Short Beasts

I was born on December 14, 1946, and raised in the bucolic village of Lansing, Iowa, which then and now has a population of around one thousand hardy souls. Before air conditioners and television, everyone stayed outdoors as much as possible during the summer months. We all knew those residing near us, and being considered a good neighbor was important. Lansing had no police officer (or traffic light for that matter), and no government social nets existed. But more vulnerable citizens were closely watched, and even those who had little shared their meager lot with others in acute need. Despite many being hardworking, highly motivated WWII veterans, everyone struggled financially, yet somehow managed to get by. However, there were rare exceptions to this latter situation, and I believe one such anomaly at least partially explains the core of my story.

When I completed seventh grade, my 11 schoolmates and I had been together since kindergarten. But at the beginning of eighth grade, a new student, Joyce T., joined our ranks. None of us knew her family situation or understood why they’d moved here. She was by far the largest member of our group, and although fleshy (we Lansing natives were all skinny as eels due to a plethora of activity and a paucity of food), she was stout, not fat, and appeared to be stronger than any of us. But Joyce, who was unattractive, shabbily dressed, unclean, and smelled funny, perpetually acted in a defiant, overbearing, and loud manner. Her being well behind the rest of us educationally annoyed our teacher, Ms. Jamesen. She was a very strict, older maiden lady who crept up behind inattentive students and whacked their knuckles with the flat of her ruler.

Boys soon began teasing and belittling Joyce, who immediately and fiercely fought back, as I suspect this was not the first time she’d encountered such behavior. My parents enrolled me in kindergarten when I was four, so until I exploded into puberty that year and became the center of our eighth-grade basketball team, I’d been the smallest in our group. No class leader, I never began Joyce’s torment, but piled on willingly. Despite being badly outnumbered, she tried to give as good as she got and never backed down. But strident, angry protests and counterattacks, while understandable, maybe even courageous, exacerbated her situation.

Joyce contended with an extremely homogenous and close-knit group. All but one of my six male classmates attended the same Presbyterian Church as my family. Each of our fathers had served, and their military experience may explain why my friends and I were raised with stringent discipline. “Children should be seen, not heard,” and “spare the rod and spoil the child” were considered literal truths. Severe physical punishment of youngsters, ranging from open-handed spankings to belt whippings to fist beatings, was common. So, in many respects, our behaviors were tightly regulated and constrained, and I wonder now how much this pervasive mindset shaped our emphatic negative response to Joyce’s variances.

Teachers were above reproach. There was no such thing as the students’ side of the story, and being ordered to bend over the teacher’s desk to be spanked by the principal with his hole-riddled paddle in front of the entire class was not uncommon. Although the thunderous blows stung like fire, we were far more anxious about messages detailing our offense, which had to be returned the following day bearing a parental signature.

Although Joyce was never threatened or abused physically (Note the principal’s paddle mentioned above), our verbal conflict with her crescendoed throughout the year. But during the final week of school, our class took an all-day field trip in which we rode a bus to Effigy Mounds National Monument, located twenty-four hilly miles south of Lansing. Situated atop a tall bluff overlooking the Mississippi River, the neatly tended grounds and gorgeous forested area are home to over two hundred Indian burial mounds shaped like bears, deer, bison, lynx, turtles, and panthers. Large, colorful signs detailed the contents of every grave and the significance of each item within. (Which I found fascinating.)

Soon after our bus departed, we realized Joyce had brought a huge bag of marshmallows. We later discovered that was all she had to eat, but to the rest of us, dining once again on peanut butter and Wonder bread, it seemed a glorious treat, as none of our families wasted money on soda or candy. And after months of abuse, the mood shifted. The girls, especially, found Joyce interesting, and she begrudgingly doled out a few of her sweet treats. By the end of our day, her largess made her the most popular person on the bus.

Joyce didn’t return the following year. Our high school’s consolidation with New Albin, Iowa, caused our class size to swell into the twenties, and, immersed in being a first-year high school student, I don’t remember giving her a passing thought.

However, while my physical memories have dimmed, her presence remains emotionally evocative. I can’t understand why we treated her so cruelly. While not angels, we were serious about our religious faith, knew right from wrong, and we were as behaviorally disciplined as a combat regiment. Nothing like this pervasive group viciousness had ever happened, nor did such behavior recur. Did Joyce’s refusal to conform threaten our heretofore unchallenged community ethos, and motivate us to act in defense of our foundational beliefs? She was far more developed physically than our slender female classmates, and maybe the insanity of burgeoning puberty exacerbated the conflict.

Years later, I realize her disparities were likely the result of extreme poverty unexperienced by us and a lack of parental guidance. Knowing that sixty-five years ago may have changed the dynamic, but at age thirteen, I had no such understanding, and now, besides the immutable past, I have only lingering regrets.

---

Over a thirty-year nonfiction writing career, Dr. John A. Wilde has published six books and 240 articles, most of the latter appearing in international magazines with approximately 145,000 subscribers, all of which relate to his professional career. Although new to fiction, since January, 2025, Dr. Wilde has published thirteen stories in literary magazines and had two more accepted for later publication.

We are all deathly quiet but mum, at least, has an excuse. She’s got the machines to make noise on her behalf – the beeps and the breathing – and the doctors are kind of her spokespersons. Dad says nothing, seems lost, and I hate him for it. Say something, you pussy! If he doesn’t say anything, I can’t; and if I can’t then neither can my brother. It’s like this back in the house. Everything’s quiet there; everything’s wrong; everything’s out of balance. Only dad’s voice is heard, that is when he does speak. We eat only his choice of food and what he decides he can cook, even if what he decides is beyond him; we watch only his choice of telly, at least until he falls asleep drunk in his chair. The night it happened, I remember hearing him through the bedroom wall, asking mum if she’s all right over and over before finally calling the ambulance and then, when it arrived, him trying to explain and just messing the whole thing up, mumbling, making mistakes and sounding a right moron. What a twat! Life’s not supposed to be like this. She looks grey and her breathing, just judging by the way her chest moves, is barely perceptible. Maybe the machines are lying to us, and maybe the doctors, too. Maybe even mum doesn’t want to tell us the truth. Where’s her consciousness right now? Put away somewhere, waiting to be reclaimed, like lost property? Is she waiting for something? For us to shed enough tears, express enough grief, say how much we love her, plead with her to come back? Is there a machine that measures all that and tells her when to wake up? Is she biding her time, deciding whether we’re all worth waking up for?

