by Joseph E. Arechavala

I sat across the tree stump from Him, waiting. Waiting for Him to answer my plea. The songbirds softly chirped their last calls before sunset, and the evening mist was beginning to gather. "Do you fancy a game of chess?" He asked, in a quiet voice. 

I looked down to see the board. I honestly hadn't even noticed it sitting there. I was a bit surprised it wasn't harsh black and white Gothic, or sleekly modern walnut and maple. Instead, I saw white and green jade pieces, simply carved, resting on the white and green board, waiting. Like me.

"I suck at chess," I offered. "You'd win easily."

"Sometimes it's not about winning or losing. Sometimes, it's just about having a nice, quiet game to pass the time and talk."

"I didn't expect to have this much time with You. I figured You'd be busy collecting souls."

"It's my day off. There are many of us, you know. And even an Angel needs to recharge every once in a while." He gazed off, as though looking at some destination in the distance.

"Well?" I pressed.

"It's not your time." His hand paused above the board, then He chose, and moved a pawn. "We have rules to follow, you know." He looked up from from His move, light blond hair falling across one blue eye, an expectant expression on His face.

I sighed. 

"But I think we can bend them this once. Let's have a nice, quiet game though, first."

I looked down, chose a pawn, and moved it two spaces forward. "Let's.”

* * *

​JOSEPH E. ARECHAVALA is a lifelong resident of NJ and graduate of Rutgers University who has had poems and stories published. He has a novel, Darkness Persists, available on Amazon and is working on an anthology.

by Beth Sherman

A memory. Me, age 11, in the backyard of a stranger’s house, watching a pileated woodpecker tap a sweet gum tree. Ack ack ack ack ack ack ack, the bird calls, in a shrill, urgent voice. My father is inside — this'll just take 10 minutes and then we'll get some ice cream. I can almost taste peanut butter swirls, almost smell toffee bits crumbled on top. I pluck a blade of grass, touch its slippery green to my cheek.

All the curtains in the house are drawn. Tilting my head, I see the woodpecker vacuuming ants down its beak. I don’t own a watch, but it’s been more than ten minutes, so long that I wonder if my father will ever come out or if the house has swallowed him whole.

Later, when my mother asks where we’ve been, I don’t mention the woodpecker or the curtain house or the strange look on my father’s face when he got in the car, like he’d been lost in the woods and just spotted a breadcrumb, or that the ice cream place was closed when we got there. We drove around, I say, which was partially, mostly true.

* * *

BETH SHERMAN’s writing has been published in more than 100 literary journals, including 100 Word Story, Fictive Dream, Tiny Molecules and Bending Genres. Her work is featured in Best Microfiction 2024 and she can be reached @bsherm36 on Instagram, Blusky, or X.

by Katie Thorn

Mark watched his newest wife throw the bouquet over her shoulder. You’d think he’d be used to it: the bouquet toss, the party games, and drunk uncles. 

It set his teeth on edge.

Abbey was a safer bet than his previous wives. Laurel had impeded his plans. Roberta couldn’t keep up with him. Abbey, though—he’d known her since childhood. Heck, he’d dated her sister at university. 

Abbey would know how to keep him happy. And it didn’t hurt to have the sister waiting in the wings. He downed his champagne and stepped into the sun, clapping with the guests. 

* * *

KATIE THORN, currently studying creative writing online through Falmouth University, divides her time between writing, baking, and listening to odd musicals. Her stories have been published in Livina Press, Prompt Press, The Writer’s Workout, Magnolia Magazine, and Candlelit Chronicles.

by Mathieu Parsy

Once inseparable, jealousy over a boy caused a landslide that buried their friendship. Their chests turned into large crevices, overgrown with trees and foliage. Tectonic plates shifted in search of a mutual core, but the continents didn’t align. As new rock formations spanned the distance, the divide remained. Their magnetic fields wavered—drawn close, yet skewed off course.
 
And eruptions disturbed the stagnation, the magma of their discontent reshaping the landscape.
 
