How to Handle an Open Relationship

Photo by Dina Badamshina on Unsplash

By Chris Cottom

As you lug Bethan’s boxes upstairs, agree when she says this doesn’t mean you’re “living together”, only staying until she finds her own place and, as a fast-track graduate, the bank could send her anywhere. Don’t grin like a mook when she hugs you for clearing half your wardrobe for her.

Look cool and unconcerned when she says something over brunch about “both still seeing other people.” Realise this is both a green light and a red one.

Don’t argue when she chucks what she calls your “man-cave duvet cover” in favour of something in Moon Shimmer White.

Trudge round IKEA while any self-respecting Chelsea supporter is at Stamford Bridge, watching them thrash Liverpool. Because it needs two people to choose a futon for when Bethan’s sister Saba comes to stay.

Don’t let on that supper parties aren’t your thing, with Bethan getting stressed and sweaty over crumbed asparagus with saffron yogurt in your “cupboard-sized” kitchen, until the evening when, amid the database wizards and wannabe entrepreneurs, you sit next to Saba.

Keep your voice neutral when you tell Bethan, as she packs for Prague, that it’s fine for her sister to stay until she starts uni in September. If she wants to.

Agree that, compared to a bed, a futon is unnecessarily uncomfortable.

Take the M40 out of London on a sunny Bank Holiday Saturday to picnic at Blenheim Palace, stereo blaring, windows down and Saba’s straw-coloured hair whipping in the wind as she drives Bethan’s beloved VW Beetle.

Wake alone to hear sister hissing at sister. Accept that you can’t tell them apart.

Watch a tear-blotched Bethan stuff belongings into binbags. Say nothing when she shouts you should have known “seeing other people” didn’t mean sisters, didn’t actually mean anybody.

━━━━⊱༒︎ • ༒︎⊰━━━━
Chris Cottom lives near Macclesfield, UK. His work features in 100 Word Story, Bending Genres, Fictive Dream, FlashFlood, Flash Frontier, Gooseberry Pie, Leon Literary Review, MoonPark Review, NFFD NZ, Oyster River Pages, Roi Fain?ant, The Lascaux Review, and elsewhere. Find him at chriscottom.wixsite.com/chriscottom and @chriscottom.bsky.social

 

Warts and All

Photo by Alex Makarov on Unsplash

by Patrick Siniscalchi

As quickly as Kayla opened her eyes, the disturbing dreams fled her memory, yet the sense of unease remained. To comfort herself, she reached under the covers across the king-size bed to touch her husband. She reeled her hand back when, rather than the warmth of Nathan’s skin, she felt something cool, damp, and bumpy. Her body sprang into an upright seated position, and she yanked the covers off. Kayla let loose a scream and then stifled it with her hand, for where her husband of ten years should have been sat a large toad.

The greenish-brown amphibian regarded her, his eyes protruding like two half spheres. He took one hop closer and said, “Ribbit.” Her heart raced nearly as fast as his pulsating throat.

Kayla’s eyes went wide as she called out for her husband, who typically woke well after her, “Nathan. Nathan!” With each shout, the toad jumped closer, causing her to retreat and stumble off the bed. She hesitantly poked her head up above the edge of the mattress to find the toad had ventured to her side.

Keeping her stare fixed on this early morning intruder, she called toward the open bedroom door, “Nathan.” The house returned silence as the toad leaped nearer.

With their eyes level, he said, “Ribbit.”

Kayla tilted her head like a confused puppy. “Nathan?”

“Ribbit.”

“What the Hell?” Kayla had long wanted her husband to change back to the man she had married, the driven man who would run four miles before most rose from bed, who did considerate things without being asked, who didn’t hide in his man-cave most evenings—the man she fell in love with. She shook her head at her toad-husband. “This is not the change I wanted.” Kayla held his amphibious gaze. “Nathan, what happened?”

“Ribbit.”

“Great, it was bad enough when you stopped having meaningful discussions with me. Now I won’t even experience your trivial chats.”

As daylight swept into the bedroom, she searched her brain for the cause of this transformation. After a few moments, she said, “Maybe it was that Sylvia down the street. She always wears a witch costume at the Halloween block party.” Kayla chuckled. “The other women and I maintain it was one of her normal outfits, that she has a closet full of them. Several times, I caught her flirting with you.” Her tone grew soft, yet serious. “Nathan, did Sylvia do this to you?”

“Ribbit.”

“I knew it! That bitch, I mean witch!” He took a short hop backward. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to scare you.” Kayla reached out her hand, palm up, sliding up to his bulging belly. He hopped on, but since one rear leg dangled off, she brought her other hand under to support him. Gently, she stroked his side with her thumb. “There’s got to be a way to change you back.” Kayla fuzzily recalled a fairy tale from long ago about a toad turning back into a prince with a kiss. “I guess a girl’s gotta do what a girl’s gotta do.”

Kayla brought him up to her nose, closed her eyes, and pressed her lips to his cool mouth.

“Ribbit.”

“Oh, you want more. Okay.” She repeated the kiss over and over until she heard her husband’s voice.

“Hey Hon, I decided to get back into running this morning and ran at the park. Then I picked up bagels on the way home. Um, why are you kissing that frog?"

━━━━⊱༒︎ • ༒︎⊰━━━━
Patrick Siniscalchi is a former electrical engineer living in Asheville, North Carolina, with his wife and scruffy dog. His work has appeared in Bright Flash Literary Review, The Sunlight Press, Great Smokies Review, Suddenly And Without Warning, and others.

