Flash Fiction By Cameron Kimber

Number 2

A mother and her two daughters crossed the street from the park to the alleyway. A white Tesla whizzed by just behind them, and the older of the two girls stopped in her tracks, turning fully around to watch the car fade down the road. Her mother and younger sister kept walking undisturbed and arrived safely on the opposite sidewalk. The girl in the street spun her head around, disoriented, looking for her family. Upon seeing them, she dashed forward to catch up- not noticing the loud motorcycle absolutely cruising towards her. My heart thumped in my chest, the calculus in my head showing the little girl and the speeding motorist would absolutely be in the same place at the same time. My body and mind froze as her feet pittered and pattered on the pavement. The driver screeched to a halt with a smile on his face not two whole feet off her right side; the little girl never even noticed. The driver motioned for me to walk on, and I waved at him with my full arm, thankful he was paying more attention than most other folks on scooters around here.

Flash Fiction By Kurt Sanders

April 29th:

Today, the two-car driveway looks unusually small. It’s almost April 29th, and I’ve been sitting in my car, parked in the driveway, for thirty minutes, just staring at the garage door. I want to go inside, but I can’t move my legs. My hands grip the steering wheel tightly, and the veins on the back of my hands stand out. I bow my head in deep thought, thinking, “I so dread April 29th.” It happens every year. My mind keeps circling with thoughts: “What now? What should I do? How will I get through another April 29th?”

After thirty minutes, my muscles in my legs loosen enough to move once again. I unlock the front door and slowly open it, listening to the hinges squeak like an old dungeon door in King Arthur’s Castle. Moving inside, I glance around, nothing, silence. I bet I’d hear it hit the tile floor if I dropped a pin. I hang up my jacket and slowly walk to the living room.

It will be 6 years on April 29th. The living room is quiet as I enter. I stop and freeze. My mind flashes back to a time and place filled with smiles and laughter. Eating popcorn on the couch, watching Downton Abbey or Corner Gas. Then my eyes slowly scan to the other wall. The wall where Hospice set up an adjustable bed for her. The wall where I tried to make her as comfortable as possible. I did everything I could, but it still didn’t feel like enough, so I tried harder.

April 29th, my wife’s birthday, and the day the Lord took her to a better place. Her pain finally ended. Rest in peace, sweetheart.

Flash Fiction By Neremiah Grue

Freaky

The silence was filled with white noise, enhanced by the enclosed space. She could not hear her own heartbeats though, because she had none. She was dead and in a mortuary fridge.

Curious to see what would happen next, she didn’t have long to wait: someone came to collect her. It was neither a funeral director nor an angel but the Collector of Souls. She giggled when she saw his face emerging through the chiller wall: it was very long and sallow with tiny black eyes. He smelt of tar.

“How freaky is this?” she thought, as they merged gently together and entered the darkness beyond.

Flash Fiction By Carl “Papa” Palmer

3rd Generation Harmonica Player

Dad was a harmonica player. He always played those same several songs, but he played them well. Everyone recognized and sang along with Camptown Racetrack, Oh Susannah and Red River Valley.

On his visit to Germany while I was in the Army, Dad played, Ach Du Lieber Augustin and Beer Barrel Polka much to everyone’s enjoyment over there. He could also do a good imitation of that train chugging along the tracks down by the plywood factory in Ridgeway Virginia, steam whistle and all. Dad was a harmonica player.

He always had a harmonica in one of the kitchen drawers or on our mantle above the fireplace, sticky from a child’s fingers and clogged with cracker crumbs. With six children he went through quite a few harmonicas. Out of us kids, I was the only one to learn to play anything, just 3 or 4 songs, but that, none the less, means I am also a harmonica player.

That one Christmas Dad gave each of his four grandsons a Hohner “Old Standby” harmonica with beginner instruction and method book. I guess none of the other grandsons had done much with their instrument, because when he asked my son, Jason,
if he could play the harmonica he’d sent, it was something like, “Well, I guess you never learned to play yours either.”

Jason came out of his room a little later, handed him the songbook and asked, “Which would you like to hear, Grandpa?” He picked You Are My Sunshine and Jason played it note for note from the music written on the page.

Dad was both surprised and thrilled, but most of all amazed. Jason not only could play his harmonica, but also read music, something neither he nor I could ever do. He talked about this for many years to come. That, of course, means Jason is a harmonica player, too.