---

Stuart Cavet was previously an international lawyer, living and working across Asia and the Middle East. He now lives and writes in London. His flash fiction and short stories have appeared in various journals, and his flash entry placed second in the 2022 QuietManDave competition. Check out his debut novel, Something Kind Of Strange, here. He is currently working on his second novel when not distracted by flash. Find him here.

“It’s third gin, third vermouth. You can’t do anything right!” she says with a smile more precious than diamonds, pushing me away from the kitchen island to perform her witchcraft with bitters and gin. I don’t protest, and quietly sink back into the couch. Proportions don’t matter to me. Nothing does. She’ll be gone in an hour and never return again. I’ve been living this life of a silent observer for the past three years. They come and go, telling me I can’t do anything right, asking where I keep the frying pan, or if there’s a takeaway nearby. It’s a beautiful prison I’ve locked myself in, and I pay a handsome amount in cash every month to a man named Miguello. She brings me the glass and sits beside me, looking for the remote. I just hope we’ll watch something longer than life. But we never do.

---

Nick Struutinsky is an art history explorer, producer, and writer based in Serbia. When he’s not working on a new script, he publishes short stories on Medium. In his free time, Nick studies art history and archaeology, hoping to one day develop an animated series inspired by these mesmerizing subjects.

My older brother and I lived on opposite coasts and saw little of each other. Two weeks ago, I was visiting his home because I had heard that his health was failing. I wanted to see him before he passed. Initially, I was going to tease him about his discourse having been reduced to MAGA talking points. But as my travel date approached, a violent wrenching within my chest and stomach compelled me to focus solely on thanking him. He had let me live in his home while I was in college. Moreover, after I finished school, he and his wife took care of our mother while I was in San Francisco running my life into the ground.

To thank him sincerely, I had to weed out resentment over our political differences. I know I succeeded in conveying that gratitude even before I arrived at his death bed, because as soon as I referred to my years living under his roof, he said “I was always looking for ways to throw you out; it’s your sister-in-law who loves you.”

It’s still hard to think of my sister-in-law as my brother’s widow. But she became that as soon as my nephew, John, their eldest son, a physician, stopped trying to detect a pulse. He had been moving the pressure strap up and down the left arm, inflating the cuff, then pulling it loose. Finally, he tossed it aside and burst into tears.

Each of us had our own response to my brother’s ceasing to breathe. And each of us had our own reasons to believe that he was still aware of his surroundings, that he was listening with other-worldly acute attention or that his spirit was still in the room. We held hands as we encircled the bed. I can’t recall the order in which the children spoke or who said what. But things like this got said, “Go toward the light, Dad. Loved ones who’ve gone before are waiting for you. You’re headed for heaven; don’t turn back now and risk messing up again.” That last encouragement puzzled me because I was in the dark about any earlier mess.

A few more filial ejaculations, then my sister-in-law suggested we sing my brother’s favorite songs. Everyone knew “You Are My Sunshine.” But they looked toward me for the words to “Old Smokey.” Although a pale substitute for my brother, I called out the lyrics correctly until we reached the green willow tree. “I don’t remember the rest,” I said, “I’m sorry.” My sister-in-law came to the rescue as she often does, this time with the leaves they will wither. That knocked free in my memory the roots they will die, followed by the final admonition about being forsaken and never knowing why. Hoping to have pleased my brother, we applauded his arriving in heaven and avoiding a return to sin.

There are many things to applaud in my brother’s life: a distinguished career on the bench, a 70-year marriage, a large family—really a dynasty—that extended beyond successful children, to successful grandchildren and even to great grandchildren. From a healthy heart, these achievements elicit admiration. In mine, jealousy threatens to turn a brother’s passing into a story about me, a family tableau in which somehow I am the sad central figure.

Eventually, we had to call the funeral home to remove my brother’s body, ears and all. Through sobs, John, the physician, insisted we hold off for those who had been out of the house briefly on errands. They deserved the chance to come back and say or sing their own goodbyes. I was still wondering about the earlier mess that might have barred my brother’s entry into heaven. Exploring its entrails might give me the satisfaction of his having failed badly, even scandalously in at least one endeavor. Despite this itch to find out, respect restrained my curiosity, my blind rage. I never probed for details, and—Damn it!—so far at least, they have not come to light.

---

Chuck Teixeira grew up amid the anthracite collieries of northeastern Pennsylvania. Early on, he received university degrees including an M.A. from the Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins and a J.D. from Harvard Law School. Chuck practiced law for many years in San Francisco, California then taught English in Bogota, Colombia.

They warned me about the orchard.

They said the ground remembers. They said things grow from more than seed.

Still, I went.

I buried him deep beneath the old apple tree, where no one goes anymore since the frost came early three winters ago. He followed me there willingly. Laughing. As though pain were a kind of currency and he’d already made a profit from it.

One push. That was all.

It wasn’t premeditated. It was… instinct. Like swatting away a wasp halfway through the sting.

His head struck a root. He didn’t laugh after that.

I covered him with soil, my hands shaking, my heart beating like a drum from some darker hymn. I told myself it was justice, that no one would miss him.

But justice doesn’t keep you awake at night replaying the angle, the sound, the silence.

Now the apples taste sweeter.

Too sweet.

People talk about how the fruit has returned redder than ever — a miraculous harvest. I watch them bite into it, juice running down their chins, and wonder whether they can taste the lie.

Sometimes I see him when the wind bends the trees the right way. A glimpse between the branches. A crooked smile. I haven’t gone back there in weeks, but the smell follows me everywhere.