From the Atlantic ridge, Isadora can only glimpse the tip of a crag surrounded by murky waters, mist filling the air. Chirping warblers peck at her chest—out-of-tune memories. It aches. Her skin splits; warblers burrow into her heart. She cups the wound to contain the pain.
 
One day, Isadora splays her fingers to peek through the gap between her breasts. She sees the other side of the Eurasian plate, where her friend lives. Green hills and dense forests have grown there. And then she spots her friend—she bears a similar hole in her thorax. There’s no bird there. Only an abandoned nest.

* * *

MATHIEU PARSY is a Canadian writer who grew up on the French Riviera and now lives in Toronto, where he works in the travel industry. His writing has been featured in FEED, Panoply, and Brilliant Flash Fiction.
Instagram: @mathieu_parsy.

by Lynn White

Do you scream in tune
in muted monochromes
flat and featureless,
or are your screams
discordant

stark

black and white.
No grey.
No doubt.

A kaleidoscope
of keys and tones
of terrifying sounds

which scream out to me.

* * *

LYNN WHITE lives in north Wales. Her work is influenced by issues of social justice and events, places and people she has known or imagined. She is especially interested in exploring the boundaries of dream, fantasy and reality.
Facebook: Lynn White Poetry

by Liz deBeer

Mom’s quiet as we drive to the beach, not even complaining that my music’s too loud. Since summer’s over, the parking lot’s empty when I pull in. Holding onto Mom, we follow the path as memories flick: building sand castles, body surfing, kite flying, picnicking on peanut butter sandwiches. Kicking off my sandals, I step into the salty surf, ignoring its chill, then dive through waves, clutching Mom’s urn tightly. Her ashes cling to my wet skin when I shake them into rocking ripples that cradle me with calming consolation before I submerge myself and swim back, stroke by stroke.

* * *

LIZ DEBEER is a teacher and writer with Project Write Now, a writing cooperative. Her latest flash has appeared in Switch, Bending Genres, Sad Girls Diaries, Lucky Jefferson, Every Day Fiction, and Libre.

by Jennifer Griffin

​I sit and watch the rivulets of rain as they slide down the window, dropping out of sight. The quiet of the room insulates us in our thoughts, you on the bed, me in the chair. It is our 17th wedding anniversary and we are in a private room overlooking the Hudson. The view is spectacular but no one envies us this setting.

The nurses of 6HN enter the room bearing cake and a candle. They have come to know us well over the past few months. Better even than family in our insulated isolation that only they can penetrate. 

They toast our marriage, our love, our devotion. But also, the specter that hangs over us. 

This is to be our last anniversary together. Soon the tumors that we have beat back again and again will finally take over, squeezing until there is no room left for you.

I can not say that I wish that anniversary back. And yet I can not wish it away either. The essence of marriage is in acceptance. And if I can not change what has happened, I accept it as part of our love.

I vow to hold your hand, to comfort you, to make you laugh, to anchor you, to keep you safe, to keep you close, to share the fear, to share the pain. And hardest of all, to let you go when staying is for my sake and not for yours. 

* * *

JENNIFER GRIFFIN (Gaul) is a musician. Writing entered late in her life after the death of her husband, jazz musician Scott Sherwood. She writes to process, explore, explain, and expound. She is happy if her words connect but primarily it’s the act of writing that keeps her at it.

by Morgan Chalfant

Everyone has baggage
Mine’s a backpack
Nothing snooty
Two straps and heavy
Nothing fancy
Filled with the norm:
A disappointed old man
Lost keys to the past
Friends I wish still were
And a little secret pocket of aspirations

* * *

MORGAN CHALFANT is a novelist, poet, and an instructor of writing at Fort Hays State University. He is a native of Hill City, Kansas. He received his bachelor's degree in writing and his master's degree in literature from Fort Hays State University. He is the author of the horror/thriller novella, Focused Insanity, and the urban fantasy novel, Ghosts of Glory.

by Corey Mesler

On this day
when I need
to unlock
something
beautiful
the sky roars
like the
final horn
and here I am
alone again
with only these
careless keys.

