bringing back memories of my own past—fatherless, my mother gone when I was six, and raised by my grandmother until she passed away two years ago.

“Where’s your family?” I asked.

“I…I…my…” His face flushed as he tried to form words, but he couldn’t manage a full sentence.

I could tell—like me, he was a child without a home, adrift in the shadows of the park.

“How old are you?” I asked.

“Ei…eight…” 

“I’m fifteen, so that makes me your big brother,” I said, forcing a smile as I extended my hand. “Come with me. You can stay at my place tonight.”

After a little pause, he nodded and grasped my hand.

We walked home together, the cold wind swirling around us as he stayed close behind me. Once home, I dug out the only food I had—instant noodles. I prepared a portion for him, and we sat at my simple dining table, sharing a meal that was humble but warm.

After we ate, we squeezed onto my single bed. The bed was modest, but it was enough for the two of us to huddle together. On that cold night, we clasped hands, sharing warmth and comfort. Our breathing gradually steadied, and the loneliness in our hearts melted away in each other’s presence. For that one night, we were like brothers—temporary, but real, and it was a bond that felt genuine and soothing.

The next morning, just as I was half-asleep, a loud and urgent knock shattered the quiet. I stumbled toward the door, puzzled by the early disturbance.

“Who could it be at this hour?” I muttered as I opened the door.

Standing outside were two uniformed police officers, their expressions serious.

“We need to speak with you,” one of them said.

I let them in, my heart tightening with nervousness, unsure of what was going on.

“A boy went missing last night,” the other officer explained. “We checked the nearby surveillance footage and saw him walking with you.”

“He…he has a home?” I asked, startled.

“Yes, his family has been searching for him all night. They’re waiting for him at the station.”

I froze, surprised and disheartened by the news. “He’s sleeping in the room,” I said after a moment. “I thought he didn’t have a home, like me, so I planned to take care of him.”

The boy emerged from the room. I stood by the doorway, watching as his small frame was guided out by the officers. Just as they were about to leave, he turned around. His eyes met mine, and in that brief moment, I felt a surge of emotions—a flashback to the joy I had felt last night, the happiness of having a younger brother.

*   *   *

Huina Zheng, a Distinction M.A. in English Studies holder, works as a college essay coach. Her stories have been published in Baltimore Review, Variant Literature, Midway Journal, and others. Her work has received nominations twice for the Pushcart Prize and three times for Best of the Net. She resides in Guangzhou, China with her husband and daughter.

By G.R. LeBlanc

Olive had noticed him at the coffee shop. He always sat alone at the table near the door, nose buried in a book. Every time she’d walk out, he’d smile at her, but she always averted her gaze, her fingers clutching her chai latte as she rushed out.  

Behind the counter, the barista adjusted her apron. “The usual?” she asked, her voice humdrum. Olive nodded. 

Although she didn’t want to be this predictable and scared person for the rest of her life, the idea of small talk and meeting new people terrified her. Which was probably why she loved working at the local shelter. Animals were more approachable and easier to build a connection with. At least for her. 

Still, she found herself drawn to the tousled, sandy-blond-haired guy. She took a steadying breath and glanced in his direction. Her eyes drifted to the book he was reading—a worn paperback copy of Jim Robbins’ “The Man Who Planted Trees.” 

Olive knew that book inside out and could talk for hours about the importance of Mother Trees and mycelium, the underground fungal network that keeps forests alive. 

That was a conversation worth having. 

Glancing at her phone, she realized there was still plenty of time before work. She cleared her throat. “Uh, I’ll have a slice of banana bread too—and two forks, please.”

Once her order was ready, she wiped her palms on her jeans and headed toward the guy’s table. This time, when he looked up and smiled, a sense of calm took root within her, and she smiled back.

*   *   *

G.R. LeBlanc, a writer from Atlantic Canada, enjoys exploring the hidden meaning within the ordinary, understated moments of life. Her work has appeared in numerous haiku journals, and in publications such as 50-Word Stories and Every Day Fiction. She is also the managing editor at The Hoolet’s Nook, an online publication celebrating short-form writing. Learn more at https://sleek.bio/grleblanc.

By Andreas Lit

I’m not an angel. I’m a mother of three, to be precise. Ironically, my smart toothbrush says “Good morning” more often than my family does. My husband doesn’t seem to care. I’m sure that if I were diagnosed with Alzheimer’s, he would just tell me to forget about it. Sometimes I think about leaving him, but then I decide to leave him in peace to enjoy his favorite meal, which I’ve prepared. I can offer him a romantic heaven because I’ve been through many relationship hells. Is he a saint? No, I’ve seen his underwear. But then again, I’m not an angel.

*  *  *

Andreas Lit lives in Europe and loves writing flash fiction.