The Insurance of Professional Service

Contributor: David Macpherson

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I tell a bartender I hear tips is an acronym for “to insure professional service.”

The bartender, still taking orders, says, “I heard that too and I think that’s bullshit. It can’t be true, and if it is, it shouldn’t be. It’s saying I need your bar change so I’ll do my job in proper like. It’s the latest Insurance racket. You got car insurance, health insurance and now you have mixed drink insurance, with an annuity rider for cocktails and personal injury in case you get hit by a champagne cork. Really. To insure professional service. I got more pride than that. I do professional service because I am a fucking professional. It’s what I do. I’m not an actor filling time between auditions. I ain’t a novelist working on my steampunk manuscript. I tap kegs. Pour stouts, mix drinks and talk up thirsty mouths and tell bad jokes. I’ll do that if I get a tip or not. You stiff me on a tip and next time you come in, I still will smile and serve and do the whole fucking routine, I might not mean it, but you still get the song and the dance and the beer. That acronym is saying that the only way I’ll do what I am supposed to is if you bribe me. It might be offensive if it mattered. Truth is some will tip, some will not and some will order another. Sometimes I am having the best time with a customer, we’re like old friends and they leave me a quarter and a dime. And then there are others on a limited budget, counting out every penny and still tipping me twenty percent. Who can say.”

He stops. Notices a customer leaving without settling a tab. He probably just forgot, we are sure.The bartender mumbles “Watch me insure professional service” as he leaves the bar area and follows the guy out the door to politely remind him of what is expected in these moments of transaction.


- - -
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The Darkness of Writers

Contributor: Rohini Gupta

- -
I know it’s there in the world of dreams – the hell of failed writers. It’s a dark, furtive, endless cave which reeks of stagnant despair and overripe frustration.

It’s heavily populated. Until you look at that crowd standing there in the shadows, you don’t realize how many people wanted to write. Young and old, every race and sex and color and style, the highly educated and the dropouts, the wealthy and the starving. They are all there, shoulder to shoulder bound by the same darkness.

They mill around angrily, snapping at each other, furious at being here, but yes, ashamed too. They know it is their own doing.

The only bright thing about the place is the woman who sits at the lighted desk. She is bright and shining, sparkling and gracious in white. She has a large register in front of her and she checks each name in it.

One by one the writers go before her, looking away, not daring to meet her eyes, bracing themselves to take the weight of her smile.

“So,” she says not even finishing the question.

And they mumble and stammer before her.

“Ah,” she says, “That excuse has been used 455678893 times – I did not have enough time. And this one – I will write when life gets better – 378946357 times."

She gives them a neat note, a slip of clean paper with a number on it. “Go and contemplate your sin,” she says.

They shuffle away, weary beyond belief and they mingle in small groups speaking in hushed tones.

“I really believed I would ……”

“I thought one day …..”

“I waited till I retired but ….”

And they look at each other with the sudden shock of revelation.

They dive for pens and keyboards and write furiously, their fingers moving faster than the speed of light.

Then they wake, having forgotten the dream, but with a great sense of urgency. They skip breakfast, let the phone ring itself into exhaustion, and head for the work table. Fingers burn with the friction.

The words flow.

At last they sit back, warm, fulfilled, satisfied.

I believe it really exists, the writer's hell, in dreams somewhere, in those unmapped spaces beyond this world. Too many excuses take you there.

I’ve been there. I know. I stood before that shining desk. I made my excuses, my voice sounding hollow as a gong. I felt that chill hopelessness but when I woke it was with renewed energy and a clear sense of what to do.

I must make sure I never enter that grey blankness again. Keep the keyboard so busy that dust has no time to settle.

May smoke ascend from the thunder of the keys forever.


- - -
I am a writer of poetry and non fiction and am working on longer stories, but flash fiction is its own delight. On a good day a flash fiction story almost writes itself and that is why I keep coming back to it.
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Burn

Contributor: Rachel Rose Teferet

- -
He never should have taken those tabs of acid. In truth, he had doubted their potency, as they were a year old, and had been discovered inside a library book, long overdue.

Now, Jude is at the library, trying to pay his fine with much difficulty.

“Sir. Your fine is fifty dollars; you have handed me a picture of your dog,” says the librarian, her face green and warty. She looks like a frog.

Sure that he is being mugged, he hands over his entire wallet and whimpers. The frog hands it back with a sigh, and tells Jude to have a nice day, sir.


He runs out of the prison lined with books―how the names of ancients glower from their gilding!―until Jude is panting in the sunshine, slumped against the book return box.

“Hey Mister, are you okay?”

Jude’s head snaps up. A child dressed in pink lace and ladybug boots is about to poke Jude with a stick. Jude growls. The girl squeals and scampers back into the catacomb of books.


Jude leans against the hot metal of the return box and hoists himself up to standing. The irises nod their heads at him; frizzled brown camellias plop onto the pavement. Behind the parking-lot, a nature trail beckons, a thick wood bordered with orange poppies gleaming like small suns.


He scrambles on all fours towards the trail, away from the library, away from the honking cars humming and chugging for his death. He rests his back against a pine tree and he is dropsied.


From here, he can survey all below him, but no one can see him. He is invisible. A ghost.
He picks a poppy and pops it into his mouth. It tastes like orange candy; it transforms him into sunlight.


Jude whistles, coaxing the shining sun inside of his cranium. He shrugs off his backpack and inspects its contents. The water from the canteen is gulped and rivulets trickle down his chin, carving clean pathways through sweat. The sandwich is masticated. The bread tastes like sawdust, and the peanut butter cements his mouth when he runs out of saliva. He forces the dry pulp down his throat, then licks his fingers clean. Continuing to rummage, he comes across a blank notebook.


Ah! He remembers, now. His thesis is due tomorrow―tomorrow!―and he decided that taking acid while sitting in the library, inhaling musty books, would be productive. Especially since he has not started his thesis. At all.


It is supposed to be a creative work of fiction, at least one-hundred pages long. Jude’s fingers fidget with the virgin notebook. He flips through it and is blinded by the whiteness, the blood-red margins.


Yes. He will write his magnum opus―not where the dead are entombed alphabetically―no! He shall write en plein air; his words will be thick impasto.


His tremulous fingers turn his backpack upside-down: cigarettes, condoms, Jack Daniel's, a walkman, fall out. Jude gives the bag an extra shake. A lone pencil follows, its eraser chewed, its sides pockmarked. Now to start writing.


He flips to the first page. The wind breathes, rustling his hair and clothes. The pages ripple like water. His pencil seems to take a breath, like a diver preparing to submerge.

The pencil dips, is pressed to the white waves. The tip breaks. There is a moment of silence.

Jude frantically searches through his possessions, but finds no extra pen or pencil. He considers stabbing himself with the pencil stub to write his thesis in blood, but the thought makes him shudder.


“See here,” he mutters to his walkman, to his smooshed condoms. “See here,” he repeats. He has nothing more to say.


He leans back against the pine, which cradles him in papery arms. It whispers: See how it is, my acolyte. For every book, there is a dead tree. The mills run red with amber blood. The library is a slaughterhouse!


“A perversion!” Jude shouts, his voice reverberating. Elderly patrons of the library eye him warily before shuffling inside.