Earth. Rot. Memory.

I could go to the police. Tell them everything. They would dig. Unearth him curled inside the roots like a secret the orchard was never meant to keep.

But I won’t. Not yet.

Because every day that passes makes it harder to be the girl who did something, and easier to pretend I’m only the girl who saw something.

Still, the apples keep ripening.

And one day, I know the tree will give us something I can no longer hide.

When that happens, I’ll be waiting.

---

Isabel Fontes, born in Lisbon and living in London, is a writer, author of several published books, and former editor who spent years helping other writers shape their voices while trying not to lose her own. Her work has appeared in literary magazines and anthologies across several countries, receiving two Honourable Mentions and third place in the inaugural contest of The 300 Project by HollowPoint Press. These days, sharp observation and the small fractures of everyday life keep her occupied. She also shares custody of a cat named Charlie with an ex — still their most functional collaboration. Read more here and here.

The mulberries were black and bursting when I opened the door for the first time in seven weeks. Mornings brought the most temptation, when my stomach whined like the siren in the center of town on the day the hushworms fell.

There were twelve windows in the house, but I could only watch the berries ripen out of ten of them. Daddy’s room was off limits since the morning I heard his window screech open and his strangled yell. He had the best view of the mulberry tree. The branches nearly brushed the window. The berries were milky white and hard as stones then, but they must’ve looked tasty enough for him to try.

I snuck to his door and listened to his gurgling. The hushworm slurped across the floor inside and jiggled the door. I found a belt and tied the doorknob to the staircase railing, tight as I could pull. After a while, the jiggling stopped and Daddy started to stink.

The second-best view of the mulberry tree was by the living room window, where the berries hung over the overgrown yard. A strip of grass was lower than the rest. The handles of the push mower rose from the weeds. My brother’s grass-stained sneakers poked out, his shins all bone.

Down in the living room, I counted each berry on the tree til I lost count and had to start over. I rolled the last three pebbles of dry cat food over my tongue, letting the meaty juices run down my throat. I scraped the inside of the paper bag and sucked out the orange dust lodged under my long fingernails.

Three days later, I opened the front door. The cul-de-sac was silent, except for Mrs. Bobkin’s bones rattling in the hot breeze. She had been checking her mailbox when the hushworms fell. I waded through the weeds, waist high in parts, avoiding my brother’s legs.

I teetered on my tiptoes to reach the mulberries, snagging handfuls and shoving them into my mouth, nearly choking on my fist in my rush for their bittersweet crunch. Dark juice streamed down my neck.

Plop.

Something cold and gloopy landed on my shoulder.

I tore it off and chucked it into the weeds. Invisible, it rolled through the grass, pressing the blades flat, and came to a rest.

A pause.

It sprang back into the air. The grass popped back up. I stood stiff and listened.

Splat.

It hit the back of my head.

I clawed at the hushworm, but its feelers were already probing my ears, piercing my eardrums. It rolled over my forehead, frozen slime oozing over my eyes.

Everything went white.

Two more feelers shot up my nose and freezer-burned my sinuses. It pried my lips open, the coldness shooting up the roof of my mouth like an ice cream headache.

I gagged.

It burrowed down my throat, my neck bulging, and flopped into my stomach.

I was full.

---

Tif Robinette was raised in a fundamentalist sect in Appalachia, homeschooled along with her eight younger siblings. She now lives with her partner and critters in an off-grid tiny home she built in the mountains of northern California. She writes folk horror and American gothic novels, short stories, and screenplays. She is represented by Sam Edenborough at Greyhound Literary. Follow her here. Read more.

A month after our twenty-fifth anniversary, Jane looked at me across the breakfast table.

“Kevin,” she said, “I don’t know who I am anymore.” She blinked rapidly and fiddled with her faux pearl necklace. “I feel lost. I—I need something different.”

Recently, she’d told me she’d been trading late-night messages with Jerry, a man ten years her junior, whom she’d met on a dating site. Middle age had softened the contours of her petite figure, and she worried about her fading attractiveness.

“Jerry makes me feel alive again,” she said.

I stared at my buttered toast.

“I decided to move out at the end of the month,” she said, wringing her hands.

Jane’s words shocked and saddened me. We’d often talked about our love for each other. She would proudly show visitors photos of us smiling and hugging, one photo for each year we’d been together. I tried to dissuade her, but eventually resigned myself to the new reality.

*

During the following week, Jane packed items into cardboard boxes but didn’t seal them immediately. I noticed she packed my grandfather’s miniature, hand-crafted wooden angel, an heirloom I cherished.

While Jane was at the hairdresser, I searched her open boxes, my hands trembling, until I found the angel. Its cherrywood wings arched gently behind its tiny back. My grandfather, my favorite family member, had carved the angel for me during a winter in Nova Scotia. I also found and removed an antique sterling silver bell with intricate designs that Jane’s great-grandmother had owned. Jane had told me it reminded her of Christmas during her childhood.

I hid both the angel and the bell until Jane moved out.

Two weeks later, she called, her voice casual. “Kevin, I forgot to take the silver bell that belonged to my great-grandmother. You know how precious it is to me. Can I come over and pick it up?”

I furrowed my brow and scratched the back of my head. “I’ll give it to you if you return the angel my grandfather carved,” I said in a calm voice.

She cleared her throat. “I … I’ll look for it.”

Jane never asked for her heirloom again.

*

The silver bell and wooden angel rest side by side on my marble mantelpiece, silent witnesses to a faded love.

---

Clive Aaron Gill’s stories and poems have been widely published in literary magazines and anthologies. He has shared his tales and engaged audiences at writers’ workshops and at public and private events. Having lived and worked in Southern Africa, North America, and Europe, Clive’s diverse experiences infuse his storytelling with a rich global perspective. He holds a degree in Economics from the University of California, Los Angeles and lives in San Diego.
—

Chandler was anxious: deck-handing on an illegal crab boat seemed about as sensible as flavored electrical fencing. But he was broke. And he was man enough to admit that poaching crustaceans might pay better than the centaur romance novellas he’d been self-publishing. So he agreed to go crab nabbing – although he fretted about how rough his roughneck crew mates might be.

