Folded Flag

by N.C. Miller

When Amelia Birch limped up to her late husband’s burial service wearing a walking cast and dragging a sledgehammer, the crowd gasped and the minister stopped preaching. She’d been in the car accident that killed her husband a week before – that much was known – but she was released from the hospital the same night and hadn’t been seen since. There’d been a lot of talk as to what happened and why she’d skipped the funeral. So, when she showed up at the cemetery, dressed for church but looking angry, she had everyone’s full attention. Continue reading

Leave a comment

Filed under Fiction

The Prodigal Son Never Returns

by E.G. Willy 

Mom says, “The nineteenth, that’s an important date. I don’t remember why.”

“It’s John’s birthday.”

“Sorry?” she says, reaches for her hearing aides, tries to adjust their volume.

“John, it’s his birthday.”

She thinks about this. “Did I send him something?” Continue reading

Leave a comment

Filed under Nonfiction

The Roommate From Somewhere Else

by Zoran Ernjakovic

Brian’s new roommate arrived three weeks into the semester, dragging nothing but a small silver cube that hummed when you got too close.

“My name is Zyx,” he said, extending a hand that gripped just a beat too long. “Pronounced like ‘zicks.'”

He was clearly an alien. Continue reading

Leave a comment

Filed under Fiction

Endings

by J. Alan Nelson

The hospice room smells like antiseptic
and the ghost of cigarettes she swore she quit in ’89.
Everyone pretends this is normal,
the way we pretend the body isn’t a house
slowly evicting itself,
one lamp at a time. Continue reading

Leave a comment

Filed under Poetry

Burst of Happiness

by Bianca Ambrosino

I was an anxious child. Especially at night.
I couldn’t sleep in the dread alone, so I
stayed awake. Thinking about not looking
for monsters under the bed.

I felt shut out of everything. I felt
the locked doors. I sent out my signal, but
no one monitored my frequency. They just
skipped over the static, tuned out of me and
into some bell clear station not on my dial. Continue reading

Leave a comment

Filed under Poetry