 

Bear on the Road

Photo by Daniel Eledut on Unsplash

by John Brantingham

Clare’s in the bus on the way to Randolph High School along with the rest of the cross country team when she hears the bus slow down, hears the bus driver laugh in surprise, and sees the bear ahead loping in a run down the middle of the road chased by the yellow school bus now on a yellow day in autumn with a yellow tag clipped in his ear, by scientists who must have sedated him and tagged him.

She imagines that fear now, the fear of this bus chasing her down, the fear of waking up out of sedation confused as to what happened, and what all these people want anyway. The driver is pacing him. The man says, “The bear’s running at 27 miles an hour.” His voice is full of a cruel music of wonder.

Clare says, “Stop it,” but her voice is swallowed by the noise of the rest of the team, boys and girls who are marvelling at the bear’s speed, down the road.

Coach Bret stands and walks to the front of the bus to watch it run. He says, “Why doesn’t it just run into the woods?”

Clare knows. She can feel it. It’s the unrelenting fear that closes off thought and stops action. It’s the fear where all you do is run and keep running. It’s the fear that drives all movement. She’s never been afraid like that bear is now she thinks. Maybe she will never be as scared as a bear in these few weeks before hunting season opens and the leaves are raining yellow and the bus is full of 30 people cheering on the terror that keeps you loping ahead, so Clare clears her voice and yells, “Stop it!”

She yells as loudly as she can, but the whole team is yelling, and she stands because she needs this to stop. She starts to walk ahead, imagining that she’s going to yank the steering wheel so they go into one of the maples that line the road, but the bear veers off into the woods and the team cheers for it, and she sits down.

It was stupid, she knows, to think that she could or might crash the school bus. She’s stupid for caring about the bear she thinks. She’s stupid because she felt one way and the other 30 people on the bus felt something completely different from what she did, but she knows she’s done with the team.

She thinks that she will quit once this meet is over. She thinks that races are stupid. She was stupid for joining in the first place and everyone here is stupid too. The only one who knows what it means to run is the bear, now disappeared into the maple forest.

━━━━⊱༒︎ • ༒︎⊰━━━━
John Brantingham is the recipient of a New York State Arts Council grant and was Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks’ first poet laureate. His work has been in hundreds of magazines and The Best Small Fictions 2016 and 2022. He has twenty-two books of poetry, nonfiction, and fiction. Check out his work at johnbrantingham.com.

 

The Fierce Urgency of Meaningless Work

Photo by Kelli McClintock on Unsplash

Creative non-fiction
by R.K. West

Years ago, I worked in Business Affairs for a television production company that no longer exists. One day, we were working on the contract for a particular actor to appear in one of our shows. The contract had been typed up and printed. The actor was in town, staying at a hotel. (Was it the Beverly Hilton, Château Marmont, St. James? I don't remember.) His agent had talked to my boss's boss, and they had agreed on one last change to the contract. We needed to make the change, print the revised contract, and have it messengered to the hotel. That should have been easy, but for some reason, it wasn't.

I made the change to the contract and printed it, but what printed was the old, unchanged version. I tried again, with, of course, the same result. It was odd. Maybe I'm doing something wrong, I thought, and asked my office mate Alan to step in. He had the same problem. We could see on screen the updated contract, but it just wouldn't print. We tried different possible solutions, re-editing the document, saving it under another name, closing it, re-loading it, but nothing worked.

In the meantime, my boss, John, was fuming. He stood behind us, complaining as we struggled with the computer, his neck and face turning pink. He kept reminding us that the contract absolutely had to be at the hotel by 4:00. The messenger was standing by. "Why can't you get this right?" he demanded. I told him that I didn't know what the problem was and that I couldn't think straight because having him stand behind me yelling about it was making me hysterical. He stomped out of the room.

Alan and I continued struggling, but still succeeded in printing only the old version of the contract. Finally, John solved the problem another way. He picked up a pen and a copy of the contract and made the correction by hand. The contract was delivered, but the next day the terms were changed again.

I hadn't thought about that day in years, until something recently jogged the memory. I'm more experienced now, and I can think of things we didn't try that might have solved our computer problem. But without a time machine, my hypothetical solutions to a truly unimportant problem remain hypothetical. And if I had a time machine, I wouldn't waste it on that.

I was fired from that job a few months after the contract incident. ("Your position is being eliminated," John told me.) John died 15 years ago, at the age of 71. I think it unlikely that he ever remembered me or the struggle with that contract, or that it had any real effect on his overall job satisfaction or happiness in life. I also think it unlikely that, as he neared death, he wished that he had spent more energy getting paperwork done on time and meeting the petty demands of people in show business.

━━━━⊱༒︎ • ༒︎⊰━━━━
R.K. West is a former ESL teacher and travel blogger who sold everything to spend two years on the road and now lives next to the mighty Columbia River.

 

Cold Calculus

Photo by Roland Schumann on Unsplash

by James C. Clar

The sea did not finish him, not then. He came ashore clinging to a barrel stave, hauled onto a gray New England beach by men who argued over whether he would last the night. Fever burned away his pain and his memory. When he woke, he knew knots but not faces, tides but not years. He could measure rope by the span of his hands. He slept fitfully, always with one eye open.

They asked him his name.

He tried to say something aloud, failed, and said nothing.

“We’ll call you Elijah,” they declared … unaware of that name’s irony.

Along the coast, silence was considered more an asset than a handicap. A ship’s chandler on Water Street hired Elijah because the man needed help and Elijah, despite his age and bad leg, seemed quite capable.

“You ever kept accounts?” the chandler asked.