* * *

COREY MESLER has been published in numerous anthologies and journals including Poetry, Gargoyle, Lunch Ticket, Five Points, New Stories from the South. He has published over 45 books.  With his wife he owns Burke’s Book Store (est. 1875) in Memphis. 

by Gabriella Brand

Years ago, she would have screamed. Hit it with a rock, the edge of a hoe. Killed it, if she could have, because life hadn’t yet mellowed her.
​
Now she just stared at the young, coiled snake that had surprised her in the garden. She had lifted up a cinder block that had fallen off the fire pit—and there it was, pale khaki with thin blue-green stripes, like a military uniform.
​ 
She waited for it to slither away. But it didn’t. Fear glued it to the earth.

She stood there for a little while letting awe creep over her.

* * *

GABRIELLA BRAND’s fiction, poetry and essays have appeared in such publications as The Citron Review, Vita Poetica, Shiuli (India) and Room. She is a Pushcart Prize nominee. Gabriella teaches French and writing in the OLLI program at the University of Connecticut. 

by Linda M. Crate

​when best friends
transition to
ghosts,
this aching heart
feels as if it will
ache forever;
i wish i could let her go
but she was my childhood— 
i still see the auburn and gold
of her hair in the summer sun
when i look at the childhood in my past,
how am i supposed to simply forget her
as she has me?
i hate living ghosts,
at least you know where to visit the dead. 

* * *

LINDA M. CRATE (she/her) is a Pennsylvanian writer whose works you can find at her social media links: 
​Facebook 
Instagram
Twitter

by Ed Ahern

Years ago, hunting deer in a forest, I stumbled onto an abandoned farmstead. There were no traces of roads or pathways into the site, no wood or glass or iron. Just the stone cairn of a chimney, and tumbled rock fences, strewn by trees. Connecticut is stoney soil, the clearing and stacking would have been the labor of years.

A chill, soft rain was falling, birds and animals were silent and still. The smell was of sodden leaves and the mold of rotted trees. As I moved cemetery-slowly through the grounds, I wanted to put a name to the ruined labor—the someone or other house, the something or other farm. But there were only age scattered rocks.

And there, where I thought a sitting room might have been, was a neatly stacked cairn, three feet high, that weathering could not have accomplished. A body perhaps, or a keepsake interred at the home it belonged to.

I propped my rifle against a sapling and lifted off the cap stone, intending to burrow down to discovery. And hesitated. And put it back. Undisturbed. What I imagined was more than I could discover, more than I could unearth.
​
I moved on, the farmstead undisturbed and unrecorded. And have long since forgotten its location.

* * *

ED AHERN resumed writing after forty odd years in foreign intelligence and international sales. He’s had about 500 stories and poems published so far, and ten books. Ed works the other side of writing at Bewildering Stories where he manages a posse of seven review editors, and as lead editor at Scribes Micro.

by Paul Lewthwaite

She is envious of her shadow.

It flickers in and out of existence, oblivious of bills, bawling kids, screaming husband, and the toothache that’s bothered her for months.

Would she swap? Escape the noise and grind for grey-scale monotony? 
​
Perhaps not, but when life burns too bright, jealousy still lingers.

* * *

Paul is a retired physician living in Scotland with his wife and a small, but all-powerful cat. He’s always surprised when he can write a story. Some appear at Dark Moments, fiftywordstories.com, and 101words.org.

by Michael Brockley

My white German shepherd’s ghost sleeps in the passenger seat as I wrestle my road-weary Silverado onto the Ghost Road. We have survived half-resurrection and tombstone blues in magic cities. And practiced nighthawk songs with devils in blue dresses. Sadie barks as I shuffle through the biography of a phantom. As I grope for the name of Bluebeard’s first wife. Lady Blue or Black Cherry. Last night a blue angel serenaded us with a song coaxed from a rose drum. I’ll let Sadie sleep through the cross-dog hours. Through the three shades of dream. Even ghost dogs get the blues.

* * *

MICHAEL BROCKLEY is a retired school psychologist who lives in Muncie, Indiana. His poems have appeared in The Prose Poem, Superpresent, and Dreams of Rust and Glass, Volume 2. Poems are forthcoming in Last Stanza Poetry Journal and confetti.