The android smiled at Brad. “Did you enjoy your work day last week?”

Brad was stood in front of a room of bored humans, and left to do his job.

From Guest Contributor Ross Clement

Death and beauty were bound by love.

All inevitable, all wondrous and all binding.

From Guest Contributor Michelle Vongkaysone

Scratching his head, the man struggled to remember where he’d seen her. He felt that he should know her! The look of concern on her face disturbed him, often others came with her, although they seemed distant. He liked the company even though he did not recognize them. Sometimes they would raise a fuss over him. The little ones pleased him most, climbing up on him, laughing, full of life. He always had a good sense of humor, but never telling the same joke twice, or always meeting new people. That’s about as far as his humor went concerning dementia!

From Guest Contributor Derrick Fernie

I was 22. He wasn’t ready, and I wasn’t sure if he was the one. At the time, it seemed like an easy decision. We weren’t married, and I had just started a new job. I was young. I could get pregnant again. Right! Besides, I wanted to be married first, then after a few years have a baby or two. That made more sense. Children should have a stable home. Right? I’m an attractive, intelligent woman, I’ll meet someone who wants a family. But leaving the clinic that day, it never became apparent, that I would never conceive again.

From Guest Contributor Dana Sterner

Dana is a Registered Nurse and Professional Writer. She has written for regional and national magazines, and continues to write in many different genres.

“Most people are Virgos – know why?” I do. Nine months before September is commonly cold; nowhere to go but bed. The I.T. guy thinks he’s flirting but now I’m just picturing my parents.

From Guest Contributor Vera Duffy

Vera is a semi-retired Mexican wrestler living in Los Angeles. Her work has appeared in Puppet Terror magazine and the L.A. Alternative Press.

Cellos make little nicks in the dark and we breathe together. The afternoon was a failure. This plain gesture, togetherness, makes quick use of industrious forgetfulness. I cannot keep you behind this gate beyond the third movement. We mean to create more than one monologue to accompany the flutist. The children upstairs, our occupancy momentarily set. I position your fingers behind my neck as talisman for strings. The tent is down. This igloo explodes into every shard of routine that has, before this moment, set what stands for you and for me, aflame, sparks falling into pockets, to the ground.

From Guest Contributor Kelli Allen

Kelli Allen’s work has appeared in numerous journals and anthologies in the US and internationally. She is a four-time Pushcart Prize nominee and has won awards for her poetry, prose, and scholarly work. She served as Managing Editor of Natural Bridge and holds an MFA from the University of Missouri St. Louis. She is the director of the River Styx Hungry Young Poets Series and founded the Graduate Writers Reading Series for UMSL. She is currently a Professor of Humanities and Creative Writing at Lindenwood University. Allen is the author of two chapbooks and one flash fiction collection. Her full-length poetry collection, Otherwise, Soft White Ash, arrived from John Gosslee Books in 2012 and was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize.

“Ugh, Dad you cannot send me to that school!” I squealed.

I hesitated. I saw nothing.

From Guest Contributor Joshua Wallis

Joshua is a home-school student from the United kingdom, who loathed reading literature until recently! He is looking forward to reading works of great novelists and insightful 100-word stories in the coming years.

Shelly sighed as she looked at the stray. Something in her mind shouted “Run away,” but it was too late. The kitten would be coming with her.

She entered her home and set the kitten on the floor. There was no turning back. This was cat number four. Shelly was officially a crazy cat lady.

It was a game. Sean and Phil followed the hunchback along the Northland Road on a gloomy October evening. It was something to occupy them. They were slight ten-year-olds, so although the eight-foot wall to their left hampered their manoeuvring, they were able to find cover behind the electric junction boxes, bus tops, and lampposts each time the figure in the long coat and brimmed hat made to turn.

Flushed with excitement at their successful shadowing, the hearts of the play-spies stopped when he tipped his Fedora, and skipped over the wall into the asylum; clipping stone with his hooves.

From Guest Contributor Perry McDaid

First contact with an alien life form came in 2015 when the pods landed. They entered the Earth’s atmosphere across the planet. They landed in empty fields and busy streets. They filled the oceans and eventually washed up on shore.

The creatures took three years to mature. Once they started breeding, the enslavement of the human race began.