Elijah studied the ledgers. “Your sums are off,” he said simply.

The chandler frowned. Grudgingly, he rechecked his books. Elijah was right.

Elijah was exacting, obsessive even. Coils aligned, nails were counted twice and barrels were tapped and re-tapped. He corrected customers without recrimination, out of experience he still could not recall.

“No,” he would say, finger firm on the counter, “you’ll want thicker line and more oakum. You think you won’t now, but you will.” Men listened. He could inventory a ship’s hold with just a glance.

Most evenings at dusk, he’d prop his leg against the pier and watch the tide as though it somehow owned him an explanation, or a past. Peace thereby found him in small doses. The days passed, each closing like an account balanced at last.

I met him by purely accident, in the doorway of the shop, on a morning when fog rolled down the street in waves. I recognized him at once, though I said nothing.

“Lamp oil?” he asked, as though reading my mind. “Take extra wicks. It’s the little things that make or break a voyage.”

I came back, often. We spoke of the weather, of prices, of ships that left port but never returned.

“You’ve been to sea,” I said once, probing carefully.

“I must have been,” he said vacantly. “Sometimes at night, I almost remember.”

If Elijah had a fault, it was that he was too meticulous. It was as though he were correcting some larger error, one he could no longer fathom. Ships with white hulls unsettled him. The word whale closed his mouth like a snapped rigging.

The end, when it came, came suddenly. Fire started on a moored brig; tar, canvas and decking erupted. A boy slipped on the slick planks and fell between hull and pier. The crowd shouted.

Only Elijah, alone among us, dared move.

He flung off his coat and, struggling mightily with only one usable leg, he seized a line, and swung. “Hold fast!” he cried. His tone now was commanding, imperious. He reached the boy and shoved him toward waiting hands. Heat roared. A spar fell.

He looked up once, as if checking the sums on a final column. In that instant, a curious expression crossed his face. Was it resignation or recognition?

The sea, at last, finished what it had started.

I stood long after the smoke thinned, silently mouthing a name I had not spoken aloud in years. Now, I truly do remain alone to tell his tale. Some nights I lay awake and wonder, in that last instant, did memory return and drive his sacrifice as atonement? Or did the cold calculus of the universe finally exact payment of a debt long overdue?

━━━━⊱༒︎ • ༒︎⊰━━━━
James C. Clar is a writer and retired teacher. Most recently, his work has appeared in Flash Fiction Magazine, Flash Digest, Bright Flash Literary Review, After/Thought Literary Magazine, 365 Tomorrows, Antipodean-SF, The Magazine of Literary Fantasy and, of course, Sudden Flash Magazine, 

The Kiss

Photo by brittany sawyer on Unsplash

By Jim Harrington

“I ain’t gonna kiss no pig on the lips.” Thomas straightened to his full six feet and glared down at his wife.

“But we really need the money,” Bobbie Jo said.

“Then you kiss it.”

“That wouldn’t be very ladylike.” Bobbie Jo squinted at the platform where the pig, wearing a pink tutu and dark glasses, waited. She crinkled her nose and continued. “Besides, it’s a girl pig.” Bobbie Jo grabbed his arm when he started to stomp away and pressed her body against his.

“Pleeease? We really, really–”

“I know. We need the money.” Thomas stared at the pig and felt his resolve melt until it was as soft as his wife’s breasts. Without another word, he plodded toward the stage, ignoring the laughs and hoots from the crowd, and climbed the three steps to the top of the platform.

He followed the carnival barker’s instructions and got on all fours. The animal raised its snout, like it knew what was about to happen.

Thomas touched his lips to the pig’s and held the kiss three seconds longer than the required five.

“We have a winner!” the barker announced and handed Thomas five one hundred dollar bills. Thomas bounded off the stage without acknowledging the roar of the crowd and headed straight to Bobbie Jo.

“Here’s your money,” he said, then turned and trod off.

“Where’re you goin’?”

“Away.”

Bobbie Jo stood with her feet apart and her hands on her hips. “You ain’t leavin me cause I made you kiss a pig, are you?”

“Nope,” Thomas said over his shoulder. “I’m leavin you cause the pig’s a better kisser.”

━━━━⊱༒︎ • ༒︎⊰━━━━
Credit: First published on October 27, 2008 in Every Day Fiction

Jim Harrington lives in Huntersville, NC, with his wife and two dogs. His stories have appeared in Flash Fiction Magazine, Flash Phantoms, The Yard, Free Flash Fiction, Short-Story.me, and others. More of his works can be found at https://jpharrington.blogspot.com.

 

A Companion For Agnes

Photo by David Brooke Martin on Unsplash

by Ron Wetherington

In the two years since her husband died, Agnes had lived alone, but with no feeling of loneliness. This had abruptly changed. Suddenly, Agnes felt imprisoned. She feared living alone. She mentioned this to her friend Sharon. “Me, too,” confided Sharon. “Then I met Charlie. He’s a remarkable companion!”

“Companion?”

“I’ll send him around tomorrow,” Sharon told her.

As Agnes was having tea the next evening, a gentleman appeared in the chair opposite. “I’m Charlie,” he said gently. “But I can be Charlene if you prefer.” He briefly morphed. “Let’s see if I can help you.”

“Some tea?” Agnes smiled.

━━━━⊱༒︎ • ༒︎⊰━━━━
Ron Wetherington is a retired professor of anthropology. He has published a novel, Kiva (Sunstone Press), and numerous short fiction and creative nonfiction pieces. Read some of his work at https://www.rwetheri.com/

 

Maternal Twins

Photo by Ron Lach on Pexels

by David Margolin

Mother loved the idea of having twins. She called them Billy and Jimmy.

