April, 2020 Archives
Apr
April Come She Will
by thegooddoctor in 100 Words
Men on the street would call my girlfriend lindo. “Get used to it,” she said. I decided the best thing for me to do was nothing. April had been designated Artichoke Month. I remember we saw a movie about astronauts on a mind-bending journey to the cosmic womb. It was confusing and a little scary. She got really into the singer-songwriter who had committed suicide by stabbing himself in the chest. There were long lines outside liquor stores and gun shops. One day we found a hand-lettered cardboard sign lying abandoned on the sidewalk: Hungry & Cold / Anything Helps.
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.
Apr
Burning Uncertainty
by thegooddoctor in 100 Words
HISTORICAL FICTION ENTRY:
My elder sister Tanya and I burn portraits of Nicholas, watching his solemn eyes melting. Melting, melting. Flames envelop his beard, rising into the night sky.
“To the Revolution,” she proclaims. “We’ll be happy again.”
“To happiness,” I proclaim. I hug Tanya. She smells of sweat and oil and victory.
I wonder what will come next. We’ve lost homes and positions, slaved in Siberia. She was a teacher and I, a writer. Those positions are in the past, though.
Will we be of use? Or will the Revolution brand us too bourgeois?
I wish the picture wouldn’t burn so fast.
From Guest Contributor Yash Seyedbagheri
Yash is a graduate of Colorado State University’s MFA program in fiction. Yash’s work is forthcoming or has been published in WestWard Quarterly, Café Lit, 50 Word Stories, (mac)ro (mic), and Ariel Chart.
Apr
Ignis Fatuus
by thegooddoctor in 100 Words
HISTORICAL FICTION ENTRY:
The three sisters couldn’t spend their summer at home because of smallpox in the town. Their parents acquired the old farmhouse close to the boarding school and their favorite teacher agreed to spend her vacation taking care of them. She told them why the house was empty, of the little girl, who drowned in the cow pond. In time, the spirit came to each: in a dream; as a light over the field at dusk; and to the third sister, as the woman she spent the rest of her life with, from the age of twenty-eight, in a Boston marriage.
From Guest Contributor Jon Fain
Thus far in 2020, Jon’s fiction has appeared in 50-Word Stories, Fleas on the Dog, City. River. Tree., and Blue Lake Review.
Apr
Like Mommy and Daddy
by thegooddoctor in 100 Words
“Mommy, you and daddy look funny.” said five-year-old Julia.
“We’re OK. We are flying high!” Julia’s mommy replied as she chewed a weed-laced cookie.
“These cookies! Flyin’ like a bird,” Julia’s daddy sang.
He took another cookie off the plate on the kitchen table.
“Let’s go upstairs, sweetheart. A little lovin’ ……Julia, watch TV.”
Julia watched as her parents climbed the stairs. She grabbed a cookie, then ran upstairs to her bedroom and ate it.
When her beautiful wings fluttered, she floated to the open window.
She pushed out the screen and thought, “I wanna fly like mommy and daddy.”
From Guest Contributor Deborah Shrimplin
Apr
Until Further Notice
by thegooddoctor in 100 Words
Thanks to social distancing, my co-worker Connor and I are finally alone. Only two employees at a time are permitted in the break room to clean out their lockers.
“Did you know Amazon Prime ships steel caskets in two days?” Connor looks at me, and my gut drops.
“What?”
“According to CNN, death rates are rising. We need to plan.”
Even when he says crazy things, he’s irresistibly cute.
“Look, it’s okay,” I say, “At least we weren’t fired.”
“I guess,” Connor sighs, “But how long will we work from home?”
I shrug. “So kiss me now before you can’t.”
From Guest Contributor Tammy Smith
Tammy is a social worker from New Jersey. Her writing has been published or is forthcoming in The Esthetic Apostle, Ailment: Chronicles of Illness Narratives, The Dewdrop, io Literary Journal, and Ariel Chart.