It’s all so clear now! The notebook falls from Jude’s nerveless fingers. What to do with this book—this corpse? Jude holds his head and weeps. He gropes through his belongings and unites cigarettes and lighter. He puts two, three cigarettes between his lips. He is a chimney; he is being turned into ashes. All is woe, woe!


Jude wishes he had three hands with which to smoke his three cigarettes. What if he had ten hands, ten feet? He could dance in a circle of cigarettes, puffing to oblivion. Like a god, with so many hands.

Jude caresses the notebook like a mourner caressing the embalmed. There should be a proper burial.


Jude shoves his belongings away with his feet to reveal bare earth. He lays the notebook reverently at the foot of the tree, then takes the smoldering cigarettes out of his mouth to light the pyre.

The notebook burns, smelling of tobacco and singed hair. Jude takes off his shoes and dances.

When the pine needles catch, Jude does not notice. His plastic walkman oozes; the smell is acrid. The condoms go up in green flares. It is only when Jude is surrounded by fire, he thinks that maybe he is (not) hallucinating.

It is too late.

Cars are caught in the spreading conflagration, gas tanks explode. The world is fire.

Firetrucks come, sentient, blaring. Sisyphean. The library is burning, and Jude’s ghost smirks. The books―oh falsehood! oh prevarication!―burn. The smoke swirls into the sky. Jude follows the pillar up and is subsumed into the sun, shining like an orange candy poppy winking in the sky.


- - -
Rachel Rose Teferet used to be a painter; now, she paints with words, and thinks a story is worth a thousand pictures. Her stories have been published by The Rusty Nail Magazine, Uncharted Frontier Magazine, and Cuento Magazine, and more. Her website is lettersandfeathers.wordpress.com, and her twitter handle is @art4earthlings.
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Phone Lines

Contributor: Kai Raine

- -
“What do you think the cover should look like?”
“I leave that up to you. I love your pictures no matter what you do.”
“Aw, you and your flattery. How’s the office?”
“Boring as hell. But, you know, it’s a job. Would you believe, Felix got on my case again about my presentation? He went on and on about how it’s useless to have a PowerPoint presentation at all if I’m not going to put any words on it.”
“Wait, was this the one for the ad pitch? With the beach and ocean pictures to create the atmosphere that you were pitching?”
“Yes. Can you believe his nerve?”
“Shit. Your boss didn’t agree with him, did he?”
“Nah, she was more than cool with it. I’m giving the presentation to the higher ups in Friday.”
“That’s great!”
“Yes, it is! How’s the flying?”
“Oh, you know…routine. But in my line of work, routine is good. I’m half worried that I’ll have to land in the Hudson one day, and won’t do it half as well as the other guy.”
“Yeah, I’d take boring office drama over boring routine any day. Even if your office is a cockpit.”
“Your cubicle is bigger.”
“Totally.”
“So, back to the cover-”
“Argh, seriously, I’ll love it no matter what you draw. I’d even love it if you drew a skeleton, though that might be a little bit tonally dissonant from the actual story.”
“I’m kinda debating between a cool, swashbuckling prince versus dragon type cover, or a medieval landscape with the castle and moat and everything.”
“I think the dragon might be a little more attention grabbing, if it’s that.”
“Because of the glasses and puppy dog tail?”
“Yep.”
“I was thinking for the landscape that there could be this little distant grappling on the castle drawbridge between the pelicans and the guards. Then show the marmoset paddling across the moat on the other side, fighting off the crocodile with the paddle. And then just a hint of the dragon in the corner of the sky.”
“Oh, go with that one. That one sounds way awesome.”
“Are you sure? I thought it might be a bit busy.”
“Well, you know, don’t kill yourself over it. If it’s too time consuming-”
“No, of course not! When have I ever been too busy to illustrate for you?”
“That time that your…friend ran away to Thailand. And that other time that your ferrets broke the wall and you had to patch it up yourself because your neighbor wouldn’t shut up about it and the repairman couldn’t come around for three days.”
“Fine, I get your point-”
“There was also that time when you were working three jobs and taking night classes-”
“Hey, you didn’t even ask me to illustrate then. If you’d asked, I’d have done it.”
“Yeah, and promptly dropped dead of malnutrition.”
“Speaking of malnutrition, how’s your brother?”
“The doctors say he’s fine. He was on IV for twenty-four hours, then got sent home with strict orders to eat better. Mom’s making a fuss about how if he had a girlfriend, it never would have happened.”
“He hasn’t told her yet, then?”
“Hey, I haven’t ever had the guts to tell her I was dating anyone, even when they were more…conventional sorts of people.”
“Fair enough. I’m pretty sure your mother thinks we’re dating.”
“Ugh, please don’t bring that up. Speaking of which, your father thinks the same.”
“He does not.”
“He does. I got a long email about what an irresponsible partner I was that time you got hospitalized in Berlin.”
“What the- Oh, crud. I’m sorry. I’ll talk to him.”
“Don’t worry, I told him to kindly go stick it where the sun don’t shine.”
“You did not.”
“I so did.”
“I think I love you.”
“Ditto. You know, much as I enjoy these conversations of ours, I’ve got to be at work in five hours.”
“Right, sorry. Exciting day battling witches tomorrow?”
“More like the demonic forces that be.”
“Sounds fun. Make sure you’ve got your light sabre on hand.”
“Oh, I will. Don’t mess up tomorrow and send yourself to the angels.”
“Haven’t messed up yet.”
“Keep it that way. Same time on Thursday?”
“Definitely. Bye!”
The line went dead.


- - -
I am a graduate student finishing a novel and fighting bureaucracy. My work has appeared in the anthology Denizens of Darkness and the periodical Suddenly Lost in Words.
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Short One Orchard

Contributor: Donal Mahoney

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When Barney Murphy married Blanche O'Brien, he told her almost every day from the wedding on that she was apricots and peaches, an orchard that was his alone to wander, plucking fruit as he saw fit, all of it ripe and juicy, something he would savor for the rest of his life. Blanche, a shy woman, really liked the way Barney could talk. He made nonsense sensible, she told her parents. Blanche was a very happy wife.

From the sixth month on during her first pregnancy, Blanche would ask Barney every day to pat her watermelon. When it finally burst, a boy popped out, and then a girl right after the boy, and then another boy right after the girl. Blanche had given birth to triplets within minutes of each other, lovely infants, all three of them plump and crowned with hair that ran in rivulets of curls.

Six additional children, born one at a time over the next 12 years, were just as beautiful. Even the neighbors were amazed at the fecundity of the couple. Some ladies on the block thought Barney should take up bowling.

"I've certainly got my hands full," Blanche would tell her lady friends but she still seemed happy. Barney remained unperturbed. He earned terrific money as a defense attorney, a vocation to which his rhetorical skills had called him. He tried to find a partner to share the workload but no one could talk the way Barney could. The bigger the crime the more the criminal would pay to hire Barney.

Life was very good for the productive couple. Their nine children studied hard in school and graduated from college. Unlike the trend today, they all married early and settled down. Blanche was even happier once the last child had married and moved out of the house. It would be another honeymoon with just her and Barney home alone. And it seemed that way until the eve of their Golden Wedding Anniversary. That was the night Barney told her, after a nice dinner at a Russian restaurant, that she--his Blanche--was no longer apricots and peaches. More like prunes and raisins.

"Nine children," Blanche said, "can take a toll on a woman."

"I know, I know!" Barney said, "I'm not blaming you. But this is life. And I'm short one orchard."