At five-a.m., he arrived dockside. On the phone, the captain had said, ‘Be early, Chandelier. Early birds don’t catch flukeworms.’ Chandler still didn’t know what that meant.

Seventy-some minutes later, he located his intended vessel: the Lilith. He was greeted by an old breadcrust, surnamed Bishop, who was barnacled everywhere by volcanic-looking moles. ‘Bish’ sported an eyepatch, which reminded Chandler of Polyphemus, in the Odyssey, which in turn reminded him how the nymph Calypso had sworn an oath, promising Odysseus could safely board her raft. The only oaths Chandler received were Bish’s encouragements to hurry up, which sounded like things Odysseus himself might’ve said, right after the witch Circe transformed his crew into hogs.

The Lilith departed at dawn, sneaking past the harbormaster, into a scoopable fog. She scudded alongside the jetty: a long arc of boulders that ramparted Blunt Point Harbor, and was also used as a latrine by the resident pelican colony, who swaggered atop it like some drunk and idle navy. They grunted at the Lilith as it passed, while Chandler cowered between stacks of crab traps, gagging from the guano-reek of those anvil-headed sea turkeys.
The Lilith rounded the jetty, and the fog vanished. The headland of Blunt Point was now visible, and on its peak was a prim little telemetry garden, tended by the Air Force, and the most impressive bloom in that entire array resembled a colossal golf ball. That great white orb leered down at Chandler.

‘Call me Ishmael.’

He hadn’t meant to say it aloud.

Bish’s laughing fit sounded like somebody was brooming a corrugated tin roof. When he recovered, he hacked a chowder-colored-something over the rail, then squared to Chandler.

‘All happy crab boats are alike.’ Bish permitted himself a smirk, or perhaps a transient facial palsy. ‘Each crabby crab boat—’

Chandler was gobsmacked by Bish’s adaptation of Anna Karenina, and surprised that Bish had read Tolstoy at all – or maybe his choice of words was just coincidence, in the same way that a zillion monkeys thwapping away on typewriters will eventually rewrite the glories of Shakespeare. Regardless, Chandler was curious about the Lilith’s prospects for happiness, so he eagerly waited for Bish to continue. But Bish’s attention had already migrated to cracking open a tin of chewing tobacco.

In the next minutes, the early-morning sunlight became strong and honeylike. Chandler rolled his face skyward, and it was anointed by an orbiting seagull.

Bish died laughing.

***

The captain said they’d put it to a vote. And at first, Chandler thought he’d vote against using Bish’s corpse for crab bait. But then he asked himself: What would Hemingway do?

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Dane Rook is an author of fiction and nonfiction. He is based in Northern California, near Half Moon Bay, which is famous for its pumpkin festival (he has never attended it). Follow him here.

The waves crash at the shore, blurring the line between sand and water. The girl walks towards the sea, shoes in her hands. The sand feels damp underneath her feet. Her black, knee-length skirt flutters with the wind. The sun looks like a giant saffron ball on the horizon as it prepares to sink into the sea. The strands of the girl’s hair fly in every which way. She smoothens them, but when they stray-fly again, she ties them in a bun. Her naval peeks from behind the grey top, showing the tiny hoop-ring she wore on her pierced belly button.

Palm trees lining the shore sway. A small boy in a white t-shirt and tiny shorts, runs with small steps, laughing loudly. A woman in a blue saree hurries behind him.

The girl too was small once. Her father brought her to the shore every Sunday. She smiles, but the curve’s presence on her lips is brief. A sharp pain interrupts her ephemeral joy. She lifts her right foot to examine the heel. A broken half of a small conch shell has pierced it.

She winces and pulls the broken piece out.

“Don’t cry, it will be alright soon.” Dad’s voice echoes in her mind. He had lifted her up and carried her to the car on a similar occasion when she was young. The pain reminds her of him – the man who left the house in the middle of the night to live with another woman. Her heart feels as if it were in a washing machine dryer.

He had called her after five long life-changing years. A random number flashed on her phone screen.

“Hey, kiddo.” She recognized the voice in a flash. “How are you?” he asked. Her mind drew a blank. What should she say? I am fine, or no, I am not fine, I miss you like hell. Should she ask why he left them or if he has children with the “other” woman? She touched her belly button. She had gotten it pierced the day he moved out, thinking about what would annoy him the most.

“It’s me, Dad,” he spoke after a brief pause.

Her eyes watered. She was infuriated; she wanted to fight with him, shout at him, throw the vase on the floor, but all she did was shed tears. She disconnected the call without speaking, ashamed at her own vulnerability.

Why did he call? What does he want from me now? She had flung the phone on the bed. But a few sips of water and a broken nail paint bottle later, she picked up the phone again and wondered if she should call back.

What if he is sick? What if this is our last chance to connect?

That weekend, clutching the phone tightly, trying not to think of her mother, she dialed Dad’s number, but disconnected it before the call went through.

“Why did Dad leave?” “Where is he now?” “Does he not love us anymore?” “Does he not love me anymore.” Every question she asked Mum swirled in her mind. She sat on her bed and rocked back and forth for a long time before deleting his number from the call logs. Her belly button bled profusely that night.

Dad never called again.

She has crossed the damp sand and has walked into the sea now. Water touches her feet. The cooling sensation runs through her feet and thence through her entire body. She blinks back the lurking tears and looks for the little boy. The mother-son duo were sitting in a corner now, sharing a cotton candy – pink, woolly, wispy.

Her eyes feel stingy – Dad bought her cotton candies.

She looks away from them and studies the sand. A bigger conch shell, broken into bits probably by the sudden collision with the ground, lay a few steps away. She walks out of the water and puts her left foot on it, applying all the pressure she could summon.