Apr
Old Fire Station – Berlin – March 20, 1939
by thegooddoctor in 100 Words
HISTORICAL FICTION ENTRY:
Removing his peaked cap, Gerhard runs his hand thru his fair, slicked-back hair. He is only a soldier: molded by the Nazi party. He isn’t a person just something to enforce Chancellor Hitler’s government. This time though, the instructions come from Joseph Goebbel. Anything marked with an X gets no mercy.
Gerhard stares into the inferno that devours the art dubbed degenerate. The canvases feeds the blaze, bubbles, and burns: turning into searing embers that fade to ash. He never understood art. The only thing he knows is everything burns. No matter the color, vibrancy, culture, religion.
We’ll all burn!
From Guest Contributor McKenzie A. Frey
Apr
Three Seals
by thegooddoctor in 100 Words
With muzzles lifted towards the sky, they gather on rocks long dry. The sun touches down where water no longer passes by. Sable tips wash to marbled tails that tell of a time in the distant past. As wind sifts the sand nearby, it slowly edges them away. A golden plague bears their memory with a single name and details of their cause. For now, they pause as a simple thread meant to knit its way into today. When clouds darken the light, rain falls and remembers the familiar trails. It brings with it a mending unearthed by the dawn.
From Guest Contributor Kristi Kerico
Kristi is a psychology major at Pikes Peak Community College. She is studying to become a horticultural therapist. She currently works at a bookstore and volunteers at a zoo and nature center. She began writing after enrolling in a creative writing course at PPCC. She enjoys poetry the most, considering it’s brief yet complex beauty. She also loves writing with a focus on nature.
Apr
Buried
by thegooddoctor in 100 Words
HISTORICAL FICTION ENTRY:
Quintus, uncomfortably warm, found himself staring blankly at the frescoes on his wall of intertwined naked ladies and men. Startled out of his daydream when the floor shook and the walls cracked, he ran through the atrium to the front wooden door and opened it. People scrambled the streets, colliding into one another screaming in terror. Mount Vesuvius had erupted into fiery lava, ash and pumice.
Quintus ran, but the roof collapsed and buried him in a pile of burning rocks. With shallow breathing, and his lungs collapsed, he bid farewell to Pompeii as the sound of dying screams faded.
From Guest Contributor Lisa M. Scuderi-Burkimsher
Apr
Divorced
by thegooddoctor in 100 Words
I’m the son of divorce to the neighborhood. Parents keep me from their children. They don’t know my pedigree, they claim. Nothing against me personally.
They know about Dad and his liaisons. They slander over smiles and Sinatra. Mother’s a “hysteric.” Can’t keep a husband. Son’s a bastard.
Mother wears starched smiles for neighbors, weeps at night.
I want to fight. I want Mother to smile. Let neighbors hate me for loving Elvis, not for Dad’s idiocy. I want to cruise the streets, to be called friend. Best friend.
I’d be considered hysterical to mention this.
I don a smile.
From Guest Contributor Yash Seyedbagheri
Yash is a graduate of Colorado State University’s MFA program in fiction. Yash’s work is forthcoming or has been published in WestWard Quarterly, Café Lit, 50 Word Stories, (mac)ro (mic), and Ariel Chart.
Apr
Botticelli
by thegooddoctor in 100 Words
HISTORICAL FICTION ENTRY:
As Sandro walked to his home on Via Borgo Ognissanti, he was so completely preoccupied he did not pay attention to his surroundings and collided forcefully with an unfortunate gentleman. The moderately obscure artist’s parchments went sprawling on the brick walkway, some fluttering quite a distance in the breeze.
“Sandro, please look where you’re going.”
“I’m sorry, Filippo, but I’ve just made the most amazing discovery.”
Hoping his eccentric neighbor had some interesting gossip to share, Filippo inquired further.
“There is apparently a game, a quite popular one, that is being played around town, and they’ve named it after me!”
From Guest Contributor Sheila Fields