Barney pointed out that he had plans to prospect for another orchard. He wanted fresh fruit again, ripe and succulent. For days Blanche was stricken. She couldn't believe Barney would go looking for another woman--or maybe women. But as her mother told her when they were courting, Barney was never meant to be a priest. Still, she had no reason to believe that in 50 years of marriage Barney had ever been unfaithful. Still, the kids had kept her busy and Barney often worked late into the night--or so he said.

In her youth, Blanche, in addition to being apricots and peaches in the eyes of Barney, had also been in the Olympics twice. She had won five gold and silver medals as an archer, a feat Barney over the years had proudly mentioned many times to any neighbor who would still listen. Frankly, everyone on the block was tired of hearing about Blanche's medals. But thinking it might help keep Barney as her husband, Blanche went looking for and found her ancient bow and arrow in the attic. That night she told Barney she was going to practice for the Senior Olympics.

The Senior Olympics was something Barney had long wanted Blanche to compete in. He wanted her to win more medals. The price of gold and silver had skyrocketed and he figured another stack of medals would be another insurance policy for retirement. Barney even decided to help Blanche train for the competition, taking time off from work to do so. He set up targets in their big back yard and brought the arrows back to her after she had shot them.

With Blanche practicing every day, Barney was kept very busy. He was so busy, in fact, that Blanche didn't think he had time to look for any new orchards. In addition, she had begun to regain her old expertise. In fact, she thought it was unlikely any other woman in the over-70 group would be able to beat her. "Bullseye Blanche," as they used to call her, was back in business.

A month later, however, something happened. The story in the paper and the reporters on TV said it was an accident, a tragedy, one arrow out of hundreds gone astray, a large, loving family heartbroken.

And the nine kids, all with big families of their own by now, believed it was an accident. Blanche in tears had told them at the time how the arrow had gone awry, had gone right through Barney's left eye and settled in his brain.

"He dropped like a tree at logging time," she said.

There was nothing the first responders could do. Barney was pronounced dead at the hospital. All the neighbors turned out for the funeral and took turns bringing Blanche a hot meal every night for weeks. And then the story seemed to die. Blanche wore black for months and months.

Nevertheless, not everyone was satisfied that things had happened exactly as reported. At closing time in a local pub frequented by friends, every now and then, maybe once a week or so, the same drunken neighbor would declare for all to hear: "The cops can't ask old Barney what happened that day. We've heard what Blanche has to say. But Barney can't say a word."

Maybe Barney's death was an accident. One arrow out of hundreds can go astray. Blanche refused to talk about it anymore and would begin to bawl if anyone mentioned Barney's name. She also refused to compete in the Senior Olympics even though her skills had continued to improve right up until the arrow caught Barney's eye. The kids all agreed Barney would have wanted her to compete. But Blanche said no--that to do so would be like putting an arrow in Barney's other eye and there was no need for that now.


- - -
Mostly a writer of poetry, Donal Mahoney has found that narrative poems that don't work out sometimes can be converted into fiction. This piece started as a poem and was converted into fiction. Do other writers do the same?
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Death Speaks

Contributor: Caitlin Brodie

- -
They tell you to worship the sun. Worship him for his light and fire and heat. Worship his brightness, even as it claws at your eyes and you beg to look away. They give him ten thousand gods, and as an afterthought they give a name to the darkness, call him Death, and tell you to never speak his name.
Speak my name. Don’t be afraid.
God of darkness, God of disease, God of blindness, God of night. I existed long before you. I will exist long after you. I remember with my hollow eyes the beginning of it all. I walked this rock you call home, embraced it all, loved it all, fell asleep with the sun on my back and when I woke, I was named Evil.
You people blame me for shadows, blame me for the bad things that live in my heart. But you can’t have shadows without light. Show me a good man, a kind man, and I will show you the shadows inside him. Light and Dark. These things were created equal. I am no murderer. He is no god. These things I know, yet here I am. Alone.
You see me coming, you run for cover. Head towards the light, find that pretty brightness at the end of the tunnel, hear the voices of your family on the other side. That is death, friends. I am the darkness, I am rest, and yet you run from me and into his sick, bright arms and I am not to be trusted.
At the end of all things, your precious sun will burn. Unable to control his rage, he will release himself, and all his light and fire and heat will destroy everything you’ve ever known until all that’s left is silence. Until all that’s left is me. And yet I am the one you fear.
I am the cold hand on your fevered forehead. I am the warm embrace of clouds on every black winter night. I am relief, I am sleep, I am that which gives all your light and brightness meaning.
In the end, your sun will burn apart and fall into my embrace, just as everything does. I will be there at the end, holding you as everything I love is turned to dust, and as always I will be alone.
My name is not Death, or Satan, or Stranger. My name is not Black or Night or Evil.
My name is End, and I will never die.


- - -
Caitlin Brodie recently graduated from Columbia College Chicago with a degree in Fiction Writing. She is currently working on her first novel.
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Saudades

Contributor: Lindsey McLeod

- -
Saudade is a unique Galician-Portuguese word that has no immediate translation in English; it describes a deep emotional state of nostalgic longing for an absent something or someone that one loves.

I have been waiting for what seems like days. Tick tick. You have been gone for an indefinable amount of time, and left me with her. I know she hates me - that much has been made perfectly clear. I'm not exactly keen on her either. She resents the bond we have together, the closeness, the daily walks to the local swingpark which thankfully so far you have not invited her to come on after that first disastrous attempt. Tick. She is my enemy for your affection, the strange body sleeping in your bed, taking up space in the already too-small flat. Tick tick.

It is not that she has forced me into the kitchen, where I huddle now under the table next to the radiator, listening to the irregular old clock hung crookedly on the wall. I could sit in the living room on the soft couch if I wished, although I would have to endure her mutterings and pointed glares. I could even go and curl up on your bed, in the space that smells of you and safety, if I felt brave enough to risk her wrath. Tick. I was, after all, here first. She knows that. She cannot get rid of me. She can only try to outlive me. I was never particularly bulky, but now, looking down at my scrawny body, I see how much I have been changed by the past few months. I've heard you arguing with her late at night. She screams at you about the cost of my medical bills, about my occasional accidents. Tick tick. Your voice is always steady, quiet. She threatens to leave you. She never does. She smashes objects around the house. She never replaces them. I can't help but cringe when she speaks to me, and somehow that seems to make her hate me even more.

I hear your footsteps on the porch, and the slow click of your key in the lock. Tick. Everything you do has an edge of solid reassurance. There are no words to explain how much you mean to me, how my heart swells up with joy to know that you are in my presence again, a barrier of protection against the enemy and the rest of the world. You exchange a few words with the devil, then I hear your boots, heavy and somehow more real than anything else in this house, in this world, thumping across the floor towards the kitchen. I scramble out from under the table as eagerly as my old bones can manage. Ticktickticktick. When you push the door open I throw myself at you with all the energy I can muster. You laugh, bending down to my height and gather me in your arms. "Easy there," you say, chuckling. "I've only been at work for a few hours. Did you miss me that much?"

It may seem like just a few hours to you, but locked in this house all day under the eye of the enemy, listening to the clock, my finite time rushes away unbearably slowfast. I bury my head in your shoulder and try to force down the lump in my throat. Tick tick. The feeling is beautiful and terrible at the same time. It makes me shiver. To be reunited with something you missed so much, longed for so badly, is overwhelming. I can't deny that every time you leave, I wonder if you will come back to protect me or to gather your things and leave. Tick.