---

Nazia Kamali is a reader, writer, and dreamer, who fell in love with writing at a young age. Her novel, The Woman Who Disappeared, will be released by Readomania Publishers in July 2026. She was a finalist for the Speculative Literature Foundation’s A.C. Bose Grant 2021. Her novella Multicoloured Muffler was published in the Rize Novella Anthology by Running Wild Press. Her shorter works can be found in magazines such as The Tint, FemAsia, Caustic Frolic, Rigorous, Café Lit, Authors Publish Magazine, Juste Literary, and 50-Word Stories.

The wind swept through her pigtail, caressing her ears, drying her eyes. It was the teacher’s whistle in the air, little footprints in the mulch, semi-permanent chalk against brick in the places rain will never hit.

Forty minutes till math, Daisy.

The choices were insurmountable: lonely, shivering swings; chilly, hollow slides; towers in need of ruling. But her eyes sought the candy-red monkey bars. The property has the best view, she’d say if she were selling. She wasn’t.

She smiles and marches through the gate toward them. It wasn’t summer anymore. She wouldn’t sweat and she wouldn’t fall.

She’d flip and flip and flip, but she was getting ahead of herself.

Look at the gate, Daisy. Listen for the teacher’s whistle.

The monkey bars cool her hands painfully as the ghosts of calluses burn. Her palms have been smooth a long time now. Laptop keys don’t grip nearly as hard as markers and playground equipment do.

She hangs, knees bending, limbs locking, teeth grimacing.

Her trials, battles fought, mulch money lost and won, surround her. Echoes of triumphs and hurts and laughter.

It’s why her eyes creep beyond the gate, an instinctive, longing-heavy practice. The field is mighty, the parking lot mightier, but that wasn’t the lively, restless piece of freedom awaiting.

It is the road just beyond it.

The cars move fast. Blink, and they’ve disappeared. One white, one red, then one green. An infinite number of people, countless destinations. Unhindered by lunch times, car rider lines, and bathroom passes.

Drivers don’t have recesses.

Her arms strain, belt a too-tight band at her waist.

Gripping and regripping the lollipop bars, she swings her legs up in one big kick; her boots hit metal, pressing.
She hangs and watches the cars. The freedom road. One white, one red, then one green.

Oh, what bliss. To go anywhere, to do anything.

Daisy flips and feels the prickling sting of tension down her spine. A guilty reminder of a muscle she never felt before. Which is odd.

She does not fall. An ambulance doesn’t come. Her mom doesn’t come running. She doesn’t get to go home.

Freshly righted, with clothes sinking back down her limbs, her eyes find her view again. The freedom road. One white, one red, then one green.

Daisy lets her sore arms slide from the bars’ hold and picks up her keys from the mulch.

---

Molly Collins is a student at the University of Tennessee Knoxville interested in literary fiction, journalism, and screenwriting. Her work explores nostalgia and the emotional tensions between childhood and adulthood.

You will find it in his pocket when you gather up his jeans and socks from the bedroom floor to add to the load of laundry. At first you’ll toss it into the garbage without even looking at it, then consider perhaps it’s a receipt he needs to save and so you’ll double-check. You will smooth the small slip of white paper open to reveal a name—Alys—and a phone number. What will bother you most is the small heart drawn there at the end. And the fact that it’s his handwriting—you’d know it anywhere—not hers, whoever she is.

You will feel like you are standing at a crosswalk or a fork in the metaphorical road of your life. You’ll look both ways, but only quickly, the slip of paper burning hot on your palm. Then you’ll crumple it up and open your hand to let it fall, down into the trash, landing on top of the salmon skin from last night’s dinner – the putrid, oily thing that’s stinking up the whole house.

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Sarah Robinson is an introspective lover of words. A Canadian writer, her work blends insight from her social work career and family life with a deep interest in mindfulness, compassion, and everyday resilience. She writes to explore the interactions and moments that shape both our inner and outer worlds.

Unable to visit—we live on opposite coasts—I sit before my computer. There, Kay is next to her husband Walt, whom I’ve never met. She appears unchanged, her long hair not yet gray, her oval face only slightly more taut than I recall. But her expression is grim and distant. Since the diagnosis, her decline has been swift. Memory care looms. I want to reach out and close the distance between us. The screen is not the only barrier.

Walt greets me as if this is an ordinary day, while adjusting Kay’s pillows for her comfort. Responding to his cheerfulness with fond recollections, I tell him that in high school, Kay and I transferred together to the same school but then I went back. Better at integrating, she stayed. After I moved east, we talked rarely but when we did, her warmth was always there. When Covid was at its worst in New York, she called to see how I was holding up.

Kay is even unaware of the screen. She wants to turn away or go to sleep. I watch as Walt puts his arm around her shoulders and gently nudges her in my direction. An idea comes to me. Telling Walt I’ll be right back, I return with a letter I just found in a drawer. On stationery bordered with flowers, Kay was writing to me in the summer after we graduated from high school. “I forgot we were in touch then,” I tell Walt, adjusting my monitor as I start to read.

Reminding me I was in Switzerland, Kay calls me a “jet-set girl” and says I must be “having a blast.” She reports that her family’s driveway looks like a “junkyard” after her parents bought a new car, which turned out to be her “uncle’s old ’68 LTD Ford.” On a visit to Waikiki, her grandparents set her up with a twenty-eight-year-old accountant from Tennessee. He lived in a “swanky” apartment. He was cute but businesslike. “It was horrible,” she wrote. Walt and I laugh together. Kay begins to smile, looking almost like herself.

“She remembers it,” I say. Watching her, Walt says, “I’m not sure.” Then quieter: “read more.”

In the letter, Kay describes the classes in Classical Greek and archaeology she would be taking in college. She asks for my college address. At the end, she wrote, “Have fun, do all you can, I miss you.”

Walt is gazing away from the screen. “I miss you too,” I say.

