What is inside you is going to come out. I think of it as a crime scene. You have brought your dead cat, placing it wrapped in a pink baby blanket on the floor. I feel in the wrong just being there. Before the exam starts, you ask the girl seated behind you for paper, but are given a slice of bread. I can’t explain it. I would need to Google you to find out. At the front of the room, the proctor makes a gun with his thumb and forefinger and then holds it to his temple and fires.

From Guest Contributor Howie Good

Howie Good is the author most recently of Stick Figure Opera: 99 100-word Prose Poems from Cajun Mutt Press. He co-edits the online journals Unbroken and UnLost.

Millie was a fireball and Herbert was steady. The cattle woke them up one night.

“Millie, if I knew you had it, I wouldn’t have hurried so.

From Guest Contributor NT Franklin

The crumpled notebook paper can’t be hurt, no matter how hard it’s thrown. An anemic crackle sounds at impact, a lazy, pointless attempt to uncurl is its sole achievement. The lopsided wad sits atop the unburning end of a Duraflame log. Mercifully, black char ashes the paper’s edge, further loosening the ball until gravity pulls it down to hearth. Still misshapened, I see blue ink, evidence of the second worst opening line in the history of writing. The winner is in my fist, ready to toss to the flames. It’s the only way to bring fire to my words today.

From Guest Contributor DL Shirey

DL Shirey lives in Portland, Oregon, writing fiction, by and large, unless it’s small. He has been caught flashing at Café Aphra, 365 Tomorrows, ZeroFlash, Fewer Than 500 and others listed at www.dlshirey.com and @dlshirey on Twitter.

I’m tramping through the parking garage, briefcase in hand, searching, again, for my car. Stopping at a sign that says “Level 3”, with the word “Remember” under it. As if that’s an easy thing. As if by putting “Remember” there that will make me remember where the damned car is. First or second time maybe. But, after that, it’s like all those other things that you filter out and forget. The trick is to remember to remember, otherwise you’re lost.

As I am. Staggering up the parking ramp, wondering where all those things went that I can no longer find.

From Guest Contributor Mitchell Waldman

Mitchell’s fiction, poetry, and essays have appeared in numerous publications, including The MacGuffin, Fictive Dream, Corvus Review, The Waterhouse Review, Crack the Spine, The Houston Literary Review, The Faircloth Review, Epiphany, Wilderness House Literary Magazine, The Battered Suitcase, and many other magazines and anthologies. He is also the author of the novel, A Face in the Moon, and the story collection, Petty Offenses and Crimes of the Heart (originally published by Wind Publications), and serves as Fiction Editor for Blue Lake Review. (For more info, see his website at http://mitchwaldman.homestead.com).

He returned the edition of Kant to the library, unread again. He came out bearing Sartre’s “Being and Nothingness.” Surely he could make a last effort to master existentialism.

How wrong he was, for, unnoticed by the passing multitudes, no one thought about him at all.

From Guest Contributor Ian Fletcher

Rain blackens the windows, dime-sized water balloons of toxic ash. We haven’t had sun in months, and now this. You look up and say, Think it’ll stop? I love how you still look up, that instinctive angle of hope, of God.

We stand on the porch and watch the rain. Our last neighbors emerge from their house, wave, then slow dance down the street. By the time they reach the corner they’re convulsing like punk rockers. I ask you to dance but you pull me back inside.

From Guest Contributor Charles Duffie

No one claims to know how the Hebrew slaves came to be heaving the shriveled bodies of the dead into raging furnaces. Soon their throats swelled from the smoke, and they couldn’t swallow or eat, and then their eyes turned red, and everything looked blurry, as if seen through the sting of tears. I feel less certain every day about my own chances. I go to sleep afraid, and I wake up afraid. Sometimes I’m even chased down the street, shoes slapping the pavement, but when I glance back, I can’t quite see who it is that is chasing me.

From Guest Contributor Howie Good

Howie is the author most recently of Stick Figure Opera: 99 100-word Prose Poems from Cajun Mutt Press. He co-edits the online journals Unbroken and UnLost.

8:45, he gets up quietly. While the coffee’s brewing he takes two cups and two glasses and places them on the kitchen table. He takes the orange juice and the butter from the fridge and the butter knife from the drawer, then slips English muffins into the toaster. He pours himself coffee and orange juice and switches on the radio for the news.

When he’s done, he trudges to the living room and does a crossword puzzle in the armchair, facing her photograph. Later, when he puts everything into the dishwasher, he’ll place her cup and glass next to his.

From Guest Contributor Xavier Combe

Xavier is a freelance conference interpreter and translator. He teaches at the University of Paris X. He has authored two non-fiction books in French as well as op-eds in the French press. His story The Games People Play won 3rd Prize at the October 2019 Bath Flash Fiction Award. He writes and produces audio fiction with 2-time Peabody award winner Jim Hall on their website muffydrake.com. He has two adult sons and lives in the Paris suburbs with his wife, their two teenage daughters and their dog Zelda.