The enemy pushes open the kitchen door. She gives me a distasteful look but refrains from saying anything. "What do you want to do about dinner?"

You grin down at me as your hand gently strokes my hair. "Let's just order in tonight. That new Chinese place looked good."

She grimaces behind you, and the blame in her eyes is directed solely at me. Tick.

"Fine," she snarls, and slams the door.

A brief look of contrition flashes over your face, but it is quickly replaced by a rueful smile. I look up at you, apologetic for my existence.

She bangs back into the room. Tick tick. "She's not your goddamn mother, you know."

Ti-

You don't look at her. You look at me.

-ck.

"I know," you say. But your arms tightening around me tell a different story.


- - -
I won the Cazart Short Story prize in February 2012; recently I was longlisted in the Fish Publishing 2013 Short Story competition. Three of my flash fiction stories are available as a download on the Ether Books mobile app.
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Waiting

Contributor: Steven Winters

- -
The sound of conveyer belts and the news, shown on dusty 90’s television screens, dominate the empty baggage claim as she stares toward the escalator which leads from the main terminal. Even as the broadcast tells its usual tales of death and debauchery, it matters little to her.

She waits there in an ivory dress, the one she wore the day he first met her all those years ago. A small, tear drop sapphire rests several inches above her chest; the first gift he ever gave her, “It accents your beautiful eyes.” All that matters to her is that he is coming home from the war front, and she wants to meet him the same way they first met. The rain that patters outside even has a romantic ambiance as she can see them walking through it together, clasping hands in a downpour as happened on their wedding day. Even though they have no children, promises of his return intimate that he would like to start a family.

Ten minutes after his scheduled arrival, still no sign of him as she waits at the baggage claim. It must be a slight delay. Half an hour later, people come and go, but still he has not arrived. After an hour she looks at the old screens, a flight has crashed in the Atlantic, and a tear traces her face. The newly reunited families who greet each other so affectionately only see a girl who waits alone.


- - -
Steven Winters is an undergraduate student working towards a dual degree in Creative Writing and Microbial Biology at Auburn University. When he is not studying, he can be found outside enjoying the the elements.
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Two

Contributor: Chris Sharp

- -
She had to make herself move at some point. For over a half hour, her stillness matched her stolid living-room furniture. At last she stood with the oxygen brought on by one of her deepest sighs. At two in the morning, she wondered how her former husband was getting around and moving about in his own house.

“Geraldine?” said Serge, her new husband, a minute after she returned to the bedroom and slipped back into the bed.

“What?”

“I thought you were going to read.”

“I was.”

“I thought I heard you talking.”

“I was reading aloud to give myself some company. Now I want to go back to sleep, Serge. Okay?”

In the middle of the night, Geraldine had made the habit of leaving Serge in bed so she could read in the living room and “make my eyes sleepy.”

“Otherwise I’ll be lying in bed for hours keeping my eyes shut like a little kid,” she had told him.

She would always keep the dreams that woke her up at a careful distance from Serge. In recent weeks, she made her late-night visits to the living room more frequently so the time when she phoned her former husband would get lost in the routine.

“I had a dream just now that you were handling my ears,” she had said to Brandon, the young man whom she married when she was only twenty. “My two ears seemed to be made of clay, and you wanted to remake them with your fingers, for some reason.”

Once again – for the seventh time in just two months – Brandon told her he just experienced the same dream she described. “Exactly the same dream,” he told her. “I was waiting for you to call in my own little space here.”

“I know it has something to do with the twins, Brandon.”

In the middle of their two-year marriage, Geraldine suffered a miscarriage of twins, which she remembered as an event so disruptive it divided her years into the old times and the new times. But the new times were so different she could no longer see herself living in them, nor could she see Brandon living with her there.

“They say ghosts linger with us because of unresolved issues,” she said.

“But are these dreams the ghosts of the twins, or of the old Geraldine and the old Brandon?”

She didn’t feel like answering that. “These dreams come to me in the form of a half-life,” she told him.

“I know I acted badly toward you, Geraldine. I know you needed to talk with me those nights after we lost the babies. But I just wanted to get some sleep so I could survive at work.”

“Did you hear what I just said to you, Brandon?”

She felt stunned that he was so oblivious, even though she used to tell him about a “half-life” taking over when all physical things ended, when the twins might still grow into some kind of wonderful people.

“I know how you feel, Geraldine.”

“How can you know how I feel?”

“In my dream I felt myself touching your ears and saying, “I miss you. I miss you.’”

“That’s not what I miss.”

“Geraldine, please listen to me.” His voice lowered to such a soft pitch it reminded her about his own wife and kid who were probably sleeping in another room out of the way. “In my dream I was trying to make you younger.”

“What’s so nice about that?”

“I mean to say, to make you the Geraldine I once married.”

“What’s wrong with the Geraldine I am now?”

“Truly I’m not the same Brandon I was then, and you’re not the same Geraldine. In a way, maybe we both became two imposters.”

“Maybe just one imposter.”

“Please, Geraldine, these dreams are so freaking me out.”

At other times, she might have kept the line of thought going, but this night she decided to get off the phone.

“Goodnight, Brandon.”

Then she just sat there.

With Brandon’s abrupt new description about a pair of imposters, the word “two” was still getting to her. It started with the miscarriage. She was bleeding for nearly two weeks, practically never moving in her bed with her fears locked in yet shedding much more blood in the last two days. On the last night she wore two new black shadows under her eyes. Then she felt herself bleeding so heavily she rushed from her bed into the bathroom.

She told Brandon when she came out: “I just miscarried.”

In the hospital, as she felt throughout the sedation that scraping and that cleaning in the D&C procedure, she closed her eyes tightly. At the time, she thought shutting her eyes against the forced reality pressing on her might somehow salvage the two little things that had fallen into the toilet.

After that, everything seemed to be coming at her in pairs.

Even when she drove up to any intersection, she mainly thought about two things crossing in front of her.

When she had at last slipped back into bed with her new husband of only two months, she closed her eyes to make everything as black as possible. Then two little lights popped up on the black screen.


- - -
Chris Sharp has numbers of flash-fiction short stories in Linguistic Erosion, Yesteryear Fiction, Weirdyear, and Daily Love as well as longer fiction listed by Google under “Short stories by Chris Sharp.” His book “Dangerous Learning” is being distributed by Barnes & Noble.
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Wishes & Dreams

Contributor: Linda M. Crate

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She never loved her boyfriend. Not once. Not even for a fleeting second. She had never liked the thought of being someone’s prize. She was not interested in cooking or cleaning house or popping out fifty babies. Yet her mother seemed to think she ought to have a boyfriend. It’s how this all came about. Her mother was forever chastising her about fulfilling her role to society. Women were meant to marry men, carry their offspring, and to offer something to the world.

She had no problem with the latter one — it was the first two that she had a problem with. It wasn’t as if she had a problem with the institution of marriage, if someone wanted to marry they could, but to her it was archaic. It was being chained in an enslavement of someone else’s needs.

It may have been selfish, but she wanted to soar on her own wings without anyone weighing her down. The fae kicked out angrily at the ground.

Her mother had landed her the menial task of tedium that required painting the roses red. Said it was a better way to spend her time than stewing.

Clearly her mother had not forgiven her for the spat that had broke out between them earlier.