Flash Fiction By Elizabeth Jurado

Little Red

Transportation was a nightmare before Little Red. It was a 1963 Rangoon Red Ford Falcon Futura convertible with a red vinyl interior, bucket seats, and a ton of character. I loved that ugly little car. Yes, ugly; by the time I bought the little gem in 1975 for $400, it had seen years of wear and tear. The black convertible top had a large slash across the back window, and the floor beneath the accelerator was a gaping hole big enough to fit your whole foot. Fortunately, the hood and side panels were still intact, and it had all its original headlights, taillights, and mirrors. I had visions of what it could become once it was restored to its former glory.

I lived in North Miami and worked in Downtown Hollywood, about 20-plus miles away. A fifteen- to twenty-minute ride by car on I-95, but I had to take two buses to work. From North Miami to downtown Miami, I would get off at Miami Ave and walk across downtown at night to catch the Greyhound bus to Hollywood, FL. I would arrive at work two hours later. Was it terrifying for me, a 17-year-old female, walking alone across downtown Miami at night? Yes, it was my personal nightmare until I got Little Red. With freedom comes a price, however. Little Red was a safety hazard, especially on rainy days. Eventually, the convertible top tore even further, making it impossible to keep the rain from pouring in over my head, fogging my glasses, and widening the gaping hole.

I had big plans for Little Red. I wanted to customize it with red flames on both side panels and the doors. Uncle Camillo, an old Cuban mechanic and classic-car expert, kept Little Red purring for me for a year.

Poetry By Richard LeDue

One With Nature

The dead birch tree in my backyard
is still waiting for me
to make it famous with a poem,
but no one seems interested
in a tree with no leaves in summer
and is too forgettable in winter.

Poetry By Madlynn Haber

In Colors

In my family, we never wore colors.
Always dressed in shades of grey,
black cloth and brown leather.
Earth tones kept us safe, camouflaged,
well hidden.

Now, I receive gifts:
purple shawl, red scarf,
apron covered in spring flowers.
No one will recognize me
drenched in all these colors

Poetry By Shaun Tenzenmen

The Nine

Stuck in the lobby with Socrates
There’s no wifi, it’s kinda mid
A peace without joy, it’s no heaven
A torment for the untormented

Simps and himbos in eternal rizz
Cleopatra has lost control
With storms eternally buffeting
One step further down in the hole

The overstuffed couldn’t put the fork down
These foodies drowning in their slop
Cerberus’s claws and icy rain
Torment those who can never stop

Hoarders push boulders at each other
Nicolas Third forgot to share
Not enough hands to carry their wealth
Their futile labour gets nowhere

There’s toxic fights, twenty-four seven
This is Twitter but IRL
In the muddy waters of the Styx
The sullen gurgle down the swell

The unbelievers will be denied
Edgelords buried in flaming tombs
Stationed around the City of Dis
Farinata’s power consumed

Murderers boil in rivers submerged
Centaurs guarding the Phlegathon
Tyrants terrorised, contrapasso
Ever downward, the river’s run

Doomers in the forest are hanging
Trapped inside thorny bleeding trees
While harpies shriek and tear at them
Or chased by black dogs of disease

No water succours the blasphemers
The fiery sand forever burns
Eyes stitched open to the divine skies
Phlegaton flows towards new turns

Scammers, fakes and corrupt CEOs
The flatterers submerged in shit
Boiled in pitch or buried upside down
From panderer to hypocrite

Ultimate backstabbers, zero rizz
Satan’s chewing on the traitors
His three mouths full, a mukbang gone wrong
For treacherous perpetrators

In Antenora, a father wails
Gnawing the skull that sealed his fate
His children plead, one by one
A feast of love and burning hate

Yet Satan weeps, powerless and cold
Absent of love, absent of rage
From purgatory towards the stars
Through hell to a coming of age

Poetry By LB Sedlacek

Perpetual Sparkles

Paper towels
Ibuprofen aspirin
AA batteries
AAA batteries
16 oz Sundrops
20 oz Sundrops
Tomato juice
Bake beans
Sundrop is a southern soft drink
have to be careful drinking too
much too often causes kidney stones
but there’s nothing else like it it makes
great floats never tried it with
batteries, beans, tomato juice, aspirin, ibuprofen
imagine what it does to the kidneys what
else can it do
I wrote a published short story about it
“Sundrop Shots”
excuse me now
I have to go to the store
I’m out of Sundrop!