When people asked her if the twins were identical or fraternal, her standard answer was carefully constructed and cryptic, “Two people are never identical—even if they have the same set of chromosomes.”

She never took them out of the house at the same time; she said that it was too dangerous. “What if one of them is seriously injured? It would kill me.” In fact, the three of them were almost a closed loop. Mother home schooled the twins. Other children, handpicked by mother-- via interviews with their parents, the child, and their siblings-- were allowed to visit. At any given time, only one of the twins could have a friend over.

Choosing the twins’ clothing gave Mother great joy.

On some days she laid out identical clothing.

On other days she put out inverse outfits—Billy’s shirt matched Jimmy’s pants and Jimmy’s shirt matched Billy’s pants.

Less commonly she chose clothes for them that were completely unalike, proclaiming, “It’s important for them to have separate identities,” and they did.

Billy was quiet, unassuming, fearful, and laconic.

Jimmy was outgoing, funny, and a fast talker.

Mother doted on Billy and was strict with Jimmy.

As much as their personalities differed, they had one trait in common. Neither of them ever paid attention to the other; each of them behaved as if the other one didn’t exist.

Billy’s most frequent visitor was Kenny. They played more sedate and cerebral board games such as The Game of Life.

Jimmy’s most frequent visitor was George. They played more active games such as Pictionary and Foosball. George’s father was a successful criminal prosecution attorney. Like his father, George was intuitive and aggressively inquisitive, to the point of being invasive.

During one of George’s visits, Mother received a call. She had to leave the house quickly to assist a relative who was being seen in the emergency room. For the first time, George and Jimmy were alone. George immediately started snooping around the house. He found a photo album in Mother’s study.

“Hey Jimmy, I see lots of pictures of you with your mom. I see lots of pictures of Billy with your mom. Why aren’t you and Billy together in any of the pictures?”

Jimmy froze; it was a simple question, why couldn’t he answer it? Jimmy studied the photo album carefully. Up until then he had always seen the pictures of himself and his brother as two separate people--he was Jimmy and Billy was Billy—just as different as typical siblings. Now the distinction was blurred. His pictures and Billy’s pictures looked the same to him—invoking the same sense of selfness, the knowledge that he was looking at himself, not at a twin.

His throat tightened, he teared up, and thoughts began racing through his head: Why aren’t we in any pictures together? Am I Jimmy? Am I Billy? Am I both? I wish Mother were here to set me straight. I always know who I am by the way that she treats me. He felt like his brain had fallen through a trapdoor, like he had been living in a pitch-black room all of his life and someone had switched on blindingly bright lights. Jimmy’s mental state was too chaotic to continue playing, so George called his mom to pick him up.

After George was gone, Jimmy was desperate to regain his separate identity. For the first time in his life, he reached out to Billy, frantically shouting, “Billy, Billy, help!” No one came. Billy couldn’t come. He was too busy being Jimmy.

━━━━⊱༒︎ • ༒︎⊰━━━━
David enjoys writing comedy as in “Table Manners” (R U Joking?), nostalgia as in “Teabags” (Memoir Magazine), and grim fare as in Brain Raid” and “Lost and Found—and Lost” (Freedom Fiction Journal). He lives in Portland Oregon with his invaluable editor, J.J. Margolin, and posts on https://davidmargolin.substack.com





 

The Final Version

Photo by Trey Gibson on Unsplash

by Huina Zheng

When Helen’s mother asked to schedule a meeting about her daughter’s essays for U.S. summer program Y, Lan’s heart sank. Requests like this usually meant a hard battle ahead.

When the meeting began, however, the mother did nothing but look down at the printed draft of her daughter’s English essay. She read it aloud line by line, repeating each sentence first in English, then in her own Chinese, the English coming out word by word, stumbling, mispronounced. “This sentence my daughter wrote is really wonderful. So soulful.” Then she compared it with Lan’s revised version, shook her head, and said, “Your version could apply to any student. It has no individuality.”

Lan didn’t explain herself. She listened to the praise, sentences she was trained to revise but could not, and reminded herself: this was what the client wanted.

A new workflow was established. Helen’s mother printed the essays, circled and rewrote them in red pen, photographed the pages, and sent the images to a WeChat group without Helen in it. She didn’t want Helen to know that all the revisions were hers.

From January 2nd to the 4th, Lan received more than a dozen photos every day. Often, the revisions amounted to nothing more than changing but to however.

“You can edit directly in the document. It would be more efficient,” Lan suggested in the group chat.

“I type slowly,” the mother replied.

On the evening of the 4th, the mother proposed another new addition.

“If we add this sentence, it will exceed the character limit,” Lan reminded her.

“How do you check the character count?”

Lan explained step by step.

“Do spaces count too?”

“Yes.”

“Why should spaces be allowed to limit us?”

“Because of the system text box,” Lan typed. “Anything beyond the limit can’t be entered.”

January 5th. Deadline day.

At seven in the morning, a message popped up in the WeChat group: “Here are the revised versions of the three essays.”

There were still no attachments, just the text pasted into the chat. The first thing Lan saw was trying best. She took a breath and pointed it out. “The idiomatic expression is try one’s best.”

“Then change it to try hard,” the mother replied.

Lan continued, “I’m not sure admissions officers would understand confirm the nature,” and asked what she intended to express so the English could be adjusted accordingly.

“No, don’t change it. I’ll adjust it myself,” Helen’s mother said.