A quilt of white snow would be falling soon after the lilt of the last remaining autumn lilies had bent their cupped heads back for their last spell. She hoped that was soon. Winter was a season of solitude and she would wear his ivory robes proudly.

She didn’t even know if she even particularly liked the boy her mother had chosen for her.

He was handsome to be certain with his purple wings trimmed in the same silver as a crescent moon, and his silver and white webs that etched themselves upon them like a spiders. His wings were some of the loveliest in the land. Yet when he smiled his perfectly pearly teeth at her or when his amethyst eyes twinkled with love for her, she felt nothing. Not even his words or his beautiful black hair laced with purple could stir any emotion in her. She was completely numb to the entirety of his existence.

After she was done giving the flowers their beautiful crimson wings, she flew off on her own. Her blonde hair rippled behind her like the flaxen hands of grains moving in the zephyr. Her scarlet eyes were the same color as her wings which were trimmed in gold, the design she had been born with on her wings were ironically flowers.

She was the least girly person she knew.

She kept soaring through the air until she made it halfway into the wood. Sitting down with the mandrakes, she took part in their lively conversation sometimes merely laughing at a joke or granting them advice on how to prevent themselves from being picked from prying mortal hands.

Alotta lifted her head when she felt the presence of another.

There Asimov stood, gleaming and glittering like an overlarge insect. She really didn’t want to deal with him right now, and before she even realized what she was doing — she was running.

He called out her name, but still she did not stop. She didn’t want to face him today or the next day or any other day after those days. She wished that he would leave her alone. She did not want nor need the sheltering of his arms. She was her own person, she was more than capable of standing on her own two feet.

She was sick and tired of people insisting upon the fact that she needed help.

Couldn’t they see that she were an independent creature? Evidently not. Storming into the stables, she began grooming her father’s favorite unicorn. It just so happened that Moon Silver was her favorite unicorn, too. He was the most patient of all of them (people had the false impression that unicorns were mostly patient they were usually all in a hurry especially the younger ones) and he was one of the rare unicorns that spoke.
“Something is bothering you?” he asked.

“I’m sorry, did I brush you too roughly?”

“No, I could sense it,” the old unicorn smiled. “Tell old Silver what it is.”

“It’s that boy they’re trying to foist upon me.”

“Ah. How do you feel about it?”

“I don’t love him, I never had. I want to follow my heart, but I don’t want to disappoint my parents.”

“Somehow, I think following your heart is more important than that,” the unicorn insisted. “They might be angry at first,” he admitted. “But they’ll see that you’ve made the right choice for you. You should not live out anyone else’s dreams but your own.”

She smiled. “Silver, you’re so wise.”

“Well, at one thousand fifty years old I’d hope so. I’d be a shame to unicorns, otherwise,” he insisted, as he proudly shook out his silvery mane.

“Silver, stop that, that tickles!” she laughed.

“It’s nice to hear your laugh again, I have not heard it for many moons.”

Alotta nodded. She knew now what she must do. She knew that her mother would be furious, but Moon Silver was right. “I know, it has been too long,” she agreed. “Wish me luck, Silver, I don’t think that this is going to go over well, at all.”

She pushed open the door to find herself nose to nose with Asimov.

“Why did you ignore me in the forest, Alotta?” he asked, grabbing her arm roughly. “We are to be married one day you can’t just —.”

“About that,” she remarked firmly. “That wedding will never come to being.”

“What do you mean by that?” her mother interjected, coming upon the scene.

She spotted her father eavesdropping nearby.

She tried hard not to lose her temper completely. “Mother, father, Asimov, there is something that I should have told you all long ago.” She shook loose her curls from her dark eyes. “If I want children, I will have them. If I wish to marry, I shall. However, to me marriage is nothing less than archaic. Asimov, my mother handpicked you to be my husband I never have nor ever will love you — I have no intentions of marrying you or bearing your children. I will not be locked in a house all day slaving away to the work and wishes of others and ignore my own heart!” she shouted. “I must be true to me, I must follow my own hopes and dreams and aspirations. Maybe one day I’ll be all the things you have always wanted from me, mother. But today is not that day.”

Her father beamed proudly. “Well said, Alotta.” He draped an arm around his daughter’s shoulders before his wife could stop him. “We’re going into the house, Edwarvina. I think you should clear up this thing with Asimov, hmm?” With that he led his daughter into the house.

Alotta drew in her breath. “You’re going to berate or admonish me about my poor timing, aren’t you?”

“No,” her father smiled. “No, I think you had perfect timing. Your mother will be angry for a certain season, it is true, but I’m glad that you spoke up for yourself. You truly are the daughter of Ryithivar Squillings.”

“Of course I am, father,” she laughed, tapping him gently on the nose. “I have your eyes.”

“That you do,” he agreed.

She smiled politely, excusing herself out the door. Before her mother could reach her, she took off to the forest, and rejoined the mandrakes. She would let her parents duke it out for a while. Right now, she would sit here and talk freely with her friends. Her heart felt better now that it were unburdened and the guilt of lying had washed it’s stain away. She knew that her mother would never understand her, but she was meant for something more than a provincial life. She could feel it in her bones.


- - -
Linda Crate is a Pennsylvanian native currently migrated to Maine. She has a degree in English-Literature and her poetry and short stories have appeared in many publications the latest of which include: Birds Eye reView, Mirror Dance, Blue & Yellow Dog, Crisis Chronicles Online Library, Super Flash Fiction, and Dead Snakes.
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Jesus, Can We Talk?

Contributor: Donal Mahoney

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Jesus, can we talk? Some folks say you're coming back any day now but many of them have been saying that for years. They say it could happen tomorrow, or maybe next week, and they've already put their affairs in order. They believe they will be swept up and taken into heaven, leaving many others on the ground, just standing there, slack-jawed and staring at all the backsides rising in the air.

I'd like be to among those rising but my Baptist barber says he doesn't think papists will be issued passports for this trip. I've been his customer for 30 years so he plans to take a rope along and drop it down to me. If I grab hold and can hang on, he says I'm welcome to come along if Jesus doesn't cut me loose. I may be a papist, he says, but he knows from all our haircut debates over the years that I believe in Jesus and the bible as the inerrant Word of God. He even tells his Baptist and Four Square Gospel customers I'm okay, theologically speaking.

I keep telling him papists believe in Jesus just as strongly as he does. But that's not what he heard about Catholics growing up in the Ozarks as a child. What's more, since I grew up in Chicago, I talk kind of funny, he says. I always tell him I can sound just like him with a mouth full of cornbread.

In the meantime, Jesus, I need a favor on different matter entirely. I'm hoping you'll find time to make a quick visit to the house of a friend of mine around midnight any night of the week. He's been retired for many years and he's enjoying the fruits of his considerable labors. As I often remind him, he's enjoying the fruits of your favors as well. But he doesn't see it that way, necessarily, if you want to know the truth.

As I see it, you've been very good to this man for more than 70 years but now he needs a different kind of help. Like me, he's old enough to find himself any day now next up in the checkout line. But he talks as though the life we both enjoy has no end in sight. If he didn't live in a far-away city, I'd take him for a haircut at my barber's shop and there he would hear the truth with a little cornbread on the side.

Now don't get me wrong. I don't want to see my friend turn Baptist, not that there's anything wrong with Baptists, as Seinfeld might say. I just want him to get back to Mass every Sunday morning before someone has to push him down the aisle in a wheelchair. He has a lot to be thankful for and maybe not a whole lot of time to say thanks.