---

Lisa N. Peters grew up in Portland, Oregon, and lives in New York City. An art historian, she has published extensively on US art, from the colonial era to the present (Lnpeters.com), including her forthcoming book, Reframing Allegory in Work by American Women Painters of the Gilded Age—Six Case Studies (Routledge, 2027). She is currently writing flash and ekphrastic fiction along with a historical novel.

Paul hadn’t expected the end to feel like this; the absence of pain was unexpected. More than anything, a hollowing out, the curt of things had dulled. The distance gains and its softness, the body, delicately seeping back from it source.

Still but not gone, he lay, as if held by a thin, fraying thread. Outside, it was winter. Or, was it, fall? Which he couldn’t remember. Not anymore. The grey light emanated from a crack in the blind, the dust motes, like tiny stars, drifted.

His hands slack against the white of the sheets were once calloused and strong. He is a carpenter, nimble but now his fingers had grown numb. He couldn’t make a fist, not for days, or was it hours?

His blood was retreating. He could feel it but there was not pain, just the gentle withdrawal.

What time is it when time has lost its rhythm? Clocks ticked on, but not for him. Untethered, he floated inside the hours now.

His breathing came stretched apart.

A nurse came and went. A friend. His brother, maybe.

Outside the edge of awareness, voices murmured. Paul could not make out words anymore.

Someone took his hand. A warm palm wrapped around his fingers. He couldn’t return the grip, but he felt it.

Function slowing down. Without panic, the lungs struggled. Even the heart had grown polite in its labor. Each beat was a soft knock on a door, that didn’t expect an answer.

And he saw things, sometimes. Not mirages. Memories. Loose and partial. A class trip, as a child then running with his father. Fishing, the cold water on bare feet. A girlfriend, then his wife’s voice, the edges of her frayed. She wore her hair upswept.

Now, nothing demanded anything of him. Not the body. Not the past.

Not even his breath.

The room was airless.

Inches of him disappeared, as he was reclaimed. A tide came in.

He was in a new world now. A world without words.

A world without the need for words.

Breaths came farther apart.

Wait.

Wait longer.

---

Allison Whittenberg‘s latest novel is Killing the Father of Our Country. Her work has appeared in Columbia Review, Feminist Studies, J Journal, Obsidian, and New Orleans Review. She is the author of the full-length short story collection, Carnival of Reality. Whittenberg is a nine-time Pushcart Prize nominee.

He had been awake inside the coffin for some time. He tried to bend his legs but couldn’t. His arms were cramped and immobile, heavy as lead. And then, like vomit, an incorporeal thing spilled out of the casing, which he realized with horror was his soul. It had no age, no face, no body. It was a specter flying through hazy landscapes, like those vast marshlands shrouded in eternal mist. The morning air’s haze covered a sickly sun, which lingered on the nape of that world.

It drifted uncontrollably in random directions, searching for a Path. Along the way, it panicked, stopped, and heard voices calling. Like a thousand mouths of sighs wailing his name with lamentations: “Anelaos… Anelaos… come close to us… here is your road… come to the land of nonexistence to see the world that seeks you… the world you sought and imagined with fear…”

It shivered. If a soul could shiver. Its enormous eyes widened, unbelieving its own hearing. Then, colossal phantoms began to appear on the horizon, moving toward it like a vast cloud. Their forms filled it with horror. Clouds, clouds of ash and haze, an indeterminate mass of souls enlarging their substance in the eternal and uncreated world of nonexistence.

“Who are you that call me? Am I dreaming or in a nightmare?”

“Come with us, and we will show you your new world. Now that your body begins to dissolve down there on the earth—below or above, it matters not—you shall traverse the path of no return. But see there, is there no one you recognize?”

Then all the memories of his earthly life passed before the dead man’s eyes. He saw the women who had passed like stations through the fleeting course of life, like shadows drifting before him. For a moment, their faces turned and looked at him pleadingly, calling him near, but as he tried to touch them, they disintegrated like clouds of dust. He saw himself intoxicated with pain at times, with joy at others, and at others lost in the lukewarm soup of mediocrity.

A tear rolled from his wintery eyes, and the souls calling him lost their patience. “It is time to leave; we have a journey to complete again, until we reach Absolute Zero, the resolution of every illusion, our Lord, the Infinite.”

Then Anelaos ran with all the strength of his spectral form and rested in the cold of his grave. When dawn broke, his soul was once again inside his lifeless corpse, and though he felt worse than ever, he did not even make a call to offer an excuse. He rose from his damp bed, dressed in his black suit, put on the stiff pink tie, and went straight—without even his morning coffee, for it was half past eight and he was late—to the death office.

Another difficult day awaited him. Stacks of papers to process. But before diving into the world of documents, he took a deep breath and looked out the window. The fog covered everything, and no one could be seen on the opposite sidewalk. A perfect day to die, he thought. He smiled faintly and immediately vanished into the paperwork.

---

Constantinos N. Makris (b. 1982, Limassol, Cyprus) is a Cypriot writer and poet. He is the author of novels, poetry collections, and short story anthologies, including Extracts of Passion, Dominion of Networks, The Vampire’s Colony, Pentadromos, and the Cyprus Government Award-winning The Straw Killer and Other Stories. His work has appeared in literary journals and magazines in Europe and the United States. His latest poetry collection, Helleno-Roman Wrestling, was published in Athens.

Tommy. The bartender. The sweet card he got for me. We listen to the moonlight together, sip each from a flask, hands clasped in wonder this night. This moment. This kiss. Cut-hay scent, worked meadow and warm skin.

Tonight is my last. Last times come before you wish they would, and time curves only forward. I can visit; I cannot stay.

I tally the count; seconds, minutes, years. His fingers pull from me as I enter coordinates, leaving warm pads on my cheek. Will my warmth remain when I depart?

What does it look like for you when I go, is it a fading out? Am I thin now, insubstantial and simultaneous as you are to me, a map of us smeared in probability?

Can you still hear me?

A horn sounds out on the street. I breathe in today, feel the chill from the wind of God’s dice as they tumbled us so far apart, a century in an instant. Your lips still taste on mine.