Three hours remained until the deadline. Lan glanced at the Chinglish-filled final version. She replied, “Okay.”

Fine, Lan thought. We’ll do it her way. After all, she was the one paying.

━━━━⊱༒︎ • ༒︎⊰━━━━
Huina Zheng is a writer and college essay coach based in Guangzhou, China. Her work appears in Baltimore Review, Variant Literature, Midway Journal, and other journals. She has received multiple nominations, including for the Pushcart Prize, Best of the Net, Best Small Fictions, and Best Microfiction.

 

The Image in My Window

Photo by Pict4life on Unsplash

by Jenny Morelli

There’s an image in my window who does not sink or swim, just sits and hovers, floats and stares, and my cat stares back, undeterred and with a righteousness only cats can pull off.

There’s an image in my window, who remains unfazed, just flickering and fading and flipping from a him to a her to a them, to a when and a where; flip-flip as the sky darkens and lightens into liquid crystals that change with one’s mood or one’s touch, warm to cold, happy to sad, here to there, then to now.

There's an image in my window who sways with the wind, diaphanous as the devil, lugubrious as a lupine’s how; melancholy and masterful, she weaves worlds like webs that stick and cling, fogging the glass into frost that may one day reveal answers.

Who are you? I ask this unknown force shape-shifting in my webbed window.

Her lips move without sound like she’s trapped in some sadness.

She extends her arm and I reach out to pull her free from her eternal eclipse, from her levitating limbo, but instead of grabbing hold, she points to me, then disappears, clearing the window to reveal just me and my lucid loneliness; the distant city inside my mind, the house without a house, those worlds within worlds that spiral into infinity.

━━━━⊱༒︎ • ༒︎⊰━━━━
Jenny Morelli is a NJ high school English teacher who lives with her husband, cat, and myriad yard pets. She seeks inspiration in everything around her. She’s published in several literary magazines including Red Rose Thorns, Spillwords, Scars tv. This is her fourth poetry chapbook with Bottlecap Press. Check out her website for more: JennyMorelliWrites.com

 

Forehead

AI-generated image

by Huina Zheng

Lan hated it when people joked about her forehead. Whenever classmates chanted, “Big-forehead Lan, never buys a raincoat. When storms roll in, she just forehead-brella and stays dry!” she would lower her head and hurry away.

All her life she hid behind thick bangs. Even when pimples bloomed from the sweat trapped underneath, she refused to change.

Not until she left for college in another city. At the salon, the stylist, a young, handsome man, washed her hair. She lay back, tense. Warm water ran over her scalp as his fingers gently brushed her bangs aside.

“Oh, wow,” he exclaimed. She squeezed her eyes shut, fists clenched in despair.

“Such a beautiful forehead. Full, elegant, perfectly shaped. Why would you ever hide it?”

For the first time, Lan wept not from shame, but from showing her forehead.

━━━━⊱༒︎ • ༒︎⊰━━━━
Huina Zheng is a writer and college essay coach based in Guangzhou, China. Her work appears in Baltimore Review, Variant Literature, Midway Journal, and other journals. She has received multiple nominations, including for the Pushcart Prize, Best of the Net, Best Small Fictions, and Best Microfiction.

 

Beer Whisperer

Photo by Elevate on Unsplash

By Jeff Kennedy

So the bartender sits a half-filled pint on the bar in front of me.

"Tell me what beer this is."

I don't know his name, but I recognize him from a few neighborhood dives. Both arms are covered in anime tattoos maybe a hundred people would recognize. I can name three of them. It's quiet, even for a Wednesday night, so he's gotta be bored.

"Kitchen guys changed the keg but didn't mark the line."

I take a delicate sip of water and then a deep quaff of the unknown beer.

"Kind of a wheat beer with a slightly bitter aftertaste - it's a light pale ale."

A little while later, he puts a full pint down in front of me.

"They found the kitchen notes. You were spot on."

Based on the ads on the taps, I guess the local brewer. He laughs and shakes his head.

"Spot on again. On the house. You in the industry?"

"Nah. Just too much experience with the product."

━━━━⊱༒︎ • ༒︎⊰━━━━
Jeff Kennedy, a 2025 Pushcart nominee, is a past Thurber House and Erma Bombeck essay contest winner. Jeff’s short form writing has appeared in publications such as Everscribe Magazine, Bright Flash Literary Review, and Sudden Flash. Read his recent work at www.justanotherdamnblog.com and follow him on Bluesky @jkennedy60.bsky.social

 

A Question of the Truth

Photo by Matthew Ansley on Unsplash

by James C. Clar

The truth was that as soon as he heard Demorovic had seized power, Mokrzan knew he’d be arrested. In his country, a new broom swept clean, and there was no such thing as “retirement.”

They came for him on January 2nd, at 3:30 A.M., four men – three burly soldiers and a militia colonel he didn’t recognize. Strange, he thought; after thirty years in the capital’s bureaucracy, he knew almost every government functionary by sight. They must have imported these men from another district, fearful that locals would be inclined to treat him with the accustomed deference.

They even let him get dressed. That violation of protocol chilled him more than rough handling might have.

“Should I bring anything?” Mokrzan asked quietly.

“No,” the colonel said. “You won’t need it.”

He wondered if that meant they’d shoot him before sunrise.

Instead, after five and a half hours in a cell, he was taken to a courtroom in the Ministry of Justice. His “trial” started at ten. The huge portrait of the new president glared down over the judge’s bench. But what truly jarred him was seeing his son seated with the state prosecutors.