You see, he was a high school graduate who became a paratrooper during the Korean War. After he was discharged he found a job as a janitor. In no way dumb, he used diligence and brains to become vice-president of the same company in ten years. He got there by being a good salesman of condiments. The man can talk but then a lot of Irish-American papists can talk. Maybe we can't yodel like the Swiss but we can certainly talk.

Not satisfied with being president of that company, he quit and started his own company. He decided to manufacture and sell products that were just catching on when Woodstock was all the rage. You remember Woodstock. That's where all the musicians and Hippies showed up on a water-logged farm in the Catskills in 1969 to celebrate free love and other developments in society at that time.

In any event, my friend figured that supplying health food to vegans and vegetarians would be a gold mine in the future and it turned out he was right. This is a guy who spent his adolescence at White Castle restaurants eating double cheeseburgers by the sack. It must have taken a conversion experience akin to the one Saul of Tarsus had to get him to try health food. I'm not sure he eats that much of it himself but he sure can sell it.

Thirty years later, with his kids reared and on their own, he sold his company for seven million dollars. I haven't asked him yet if he had any outside help in his success or if he did it all by himself.

He still believed in you while the company was growing but I don't know what happened after that. He's a good man, basically. He has the same wife now as when he was a janitor, a big bunch of kids now grown up and doing well and a flock of grandkids who adore him. Excess of any kind has never been a problem with him. He simply lost his faith somewhere along the road to becoming a millionaire. Other millionaires have followed the same path, I imagine, but I have never known any others, personally.

Many decades ago in grammar school, he and I were always in the same grade and we both believed, without any doubt, that Jesus Christ died on the cross and rose from the dead and opened the gates of heaven for the likes of us and maybe for the likes of the worst of us if they shaped up in time. Now my friend is living the good life but says he doesn't know if you exist or if you died on the cross or if you rose from the dead. He says he'd like to believe in you but he needs some evidence. Otherwise, he says he'll remain an agnostic, a word he says means "I don't know."

Well, Jesus, I don't think his problem is a simple one. First he has to come to believe in God again, a belief some philosophers say a man can reach through reason alone. After all, there are the five proofs for the existence of God that many philosophers accept. But then he has to come to believe again in Jesus Christ--that God sent his only begotten Son to die on the cross for the sins of all mankind. That's the hard part. He can't do that through reason alone. That takes faith, the gift you gave to both of us, the gift he lost and I somehow retained despite being no better than he is.

Jesus, this man is 75 years old so perhaps you can sense the urgency of my request. There's not much time for him to believe again unless, of course, you step in.
That's why I'd like you to drop by his mansion some midnight when you have some free time. Just pull him out of bed by the ankles and hold him upside down for awhile before you introduce yourself. Then tell him you are Jesus Christ, a native of Bethlehem with strong ties to Galilee and Nazareth. Remind him about what you did with the loaves and fishes at Cana and ask him if he sees any parallels to that event in his own life. My hope is that before you leave, or shortly thereafter when someone revives him, he will find that he has the gift of faith again.

You see, I don't know how he lost his faith but I can't find it for him. The nuns who schooled us in the life, death and resurrection of Our Lord Jesus Christ have been dead for many years. There are a couple of them who might have been able to turn him around. They had a way of making you see the truth. It's amazing how quickly you can see the truth clearly when an old-style nun in a big habit takes time to explain everything half an inch from your nose.

In any event, you gave both of us the gift of faith in 1938, the year of our Baptism, and I somehow still have my faith, despite not leading a noble life. I mean I was honest and was never arrested but there might be a lady or more who would take a bumbershoot to my backside if she ran into me, even at my age.

My friend, on the other hand, has done everything according to the book but he no longer reads the book. So, please, drop by his place some midnight before he dies and yank him out of bed by the ankles. Let him know who you are and mention that you look forward to seeing him at Mass on Sunday. Remind him that he can get a spiritually nutritious bite to eat at any Catholic church in the world in case he still likes to travel. Food that will stick to his soul for the long road ahead.

By the way, this man can afford to tithe, big-time. Even though papists don't tithe the way Protestants do, they nevertheless give a ton of money to charities managed by the Church and other not-for-profit organizations. But it's probably best if we don't mention his ability to tithe to my Baptist barber. He might be tempted to get on a plane and go see if my friend needs a trim.


- - -
Donal Mahoney has had poetry and fiction appear in various publications in North America, Europe, Asia and Africa. Some of his work can be found at http://eyeonlifemag.com/the-poetry-locksmith/donal-mahoney-poet.html
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Throwing-knife

Contributor: Tony Battaglia

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When John turned eleven, he got a throwing-knife for his birthday. He'd seen it in the glass case of a shop on Water Street when he went in with his father to buy bread and milk and tobacco, and it had reminded him of a scene from that movie The Magnificent Seven, which he'd been allowed to see only after cleaning his room. He'd begged for it, and his father had said, "Maybe for your birthday."
The knife was a squat, flat strip of metal, blunt and straight along most of its length but carved and sharpened to a point at one end. John's mother had tested it on a veal cutlet she was preparing in the kitchen and declared it to be safe enough.
John spent the rest of his birthday in the backyard, throwing the knife with all of his strength into the upper branches of the big maple tree, then watching it bounce and clatter its way back down from bough to bough and trying again. After a while he got pretty good at chucking it way up there. He was getting some real height.
The next day, a Monday, John had to go to school. The minute he got home, though, he was right back out there lobbing his throwing-knife into the maple tree. He couldn't get it to stick.
For a month or so, things went on this way. Now and then John would forget about the throwing-knife and leave it out in the yard. Before long it was rusted. Most days he would come across it while digging for worms or playing some other solitary game, and he'd give it a few tosses, but his heart wasn't really in it anymore.
One day John's friend Sam came over to play. They were playing Magnificent Seven in the backyard-- John insisted on being Britt, which was fine with Sam since he wanted to be Steve McQueen anyway. They were taking potshots at bandits from behind the woodpile when Sam found the rusty throwing-knife in the grass.
"What's this?" he said.
"That's my throwing-knife. Like in the movie. Watch."
John took the knife and threw it up into the tree. It twirled and pinged its way back down through the branches.
"One day it's going to stick way up there," said John, "and then it'll be up there forever. Even if we move away."
"Let me try," said Sam.
"I've been trying for weeks," said John, "I think it's a dud knife. You'll never get it." But he handed it over.
Sam wound up real good and whipped the knife high. It arced through the air, spinning like a rusty pinwheel, and with a dull thud buried itself in the maple trunk near the tree's crown.


- - -
Tony Battaglia is a writer and painter from Kent, Ohio. His fiction has appeared in Composite Arts Magazine and Red Fez, and his poetry is forthcoming in the Eunoia Review and Circa Review. One time he got an empty fortune cookie and he still worries about that sometimes.
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Submersion

Contributor: Maddison Scott

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Underwater, his face whirls like a metallic dream. I want to reach up and touch him but he isn't mine.

I latch to a thought I had one summer when I was home alone. I took to the water with clothes still clutching wrinkled skin. When I held my breath, I was pulled away from the sky. There was no sound, only the dim whimper of my heart breathing. It wasn’t difficult to imagine myself as a wreck on the bottom of the ocean, waiting to be found.

