by Christy Hartman

I grate a teaspoon of nutmeg into the bowl; preparing Finn’s favourite cake is a rare reprieve from my burden. Winter-fever picks off more villagers daily, snuffing them like Mass candles after the Saints are beseeched. 
 
My throat is raw, eyes red-rimmed from hours wailing for wee Orla Murphy. Finn had slouched on the cottage’s porch with the other men. Futility and grief hung thick in the air. The women inside met my keening with their own cries. My vigil only ceased when the child’s spirit drifted through the open window. I retreated to my home, hidden beyond the mist.
 
I’m reaching into the oven when despair’s veil descends again. I shrug on my cloak and succumb to the pull, wild hair flowing behind me, untamed as the river that dragged me under, sealing my fate. Back then I was Clodagh, devoted fiancé; now I am only Banshee. 
 
I feel his essence fading as I approach the cabin, his fear twisting into me. Fever radiates through the open door. My should-have-been mother-in-law kneels at Finn’s bedside. I writhe above the cabin; my guttural screams shake the walls. When his tortured body finally succumbs, his soul soars past. I give chase, crying out as he slips from view, into the fog shrouding the moor. 
 
Cloves and cinnamon scent the air around my house. I pause at the window. Finn is there. My Finn. I weep with self-serving relief. Crossing the threshold, I am eternally reunited with my love.

* * *

Christy Hartman pens short fiction from her home between the ocean and mountains of Vancouver Island Canada. She writes about the chasm between love and loss and picking out the morsels of magic in life’s quiet moments.

by Scott Ortolano

I remember
the first time we slept together,
slumbering in a room covered with poetry and song.
 
We held one another desperately
in a world that refused to stand still.

* * *

Scott Ortolano is an English Professor at Florida SouthWestern State College. You can usually find him reading, running, hiking, or frantically grading. More of his work is available at www.SOrtolano.com

by Chris Cottom

I get home to find Marion radiant and every bookcase empty.
"Happy retirement," she says, handing me a Kindle.
Even family photos, it appears, aren’t sacrosanct.
"Digital storage is eco-responsible," she says, as her scanner-shredder swallows our wedding album.
"But we can’t digitise my LPs. My Flying Burrito Brothers, my Motown Chartbusters."
"I have seen the future of rock ’n’ roll," says my once hippy-chick wife. "It’s called Spotify."
 
She drags me around a canal-side complex for the over sixties.
"I’m happy where we are," I say. "And none of these flats have kitchens."
"We’ll eat out. I’ve done a cost-analysis."
"What about making a sandwich? A cup of coffee?"
"Duh! Ever heard of meal deals, David? And there’s a coffee shop across the bridge. Called Nomad."
"I feel like I’m a nomad."
 
On our way to sign the lease, Marion takes me to the whole-life memory scanner at the health centre.
"Copies everything onto an SD card," she says. "Ideal for when we start losing it."
I step to one side. "Ladies first."
I slip the technician a wad of fifties, tell him to press Wipe. Then I get out the lease and ask him to shred it.

* * *

Chris Cottom lives near Macclesfield, UK. One of his stories was read aloud on the Esk Valley Railway between Middlesborough and Whitby. In the early 1970s he lived next door to JRR Tolkien.
@chriscottom.bsky.social
@chris_cottom1 (on X)

by David Thompson

No news for several days:
I went to the florist anyway.
An armful of flowers
means love in any language:
new buds, odours, colours,
fresh beauty shared.

But if today was different?
Outside the shop, sun hit the blooms.
As I paused, a butterfly
slipped through a gap in time,
danced a last poem,
and settled softly
on a white cyclamen
to tell me I was too late.

When I got home,
a message said
you'd left my world that morning.

* * *

David Thompson was a translator, interpreter, editor and publisher with the UN and WHO in New York, Bangkok and Geneva. He has since published two poetry collections: Days of Dark and Light (2021) and Where The Love Is (2023).

by Beth Sherman

​I wake one morning, after uneasy dreams, to find myself transformed into a lesser, long-nosed bat. Nights, I hang upside down in your attic or flit through your garden, lapping nectar from bee balm. Endangered. Despised. With my pointy ears, short tail and brown fur, I look harmless enough, like a chipmunk with wings. I can fly now, hitching a ride on the wind’s back, somersaulting through clouds. My hearing has improved. Sound waves determine your exact location: office, park, bar. I know the name of each girl you bed, each lovely lie you tell. Try to get rid of me. Try. I dare you. Plant mothballs in the eaves. Lay your sticky traps. Plug holes in the roof. I am your shadow now, black as an evening glove, translucent as spilled moonlight. While you sleep, I aim for your hair, my fangs tickling your eyebrows.

* * *

​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 Marcelo Medone

Flavius hurried towards the two-masted vessel that had just docked.
His friend Titus came down the ramp and they embraced.
“How was the trip? Did you have good weather?” asked Flavius.
“Better than here, for sure,” answered Titus, observing the leaden sky.
That night, burning ashes rained down on Pompeii.

* * *

Marcelo Medone (Buenos Aires, Argentina) is a Pushcart Prize and Best Small Fictions nominee fiction writer, poet, essayist and screenwriter. He received numerous awards and was published in more than 50 countries, including Canada. He currently lives in Montevideo, Uruguay.

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 Morgan Chalfant

It hurts to see you still have no ability.
You can’t make decisions for yourself.
Individuality was torn out of reach,
hidden on someone else’s shelf.
 
You’re a doll, a marionette on strings,
a mannequin posed in place.
If you had the choice of what to look like,
you’d let someone else choose your face.
 
What do you call your personality,
when the ‘person’ you are isn’t you?
If I asked you what to bury you in,
you’d answer, “He told me I want blue.”

* * *

​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.