Their eyes met only once. The young man’s expression seemed to say, you taught me how the system works. You taught me how to survive. Neither spoke. Afterward, they avoided looking at one another.

The evidence came in crisp, damning waves. Transcripts of conversations with officials in several Western nations. Vouchers showing indulgent meals and foreign travel. A prosecutor waved the documents about like an orchestra conductor working his way through a particularly difficult symphony.

“Comrade Mokrzan’s appetites grew as his loyalty shrank,” the man stated matter-of-factly.

They produced surveillance photos of him meeting men suspected of having CIA ties.

Mokrzan said nothing. He could have explained that he’d been acting under orders from the Ministry of State Security, that two of his judges had approved those very missions. To reveal the truth would doom them now, and worse, his son.

At one point a young prosecutor asked coldly, “Do you deny consorting with agents of the West?”

Mokrzan’s voice was nearly a whisper. “I deny nothing. What would be the point?”

Reality in his country had always been malleable, truth a tool wielded by whomever held power. Thousands had perished over the years in shifting interpretations, variable exegesis. Now, inevitably, it was his turn.

At 12:30 P.M., the sentence was delivered: death by firing squad on January 16th at 9:00 A.M. The delay, he knew, was meant for interrogation. Fabricated evidence required a full and fabricated confession.

But days passed. No interrogators came. On March 10th he was trembling with dread. It wasn’t the execution that frightened him, that would be quick. It was the anticipation of torture, the hours or days that would precede it. He slept hardly at all. Meals remained untouched. By the 14th he was feverish. He understood that events seldom conformed to one’s anticipation of them. He thus allowed his mind to run wild, imagining horrors that surpassed even those he had witnessed over the decades.

On the morning of January 15th, at 1:45 A.M., he lay on his bunk, eyes closed but mind racing through a botched interrogation he’d once seen. Keys rattled in the door. He sat up sharply. Two guards entered.

“Time,” one said.

As their hands reached for him, Mokrzan felt his heart surge. He was dead before they could lift him from his bed.

On January 17th, the state newspaper reported succinctly: The traitor, Minister Mokrzan, was executed as scheduled.

The truth had never been in question.

━━━━⊱༒︎ • ༒︎⊰━━━━
In addition to his contributions to Sudden Flash, work by James C. Clar has appeared in Antipodean SF, Altered Reality Magazine, Freedom Fiction Journal, 365 Tomorrows, Bright Flash Literary Review and MetaStellar Magazine.

 

Breath With a Broken Schedule

Photo by Rowen Smith on Unsplash

by Judith Taburet

My aunt died in France.

Death broke the schedule.

Suddenly, I don’t have time disappeared, wiped clean like chalk from a board.

My mother crossed the sea from Madagascar. I hadn’t seen her for years—years measured not in days, but in distance in silence, in voice notes saved and never deleted.

How could my face show happiness and sadness at the same time?

Sadness.

Joy.

Sun.

Cloud.

Shadow.

Weight—not lightness.

The sun argued with the clouds. Light spilled anyway. Shadow stayed. Weight existed without gravity. I felt heavy and floating, carried by something larger than myself—solitude wrapped inside enormous solidarity.

Family gathered the way weather does: sudden, inevitable. Hugs came from everywhere—lightning, wind, pressure. Death had done what only love could resist: it forced us into the same room, the same moment, the same breath.

Time was confused in the heart’s country.

Hours bent. Minutes refused to give their names.

Tic. Tac.

Happiness began blowing pink balloons, timidly, as if asking permission. Christmas lurked in the corner, unsure whether to enter. Sadness put on a swimsuit and crossed the sea of tears slowly, refusing to rush. Doubt dressed with care—black shirt, red pants—ready for whatever would happen next.

Hail fell outside.

Sharp.

Brief.

Honest.

When my mother finally stood in front of me, she said, "Sweetheart, how are you?" Her voice was soft. Grief stepped aside. Not gone—just quieter. My face learned something new then: how to breathe with a broken schedule, how to hold joy inside great sadness, how to welcome love even when it arrives carrying death.

Tic.

Toc.

Love.

━━━━⊱༒︎ • ༒︎⊰━━━━
Judy T is a writer and photographer hailing from Madagascar, now based in France. Drawing from a rich legacy of advocacy, she infuses her art with a sense of purpose. Inspired by her father, an influential writer who courgeously fought against prejudice and racism in their homeland . Judy T channels her creative voice to shed light on women's stories and Malagasy culture. Her work, both in prose and photography, delves into strong experiences, ensuring they are told with unflinching honesty and strength.

 

The Birthday Gift

by Huina Zheng

“You waste money,” Old Li said, pointing at the blue-wrapped birthday gift in his son’s hands.

“You spent far more on my education,” Ming replied.

“That’s what parents are supposed to do,” Old Li said, weighing the box with a satisfied smile.

“Then I made sure today’s gift follows the proper path,” Ming said.

Lao Li laughed as he unwrapped it.

“Thanks to your year-round drills, no days off, and the countless belts you broke on my back, I finally got into medical school,” Ming added, his tone as casual as discussing the weather. “You always said studying is the only proper path.”

Old Li’s smile froze.

A brand-new smart study tablet lay on the velvet lining.

“Latest model. Complete parental-monitoring functions,” Ming said, leaning in to power it on. The screen lit up with course lists. “I’ve enrolled you in a senior-college intensive program. Daily check-ins. Weekly exams…”

Old Li stared at the notification flashing: Today’s Required Lesson: Algebra I. His fingers trembled.