I can't hear my name but I see a dancing smudge of pink. It’s my sister. She's waving me up like a distressed Pelican. When I hit the surface, I’m reluctant to anchor my eyes. If I look at him, she’ll know.

“Don’t drown,” my sister clicks, as though the moments are wasted in my presence. My fingers skim the side of the pool and when she’s out of view, I founder.

I cling to the pool's belly with corrugated fingers, my anger effervescing. From below, life is transparent. Distractions don’t claw at my vanity. Weak thoughts don’t sink my esteem.

I'm not even sure when the world dissolves, only that it does. The water stiffens but inside I'm still warm, still drifting. The touch flares like an electric shock –my body a compass flickering back and forth. Below me lies a graveyard of summer memories and above me, its eraser.

He digs his fingers into the soft skin on my shoulder. I'm shaking, my jaw clamped too tight to protest. I feel his breath before his lips but both are welcome. A hand lingers over my heart, my lungs shiver, his lips still affixed. When I open my eyes he pulls me close, whispering words that melt my bones.

I reach up to touch him and this time, there's no water between us.


- - -
Maddison Scott recently graduated from the University of Melbourne with a BA in Creative Writing. She loves to run marathons (of the TV-watching variety) and previous work has appeared in The Eunoia Review and Daily Love.
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Running Home

Contributor: John Laneri

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I recently worked Montgomery Forest, a state wildlife preserve in East Texas. My intentions were to reappraise the site before opening it to the public.

As usual, most of my day was routine. Around five o'clock though, after an uneventful ten hours of following animal trails, I tucked my notebook away and turned for home. By then, I was ready to call it a day.

A few minutes later though, I heard movement in the brush. Curious, I stopped to take a closer look, wondering if the sounds were coming from the immature bobcat that had been tracking me for much of the day. I first noted its footprints near a creek earlier in the day.

After failing to see any activity, I continued on, remembering that Maggie expected me to attend a dinner party with her club group later that evening.

Suddenly, I spotted a snake about twenty yards ahead of me – its black body gleaming in the remaining sunlight. While snakes were common in the area, I rarely saw one in the open, especially one so large.

Quietly, I edged behind a tree and watched it pause and lift away from the ground before swinging its body from side to side as if searching.

Once I watched it coil in the shadows beside a tree, I began to wonder if it had produced the sounds that I had interpreted as a bobcat's. Some snakes, I knew, were skilled trackers – a thought that sent a series of shivers racing along my spine as that inevitable burst of adrenalin kicked into my system.

Logic suggested that I move past it without being seen so I decided to backtrack and circle rather than take my chances on a direct confrontation.

Soon, I was making my way along the side of a rocky hill that would take me toward the creek near my truck. Unexpectedly, the rocks were loose, and a few broke away under my feet. I looked toward the tree and saw the snake come away from the ground and turn sharply toward me.

Our eyes met.

In an instant, I was running, my arms and legs pumping frantically – fear taking control of my senses.

Finally, after what I thought was a safe distance, I looked back… no sign of the snake, so I eased into a slow jog and continued down the hill, wondering why I had acted so foolish. After all, I was a professional naturalist, a person comfortable with the out of doors.

Near the creek, I looked back to check my progress. That’s when I saw it again – all six feet of black, menacing snake moving like a demon, its body flying across the hilltop, charging directly toward me.

Certain that it was chasing me, I resumed running, my arms and legs charged with the terror coursing through my body. I chanced another look. To my surprise, it was closer, its body whipping back and forth, gaining steadily.

A moment later, I stumbled and fell, my momentum sending me rolling downhill and into the creek.

Spitting out a mouthful of water, I looked about and spotted it, watching from the bank, its eyes anticipating my next move. I took several steps to the side. It mimicked the move. I turned in the other direction. It followed, the tongue flicking back and forth.

Smart snake, I thought as I backed away and began wading toward the far side of the creek confident that once I had put the water behind me I’d be safe. I had to be smarter than a snake – at least that was my impression at the time.

It must have known what I had intended because it slipped into the water and continued in my direction, its sleek body speeding smoothly across the surface.

Turning away, I started a frenzied run up of the last hill toward my truck. Near the ridge, I looked back and saw it come roaring out of the water, again moving directly toward me.

Staggering on, I spotted my truck across an open plain and turned toward it, knowing that I was close to the end of my endurance.

Almost immediately, the snake was beside me, striking my pant leg – its body whipping back and forth, matching me stride for stride. Angling away, I took another deep breath, digging deep to grasp whatever energy I could muster.

Much to my surprise, it edged ahead of me then suddenly, it turned and coiled, it’s mouth poised.

I sidestepped to avoid the thrust, but my shoe caught a rock that sent me tumbling out of control. After that, it was on me, slithering across my shoulders and around my neck, its body wrapped around mine. I reached to fling it away. Then, coming to my feet, I sprinted the remaining few yards to the truck and threw myself inside, my nerves shot.

As I frantically dug into my pocket for the truck keys, I again spotted it in front of the truck. Strangely, I noticed it stop and look back in my direction. Once our eyes met, it lifted off the ground and presented me with what I can only describe as a look of satisfaction.

Ramming the gearshift into drive, I stomped the gas intent on getting my revenge. But for reasons that I cannot fully explain, I hit the brakes, skidded to a stop and waited until it had safely disappeared into the brush. Only then did I take a deep breath and head for home.

Maggie was not happy when I arrived late for her dinner party. But as I tried to explain, it’s not often one comes face to face with an aggressive snake.

Surprisingly, her dinner group was enthralled by my story.

Of course, I failed to mention that the snake had been a Black Racer, a non-poisonous species – one to be respected but not feared.


- - -
John is a native born Texan living near Houston. His writing focuses on short stories and flash. Publications to his credit have appeared in several scientific journals as well as a number of internet sites and short story periodicals.
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Susan