You can’t hear me now. Goodbye Tom. I’ll be back one day.

---

Chris Grebe grew up in the shadow of the Colorado Rocky Mountains and began publishing fiction and journalism as a teenager. His fiction works have appeared in The Phoenix literary magazine and Dark Horses magazine, among others. Chris was an honorarium reader at the F.R.A.M.E. Literary Salon in Boulder, Colorado. Reach him here.

Her name is Anemoia. Often, she waits for me at my desk, my couch, my bed. She whispers comfort; the histories of places that fascinate me. She talks of games I never played; trinkets that have been warmed by someone else’s hands; hazy memories I never experienced that resonate all the same.

Her name is Anemoia. Sometimes, she follows me wherever I go. Her eyes sparkle at the paintings in the art gallery, jabbering about the artists and their strife. What they suffered to create, circles back to the present day. Old is new and new is old, in her eyes.

Her name is Anemoia. Never does she shut up. As I sleep, she’d sit on the headboard, singing her siren song. In my daze, I’m comforted but not enough to truly rest. I could yell at her, but she’d never forgive me. So, I let her sing on, until my alarm rings.

Her name is Anemoia. My friend. My enemy. My sister. My stranger. My everything.

---

Sarah Kessell is a writer and poet from Wellington, New Zealand. Having completed her online courses in 2024, her poetry has since been published in Neon Origami, Tarot Poetry Journal, and Tay Bridge Press, and her short stories have appeared in Suburban Witchcraft and The Vineyard.

Glossy brochure, smooth to the touch. It isn’t a run-of-the-mill facility, Sarah thinks. It promises peace of mind, dedicated professionals to care for Mother. 5-star accommodation. Season-appropriate air-conditioned comfort. Enrichment programs: crafts to keep minds nimble, gentle calisthenics to keep bodies as supple as arthritis will allow, music and entertainment, massages. Heck, it sounds like a vacation to Sarah. Mother’s last, no doubt. The food? Organic, ethically-sourced fresh ingredients. Mother will get to eat healthy, cholesterol controlled, diabetes disciplined. All credit cards welcome. Flexible payment plans available to select few. They even offer 24/7 personalized online counseling to family—that’ll be Sarah, only child and next-of-kin—to help cope with the change. She almost misses the fine print: an option for pre-planning of deceased estate management via an accredited solicitor, be it rent or sale. And when the inevitable end comes, in-house Life-Cycle Celebrants conduct end-of-life ceremonies and take care of everything: casket, funeral service (all religions, all denominations welcome), burial or cremation.

Sarah sits back. A choice that’s really no choice at all. But she’s put it off too long already. Time to recognize facts, be less indecisive. Once she rationalizes it, she stops shirking.

They’re all courteous, all smiles. Mother’s ambulant, Sarah insists, when they trundle in a gurney. Standard practice, they say and shrug, strapping Mother down.

Outside, before the van’s doors slam, Sarah flinches. She’s seen, shut her eyes too late: Mother’s left ear folded like an envelope on that gurney. No one else notices.

Oh Mum.

The van speeds away. Rooted to the spot, a certain premonition rises like heat from the bitumen up through Sarah’s soles: she’d go, too, without protest, be fed gruel and shit in bedpans until her death.

---

Margaret Suganthy Parker is a Sydney-based writer. Her fiction and poetry appear in Hecate Journal (University of Queensland), Kitaab, Unlost Journal (USA), Microflix (microfiction shortlisted for 2021 Microflix Awards and adapted to film), Grieve Anthology, and elsewhere. Her writing delves into familial relationships, identity, memory and trauma. She holds a masters in creative writing from the University of Sydney.

He woke, animal-like, with the sun and crawled from under the quilt. His mother had made it. He remembered that much. How long ago? Fifty, sixty years? Long enough that the patches were hanging from threads.

He rolled over so he could grab the sofa, his home to things he used to collect from Free Stuff boxes. Dishes and pots and CDs, a transistor radio, a desk lamp, a collection of Barbie dolls and GI Joes. Whatever he managed to move inside before the town sent a crew to clean up his yard. “Fire hazard” the notice said. $5000 the bill said. It was on the table, unpaid, beneath the mail he collected every day so his neighbors wouldn’t call the police to do a wellness check. He was well enough. All he wanted was to be left alone.

He could no longer unbend his spine to stand. “That’s okay,” he said to the bobblehead he slept with. Sylvester, but he called him Stewie. His mother bought it for him when he was eight. Back when she checked his bedroom every day to see that he’d dusted the bobblehead and made his bed.

He stopped at the table where he’d piled more treasures. Vases empty of flowers, a boy scout jackknife, a garden trowel, a ceramic Santa Claus and a clay statue of some long-ago president. He ran his finger along the table, making a long arch. Like his mother used to do. “We don’t mind a little dust, do we, Stewie? Mummy can’t see.”

His legs gave out, so he got onto his knees and crawled through the path of things he intended to fix. A broken bicycle. A dot-matrix printer. A guitar without strings. He remembered the music he played in his head so he could ignore his mother’s voice.

He got to the bathroom and the chamber pot he’d scavenged a long time ago. When he still had water. “You see,” he said to Stewie. “Nothing is junk. Everything has a use.” He pulled down his sweatpants and squatted. “Wonder where that cat got to,” he said when he finished and sprinkled what was left of the litter into the pot.

“Not you,” he growled at a creature staring at him. Gray hair covering its face so only two beady eyes showed. And a mouth. He searched for the word. Wolf? He punched and hit the mirror’s glass and the image of his own fist. He remembered. His name. Louis. He got to his knees and crawled back to his lair. “It’s just us, Stewie,” he said to the bobblehead. He nested into the quilt and fell asleep.

Memories intruded. Miss Burns telling him on Father’s Day that he could make a card for an uncle, a neighbor, any man he felt close to. He drew a picture of a cat and printed Stewie under it. He remembered his lunchbox and how he cleaned it after he ate. He remembered how he put his card in it and walked home, alone. Mummy would be making phone calls. He knew not to interrupt her. Phone calls were her job.