“You always said one should learn for life,” Ming said, gently pressing the lock button. “Now it’s my turn to keep you on the proper path.”

━━━━⊱༒︎ • ༒︎⊰━━━━
Huina Zheng is a writer and college essay coach based in Guangzhou, China. Her work appears in Baltimore Review, Variant Literature, Midway Journal, and other journals. She has received multiple nominations, including for the Pushcart Prize, Best of the Net, Best Small Fictions, and Best Microfiction.

 

The Yard Sale

by Robert Runté

The pre-teen nephew was put in charge of the yard sale table, while inside the adults haggled over the better furniture. The nephew had arranged the collection of worthless vases, knick-knacks, and rusty tools on the table, along with the contents of the kitchen drawer. The ancient ivory figurine was probably worth six figures, but the family had dismissed it as some plastic Halloween trinket.

I was more interested in the metal chest the boy was using as a bench.

"How much for that metal case?" I asked, pointing.

"There's no key for it," he told me. "We're gonna break it open later, to see what's inside."

"Oh, I can tell you that," I lied. "He used it to hold a combination of sand, cat litter, and salt. For the driveway each winter."

The boy nodded. "That's why it's so heavy, then."

"I'll give you a twenty for it."

"Why do you want it?"

"It snows on my driveway too," I said, indicating a random door down the block. "I liked your uncle's idea of having a sandbox out by the driveway. And it will remind me of him."

"You were friends?" the boy asked.

"Neighbors," I said. That should be safe. Close enough to be friendly, but not enough to have come up in conversation with family.

The boy shrugged. "Sure. Why not. Everything has to go somewhere." He stood up.

"My car's just there," I said. "If you could help me carry it that far?"

"Why the car? I could carry it to your house, easily enough." He nodded at the house I had indicated earlier.

"Oh, thanks, but winter's still a month or two off. I'll put it in storage until it actually snows."

"Sure."

Together, we manhandled the chest into the trunk.

"Hey," he said as I started towards the driver's door.

I jumped a little, afraid of what he might ask.

"Yes?"

"Aren't you forgetting something?"

I looked back at the table. It was tempting to go back for the ivory, but I couldn't risk it. There was a chance someone would mention it to the family, they would realize its value, try to track it down, find me.

"I don't think so. I just wanted the, uh, sandbox."

"My twenty," the boy said.

I laughed. A little too loud, I suspect, given my nerves. Stiffing the kid would have been unnecessarily memorable, almost as bad as buying the ivory.

I reached into my wallet and pulled out a bill.

"I'm sorry. I'm getting forgetful in my old age.

"It's okay. Uncle was like that, too."

Which reminded me, I'd better get gas before heading out for the woods. Running out would be the sort of careless mistake I'd been making lately. God, what else did I need? A shovel from a hardware store.

As I drove off, the lad gave me a friendly wave.

━━━━⊱༒︎ • ༒︎⊰━━━━
Robert Runté is Senior Editor with EssentialEdits.ca and freelances at SFeditor.ca. A former professor, he has won four Aurora Awards for his literary criticism and currently reviews for the Ottawa Review of Books. His own fiction has been published over 130 times, with several reprinted in "best of" collections.

 

The Pogo Stick Boy

by Jenny Morelli

He woke this morning confused, disoriented; crawled from bed, threw on yesterday’s clothes, fresh socks, summer sneakers, and ran out the back door, past his mom.

"Slow down!" she yawned, then "Eat something!"  but he didn’t respond, just picked up his pogo stick to hop down the street as his neighbors hollered "Good Day, Sir Pogo Master," amused with this, the only child on the block, and he bounced along the yellow line from one curb to the other, into the neighbor's yard higher, higher, higher; up and over tall trees and low clouds, up and up into space before dropping again, ears popping, stomach plunging, until at last, he reached his street, long shadows revealing dusk had arrived.

He pogoed his return home until forced to stop for the strange man that appeared before him, falling from his toy as he looked up, up, up at the top-hatted fellow, eyes full of awe.

"There you are," the man said, to which the boy replied, "Here I am," to which the man replied, "You missed so much," to which the boy replied "So did you," then the strange man stroked his lopsided, gray-speckled beard.

"How do we fill it in," he asked, "all that lost time between you and me?"

The small boy shrugged, took the man’s hand, and together, they strolled down the street, backward, of course, so they could watch their ends meet in the middle. 

━━━━⊱༒︎ • ༒︎⊰━━━━
Jenny Morelli is a NJ high school English teacher who lives with her husband, cat, and myriad yard pets. She seeks inspiration in everything and loves to spin fantastically weird tales. She’s published in several print and online literary magazines including Spillwords, Red Rose Thorns, Scars tv, Bottlecap Press and Bookleaf Press for five poetry chapbooks.

 

The Laughing Class

by Huina Zheng

At 8:20 a.m., just as the first-period bell faded, Teacher Chen’s piercing voice filled the classroom. Since becoming their homeroom teacher in fourth grade, she had called them “stupid,” “disgusting,” and “brainless,” though to parents she insisted that “strict teachers produce top students.”

Lan, as class monitor, sat upright with a serious expression. It was her duty to set the example. Yet inside she bristled. She disliked this teacher, and even more, the endless scolding.

Let something happen. Make her stop, she shouted in her head.

She kept her back straight, for lowering her head was not allowed; she kept her hands on the desk, since hiding them below would only invite more fury. Teacher Chen, gesturing as she lectured on discipline, knocked over her water cup. Tea spread in widening circles across the podium and dripped to the floor. Lan pressed her lips tight, but her deskmate Ling let out a snicker. Instantly, the room caught fire: muffled giggles swelled into loud, unrestrained laughter. Lan joined in, her voice rising until it drowned out Teacher Chen’s scolding.

