They’d warned her. They told Sheila that he wasn’t boyfriend material, let along worthy of marriage. But she hadn’t listened. Sheila believed that if she stuck with him, Greg would prove them all wrong. He had hidden layers.

Greg wasn’t the one. And thinking that he might be after their first date said more about her than it did about him.

As Henry steered the plane toward the bombing area, he said a silent prayer and kissed his wife’s picture. Bullets filled the air and planes dropped to the ground crashing into enemy lines.

Henry grabbed the picture of his wife Maggie, attached the parachute and together he and Stan jumped into the air just in time before the plane exploded into pieces, creating fire in the sky.

From Guest Contributor Lisa M. Scuderi-Burkimsher

First day at my new school. I wonder what the other kids will be like. I miss all of my friends from my old school; I hope I’ll find new friends here. My older sister Alice has it worse than me. She lost her steady boyfriend when we moved. Those guys down by the street might be interested in Alice; she was popular back at Edgeworth High. They look like they are the right age for her. Oh-oh, I’m going to be late if I don’t snap out of it and get going. School is a couple of miles away.

From Guest Contributor Doug Hawley

The dust stuck to everything, even my sweat. The heat wasn’t as dry as everyone said. I’d be happy when this job was over and I could head back to the city.

If I wasn’t headed to heaven to kill a man, I’d have assumed I was the one who was already dead.

Her family loves apples so despite the fight she carted off in a cardboard box the tree’s fruit. My family has applesauce in its veins, was what she told me. When I saw her there were cores littering her countertops, a pan boiling on the woodstove. Did she see the metaphor? Those gnarled branches over her head. I took her coring knife, though cut fruit was a present I would not be offering, not to my relations. Beside me she sliced another tree-gift. By stovelight our wrists flashed, the lines in them crisscrossing as we worked, tangling and yet not.

From Guest Contributor Colleen Addison

Sherman breathed deeply, concentrating on emptying his mind of all thoughts. The contradiction of thinking about not thinking about anything gave him a headache. His spiritual advisor instructed him to repeat his mantra at times like this.

His advisor didn’t understand. “Why do you sound like a bumblebee?”