Contributor: Casey Sean Harmon

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Ever since the night of the terrible thunderstorm, Susan, the Bull Terrier, had a suspicious turn of mind. Everyone knew it. The Anderson family worried something fierce over her, for she no longer spent her time loping in the back yard or playing ball with the children. She wasn’t an old dog, either. In fact she was quite young. There was still that cute puppy look on her face and her tail still managed to wag whenever that certain spot just above her stomach was rubbed. Well, it did wag, before the awful thunderstorm. The fact is that no dog ages that fast. No dog. But it wasn’t until the night of the 7th, just as the old clock in the den struck 9:00, that Mr. Anderson started believing that the Bull Terrier was no normal dog.
He was writing in his record book, of course. Mr. Anderson, being a man of stature, always kept to a schedule. Starbucks coffee and the newest innovations could wait if it meant going over their allowed budget. The children were tucked in their beds. Mrs. Anderson was upstairs in her bed, thinking about the many chores that awaited her the next day. The grand old house was clean as it could be, yet Mrs. Anderson could always find something out of place. About the time Peter Anderson closed his record book and started to stand he noticed that Susan had crept into the study. This was odd. Susan was usually asleep at the foot of Charles’ bed at this time of night. Peter regarded her as she sat before him, staring. “What’s the matter, girl?” he asked, never anticipating that she would actually reply; and yet, when it happened, there was the surest certainty that he was not imagining things.
The night passed very slowly for Mr. Anderson. He couldn’t sleep. All night he stared up at the ceiling. Next morning Peter wrapped a chain around Susan’s neck and tied her off to a tree in the back yard. When Mrs. Anderson and the children asked what he was doing, he replied: “Never mind. Susan must get happy again.” All week Mr. Anderson ignored Susan. He never went out to visit her. He refused to allow anyone else to visit her. Time after time Susan’s words would play throughout Peter’s mind. Often Peter would wake up in the middle of the night drenched with sweat and shaking all over.
He tightened their budget. The children couldn’t understand why he no longer wanted to play with them. He never smiled, he never laughed. With everything he did he kept a close eye on the back yard where Susan sat, silently staring at the house.
One day he woke up and stomped out and shortened Susan’s chain. He kept doing this day after day; Susan willingly edged closer and closer to the tree, until only three feet of chain remained.
On the 23rd Mr. and Mrs. Anderson got into a fight. Mrs. Anderson demanded that he tell her once and for all what was going on. “It is the only way for Susan to straighten out,” he would say. “You, fix us a meal. Do something besides clean!” Charles, the oldest, decided he would sneak out one afternoon and pour some food into Susan’s bowl, for she hadn’t eaten in almost a week and all the water she received was what came in the rain. Mr. Anderson caught him in the act and spanked him and told him to never try such a foolish thing again.
On the 25th Mr. Anderson awoke with a start. He carried a rifle with him as he walked out the back door. He aimed, pulled the trigger, and killed Susan right on the spot. As he walked back to the house he felt a relief in his heart. “It is over,” he thought. “Now I don’t have to worry anymore.” He told his family that Susan had tried to attack him so he had to shoot her.
A bad storm was forming outside. Peter Anderson took his family and together they huddled closely in the storm shelter. “It’s over,” he kept saying to himself, a wad of anxiety stuck in his throat. He swallowed deeply. “My worries are over.”
At exactly 3:00 that day a huge meteor entered the earth’s atmosphere. It fell closer and closer to the ground, until it came to rest atop the storm shelter in which the Anderson family huddled. Everyone was killed instantly, except for Peter, who, struggling to breathe, said, “If only I had listened to you, Susan. If only I had listened to your warning.”
In heaven, Mrs. Anderson and her children stood next to Susan, who gazed downward at earth with tears in her eyes.


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Casey Sean Harmon is a bestselling author and a Soldier in the U.S. Army. He has studied with the Jerry B. Jenkins Christian Writer's Guild, and holds a degree through American Military University. He lives with his wife and son wherever the military sends them. Please visit his website for the latest: www.caseyseanharmon.com
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Thinking in the Box

Contributor: David L. Nye

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“Ambulance needed at corner of Murphy and Seven. 82 respond.”
It always starts with a call.
The driver tears toward the location and, before I know it, we have the patient loaded in the back and I’m trying to keep him going as we fly to the emergency room.
This time, it’s a car crash victim and I’m pumping fluids into his veins to replace the blood still leaking from his thigh.
I’m focused, clear-headed.
I’m off my medications.
The meds keep the voices away but they make it almost impossible to treat patients. I lost a man because I couldn’t work through the fog, never again.
“Ten minutes,” Ben, the driver says.
I check the bandage again; the bleeding seems slower but I can’t tell for sure without removing it. I check the blood pressure… too low.
I increase the IV flow, the saline will increase the volume of his blood. I check his pupils and…
“What’s that?” the priest asks.
He sits, as he usually does, in the empty chair for family members to ride to the hospital.
“It’s nothing, just a burst vessel in his eye.”
“How can you be sure? Do you think the devil announces his presence? No, we must always be wary of the signs he approaches.” The priest is rotating the rosary beads as he speaks.
The patient’s face twists to one side and his mouth flies open; a moan escapes.
“There!” the priest points at the man and I hear not just the moan of one man, but of thousands. The priest is right…
“Seven minutes, man.” Ben’s voice sends the priest and the demon running, and it’s just the patient and I again.
The bandages are doing their job. I reassess my interventions, a practice they taught us in school. Always check, again and again. Bandages are good, saline line is good.
“Hey, buddy?” the patient doesn’t respond to my voice. Not good, he reacted when we picked him up. He’s falling further…
“Why wouldn’t he respond?” Father Todd asks.
“He could be sinking deeper into shock, or he’s lost more blood. He’s still bleeding.”
“Why else?”
I remain silent.
“Why else wouldn’t he respond, Scott?”
Father Todd leans in to me, he whispers in my ear.
“Why else would he be unable to respond? What if he is no longer in control of his body?”
I try to ignore him as I work, but his question nags at me. The patient is not bleeding heavily enough to be losing consciousness, and the shock should be wearing off. He should be responding more easily, not less.
I check my interventions again. Bandages are good, saline is good, patient does not respond to sound or touch.
“Check him, check to see if he responds to pain.”
Father Todd is right, it’s the next level of patient consciousness, and I need to check.
I rub his sternum, my knuckles digging into the soft, tender flesh on top of his ribs. His skin is crushed between his own bones and my knuckles.
His eyes flash open.
“Mary, mother of Jesus!”
Father Todd’s voice echoes through the cramped back of the ambulance but I barely hear it over my own heart. My heart hammers in my ears as I stare into the patient’s eyes, now full red. Both eyes. Not even a pupil is visible.
“Father, what do I…” I start to ask, but Ben interrupts me.
“Four minutes, almost there.”
The priest is gone, it’s just the patient and I again.
I close my eyes and count to ten.
Check the interventions.
Saline is good. Bandage is good. Bleeding seems to be under control, either slowed to a trickle or ceased. I can’t tell through the bandage.
I don’t want to look.
I check blood pressure again.
I don’t want to look.
I scribble on the chart.
I don’t want to look, but I do.
His eyes are closed.
I speak to him again.
“Hey, bro?”
His eyes flutter open this time, but it is not the patient in charge of them.
“Father!?” I whisper, panicked, into the closed air. “Father! Oh, please don’t leave me here.”
“I see it, son.” The priest is back.
“It can’t be.”
“It is, and you must stop it,” Father Todd says, calmly. I listen to his voice, my only sure thing in this world. I thank God he got on with us, at the crash site. I’m so thankful there is a priest to help me. If I was the only one in the ambulance, I don’t now what I’d do.
“You must kill him.” My stomach twists at Father Todd’s words.
“I can’t, Father. I can’t. He’s my patient.”
“No, no longer. He’s…”
“Two minutes, get ready to offload him!” Ben’s voice cuts through the back of the ambulance. I shake my head to clear it and do a final check of the interventions. All good. I go to check the restraints.
He grabs me; his hand has an unnatural grip on my arm. I can feel heat searing through my flesh and my bones crunching in his strength.
“Do it! You have to stop him! You’re the only one!” Father Todd screams into my ear.
My eyes well with tears from the pain, but I get my free hand to the bandages and pull them away. There is a clot underneath; I peel it free of the skin. I punch the soft flesh, clearing any clots inside the tissue. Crimson spurts onto the bandage as I get my arm free of the weakening grip. He won't survive that blood loss.
I feel the ambulance coming to a halt and push the bandage back into position.
The doors open and ER nurses take the beast away.
I climb from the ambulance and look at my wrist.
Nothing.
The skin is flawless.
Nothing.
“Burn victim at Oak and Jackson, 82 respond!”
It always starts with a call.


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A former paratrooper and military journalist in the U.S. Army, David is a creative writing student in Florida.
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