Teacher Chen’s face darkened. “Quiet! Be quiet!” she shouted. But the class only laughed harder, their voices rattling the desks and spilling into the hallway, storming into the next classroom.

━━━━⊱༒︎ • ༒︎⊰━━━━
Huina Zheng is a college essay coach and an editor. Her stories appear in Baltimore Review, Variant Literature, and more. Nominated thrice for both the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net, she lives in Guangzhou, China with her family.

 

The Woodpecker War’s First Casualty

by Salena Casha

Martin had taken to wearing pajamas and applying a stepladder to different sides of his house in fogged daylight. From across the way, Pamela watched him mount the rungs, stretching two stories, a garden hose in tow. He pointed the nozzle at a gutter, cranked it to full blast.

Good, he was finally doing something about that mess of leaves from last year. Though, there’d been a rumor that what he was really after was revenge; something had been putting holes in the stucco by his bedroom window while he slept. Perhaps, Pamela thought, he needed to focus a little less on killing a bird and a little more on reconsidering stucco in this sort of New England neighborhood.

Someone, not Pamela but someone, could say he had it coming.

She watched as water rebounded, a crank too far, and he tilted. A windmill of arms, a grasping at air. He hit the ground with a thump that Pamela heard through her window, hollow, like the earth had been dug out beneath him.

After she got her story straight, she told the authorities what she’d seen: something chartreuse and scarlet fleeing to open sky.

━━━━⊱༒︎ • ༒︎⊰━━━━
Salena Casha's work has appeared in over 150 publications in the last decade. Her most recent work can be found on HAD, F(r)iction, and Club Plum. She survives New England winters on good beer and black coffee. Subscribe to her substack at salenacasha.substack.com

 

The Companions

by James C. Clar

The island was little more than a sandbar. Hemsworth had walked its perimeter so many times he could trace its contours with his eyes closed. He had washed ashore weeks before, the only one to crawl out of the burning water when his fishing vessel split apart in a storm.

Now, the relentless sun was his only companion. He drank rainwater that caught in the trunks of palms. It kept him alive, but just barely. Fever burned through him most nights in the middle watch. He’d lie on the cooling sand looking up at the stars muttering to himself about past voyages and dreaming about the ocean-like geometry of space.

At some point, he saw them. Three figures on the shore. They were tall and pale in the liminal light of early morning. Momentarily, Hemsworth thought his eyes had tricked him yet again, but the figures remained in place as he drew nearer. He laughed. “You’re real.” He stumbled forward with arms outstretched.

“I’m Hemsworth,” he sobbed. “My ship went down three weeks ago. I thought I was alone.” His companions said nothing. The nearest was a woman in a tattered dress. Her features were sharp, serene and unreadable.

“Where are you from?” Hemsworth continued unfazed. “Another wreck? I’ve searched everywhere. I can’t believe I missed you.”

Hemsworth turned to look at the others. He thought he heard one of them, a shirtless man in duck trousers, whisper … “We’re here now.”

Hemsworth grinned through blistered lips. “Yes. We’re here together.”

He sat with them until night fell, speaking quickly and, at times, incoherently. They didn’t seem to mind. He told them about Newcastle, about his family. His voice faltered as he described the storm that had destroyed his vessel.

The woman in the dress shifted slightly. Hemsworth could have sworn he heard her assure him with sympathy, “We’re listening.”

“Thank you,” Hemsworth replied with genuine emotion. “It’s nice to finally have someone to talk to.”

The next day, he built a crude shelter to shade their pale bodies. He scrounged for what little food he could find, overjoyed to share whatever he discovered. He was certain he saw looks of approval on their inscrutable faces.

“I’ll look after you,” Hemsworth vowed, febrile sweat glistening on his brow. “We’ll be rescued soon. Together.”

Time passed. Hemsworth was even weaker now from sharing his meager food and water. It was worth it. He spent his hours talking to them, waiting for the faint syllables that sometimes floated back to him.

One bright morning, he heard loud voices carrying over the water. Hemsworth staggered from the palms just as a sea boat slid onto the beach. Two sailors leapt ashore, staring at him with astonishment.

“Christ,” one shouted. “A survivor!”

They lifted Hemsworth under the arms. As they did so, he pointed frantically back toward the palms. “There are others!”

***

Later, having been reluctantly removed from the otherwise empty island, Hemsworth lay in the sick bay of the Australian warship, Exeter. He was sedated and hooked up to an I.V. The ship’s XO spoke to the medic. “Name’s Hemsworth. He’s the sole survivor of that fishing vessel that went missing six weeks ago.”

“He’s dehydrated. Has an infection,” the medic reported, “That’s about it. I reckon it’s a miracle.”

“Good,” the XO responded. “We’ve got work to do before heading to port. A cargo ship bound for Sydney went down around here too. One of the containers must have been for a department store. The sector’s loaded with mannequins. They’re hazards to navigation and Fleet wants us to clear the area.”

━━━━⊱༒︎ • ༒︎⊰━━━━
James C. Clar is a writer and retired teacher who divides his time between the wilds of Upstate New York and the more congenial climes of Honolulu, Hawaii. Most recently, his work has appeared in The Magazine of Literary Fantasy, Bright Flash Literary Review, Freedom Fiction Journal, The Blotter Magazine MetaStellar Magazine and Antipodean SF.