There’s no spark of recognition in her eyes when we pass. It’s as if we’d never met before.

Now I’m the one flying.

With her seat tilted back, she could only see the tree tops as they sped past. She squeezed his hand tightly, letting him know without words that she loved him, but also she hated it when he drove too fast. They could communicate a lot without words.

‘Go slower,’ she said.

Dominicus Tyrannus watched the city crumble from his tower. For years, advisors and barely-trusted confidantes had warned such an outcome was inevitable. There were always warnings and doomsayers looking at him as if somehow he was the one who had failed them, not the other way around.

They were dead now, publicly executed by being tossed from this very tower, their deaths meant to placate the masses. Perhaps it had just whetted their appetites for more blood. Either way, with the empire falling after more than a thousand years of uninterrupted reign, Dominicus regretted not killing them all much earlier.

Satan ruled Hell with a malevolent thirst for pain and suffering, visiting the worst horrors imaginable upon all who entered his realm.

But that’s what friends do.

I must be insane walking the streets at 3 o’clock in the morning, but I need to clear my head and the air helps.

I unlock the door and leave it open behind me.

From Guest Contributor Lisa M. Scuderi-Burkimsher

She’s already made up her mind.

She’s already made up her mind.

Beyond porch lights, snow piles up, sealing in anxious women. They stand at windowsills watching the sky glower. Blinking in the fists of children are glo-stix to throw at the towering drifts, aiming where the eyes should go. Elsewhere, a child snaps his birthday gift of a bow-and-arrow in half. The moon rolls down a hill and thunder beats its metal chest, a rattling that distracts everyone from the whir of an incoming drone. It kicks up all the snow but means no harm, though some will insist the machine was an alien ship, come to take the glo-stix home.

From Guest Contributor Cheryl Snell

The colors bled into the paper as the flames curdled the corners. Names, dates, crimes, it all melted into ash before their eyes, disappearing into oblivion. They all vowed never to speak, even in a whisper, what was written within its binding. Their sins no longer existed.

Most religions have a bible or a creed that is a resolute anchor of all that is sacred. For those lucky souls who inscribed their names into the burn book, their holiness was birthed out of that which was not recorded. Their spirits flew forever free, their futures untied to fate or destiny.

Stella huddled on the dock with her family, clasping hands with cherished loved ones. She tried relinquishing her ticket, proclaiming she’d rather stay behind, but they pushed her towards the boarding platform without entertaining such foolishness.

And then Stella boarded the starship, one of the lucky few afforded a chance of survival.

Thomas was excited to see Our American Cousin at Ford’s Theatre. President Lincoln would be attending, and he was overwhelmed with contentment that he’d be there on the same night.

That would be the one and only time I’d see Lincoln.

From Guest Contributor Lisa M. Scuderi-Burkimsher