That was the day she gave him his present. “You can be my father,” he’d said to Stewie. He kissed his stuffed cat and carried him to his secret place. Mummy never looked at the treasures in the shoebox in his closet. A Matchbox car, a tennis ball, a broken harmonica. He picked up a cats-eye marble and rubbed it on the place Stewie’s eye used to be. “I’m sorry I didn’t put your eye in my treasure box before Mummy found it.” He put the marble and the card into the box and lined it up neatly before he closed the closet door. “Mummy’s coming.” He kissed Stewie and propped him on his pillow.

She came into the room holding a bobblehead of Sylvester the cat. “This is for you,” she said.

He beamed. His favorite cartoon. On Saturdays, he’d lie on the sofa and watch Tweety Bird outwit Sylvester. He’d hold Stewie and wrap himself in the quilt his mother had made.

“Trade,” she said as she handed him the bobblehead. She grabbed the cat his father had given him before he died from germs. “Now you have Sylvester. He won’t give you germs.” She left him crying and trying to cuddle Sylvester the way he’d cuddled Stewie.

He woke again when he heard a knock on the door. “Groceries here,” a voice called from outside. He went to the window, pulled aside the tattered curtain and watched until the delivery van drove away. He opened the door and dragged in the box before any neighbors could see him. They used to leave him a meal—leftover turkey at Thanksgiving or a plate of Christmas cookies. Now they just checked to make sure he brought in the deliveries. Make sure he was alive. All he wanted was peace.

Crawling, he pushed the box to the kitchen. Bread, peanut butter, bottled water. All he needed to survive. He stayed on the floor as he opened the bread and the jar of peanut butter. He dipped the bread into the jar and drank from the bottle of water. It was enough. He left the jar open and the bread unwrapped.

He crawled back to his lair and cradled the bobblehead in his arms. “It’s okay, Stewie,” he said. “We can feed the rats again. Mummy will never find out.”

The neighbors waited until they noticed the smell. The next week they watched a team wearing hazmat masks pile junk in front of the house. Kids prowled through the debris for treasures. An eight-year-old picked up a bobblehead. “What’s this?” he asked an older boy who wasn’t his friend.

“Don’t be stupid,” the older boy said. “It’s Sylvester the cat.”

He cradled the bobblehead and said, “I don’t like that name. I’ll call him Stewie.”

---

Sharon L. Dean grew up in in New England and earned undergraduate and graduate degrees at the University of New Hampshire. Although she has given up writing scholarly books that require footnotes, she incorporates much of her academic research as background in her mysteries. She is the author of three Susan Warner mysteries, three Deborah Strong mysteries, the companion novels Leaving Freedom and Finding Freedom, and a collection of stories called Six Old Women and Other Stories. Her tenth novel, Books Inn, is scheduled for publication in 2026.

The night is cool. The blaze illuminates your face orange. Her vehicle is an inferno. You warm yourself before it.

A minute ago, you set it on fire. Surprised it went up that quick, you think. Gluttonous flames devour her car.

A breeze caresses your back. Hot air singes your face. You step away, flip off the once blue hybrid.

Taking a drag from a cigarette, you cough. It was years since you smoked. Why now? you wonder. You shrug.

The flames sound like a waterfall. A finger flick; the butt shoots into the blaze. It is instantly consumed.

You stroll into the night. Your unhurried footfalls are loud. The heat on your face dissipates.

There are no police, no fire trucks, no ambulances, and no sirens. No one confronts you. Am I petty? you wonder.

That morning: You wake early on your day off, a day for chores. Sighing, you crawl from bed. Lots to do, you think.

#

With an armful of bags you exit the market. You plod to your car. Why didn’t I use a cart? you question.

#

Groceries in the trunk, you climb into the driver’s seat. You start the engine. The car pulls from the spot.

A blue hybrid drives past. The woman inside flips you off. Her vehicle leaves the parking lot.

What did I do? you wonder. You drive home.

A few hours later: It’s beautiful out, you think. The sky is robin’s-egg blue, no clouds. You decide to postpone chores to go for a walk at the local park.

Stepping out the front door, you encounter Brian. The neighborhood asshole, you think. You stare ahead, climb into your vehicle, and drive off.

#

The car arrives at the park. You exit your vehicle. All I want, you think, is a quiet walk alone. Nearby, a man places his little girl in a stroller.

You walk down a path. Sounds from wheels on dirt follow. You pick a different route. He follows still.

#

You needed solitude. You received irritation. The man and his child ruined the walk.

You return to your car. Maybe all I really am is hungry, you postulate. You drive to the supermarket.

Exiting your vehicle, you use a nearby ATM. It does not dispense cash. It keeps the card.

You call the number posted on the machine’s side. “Can you return my card?”

“Sorry, contact your financial institution and get another issued.”

“Thank you.” You hang up. Today sucks, you conclude.

You return to your vehicle. Need to speak with a teller face to face, you think. You drive to your bank.

#

“It’ll be two weeks before you receive the new card in the mail,” explains the woman behind the desk.

You nod; leave the bank frustrated. “Shit.” I’ll have to use my credit card until then, you conclude.

#

Driving home, you are at a stop sign. You look both ways. A blue hybrid rolls past. The woman inside flips you off, again.

You continue on, irritated. “Fuck that bitch.” You say it again: “Fuck that bitch.” You add variety to it: “Fuck that fucking bitch.”

#

Stressed, you buy a pack of cigarettes. You arrive home. Needing to unwind, you decide to walk around the neighborhood.

It is sunset. The sky is red. You randomly stroll along streets.

Then you see it, the blue hybrid. “The bitch’s car.” You light a cigarette; stare at her vehicle.

You shake your head; walk away. “No, better not.” Suddenly changing your mind, you turn toward her car.

---

Every morning, W. M. Pienton meditates, reads; writes. Occasionally he paints. Once a week he hikes (he wishes he had time for more). And recently, he gave up alcohol and tobacco.