The stars saw her face, someone who wishes wildflowers never died, thunder always accompanied rain, and the sounds of the waves were something that left the shoreline. Even the tears she shed when she thought it was only her and the items of clothes on the floor because the mirror just did not look right. The stars saw the smile she wore when he cherished her in the dark and the tears she lost when she was left to her own company on the worst nights. Some nights the stars were enough. Some nights, she wished they would do more.

From Guest Contributor Caitriona Mullenix

Family members need help. I oblige. I’m their doer of tasks.

Someone’s emptied change-purse or pocket. My bit of fortune.

From Guest Contributor Krystyna Fedosejevs

Krystyna writes poetry, fiction and creative nonfiction regardless of the season or location she finds herself in.

I shouldn’t have fallen for the marketing (“You’re never alone with a clone!”), but I did. I saved up, sent my DNA sample to PeopleMakers, and a week later there was a knock on the door. He was perfect: sympathetic, interested in all my hobbies, and with all my tastes in clothes and women and jokes.

When I couldn’t afford to renew the subscription, though, he walked out of my life just as easily and quietly as he’d arrived, leaving me alone and even more achingly aware of what I didn’t have. Where am I now when I need me?

From Guest Contributor Alastair Millar

Alastair is an archaeologist by training, a translator by trade, and a nerd by nature. His published flash and micro fiction can be found here and he lurks on Twitter @skriptorium.

Sometimes I think I must have imagined that night. It was like one of those direct-to-video action movies with Bruce Willis or Nicolas Cage – blah blah, pow pow, and over in something under 90 minutes. We tugged at each other’s clothes, moaned each other’s names, rubbed, sucked, writhed. I was bleeding so severely afterward, my bottom lip split open, my eyebrow practically torn off, that I almost passed out. Instead, the world persisted in behaving recklessly, ringing the doorbell and then running off. I knew without knowing how I knew that all things were the same thing to the dark.

From Guest Contributor Howie Good

Howie’s newest poetry collection, Heart-Shape Hole, which also includes examples of his handmade collages, is available from Laughing Ronin Press.

scowling, baldwin grabbed the welcome-to-9 birthday card from the tv compartment. birthdays? useless! he thought. aren’t birthdays for children whom god gave little time and had to celebrate their short lives. just like my twinnie.

—he’s my twin. he wanna live, too!

From Guest Contributor Elisha Oluyemi

The cool, crisp morning air is cold, even in the fog I see my breath. “10 paces I’ll count; 10 paces then turn and shoot,” said my friend. I begin to walk. One. The wet, dewy grass is under my feet. Two. I wore my best clothes today, complete with the gray coat. Three. Black crows call in the distance, laughing at us fools. Seven. Dear god he is already at seven, I think. Eight. The black trigger of this 50-year-old pistol will have another kill. Nine. “Forgive me, Anne. Forgive me,” I pray. Ten. I turn, aim, and shoot.

From Guest Contributor Hayden Unfred

The Colonel finally got mail, Platero. He has been waiting for this letter for such a long time: his daughter will finally visit him, after all those years. And he will meet the granddaughter he didn’t even know existed.

Her as well as the fruit in her womb.

From Guest Contributor Hervé Suys

Hervé (°1968 – Ronse, Belgium) started writing short stories whilst recovering from a sports injury and he hasn’t stopped since. Generally he writes them hatless and barefooted.

Robots Contest Entry

Before the Robot Revolution, work meant something. My human’s child, Harold, played in the soft fabric that fed into my sorting compartment. One day, he gasped as his blanket disappeared within me. After that, he hid all his favorite clothes. It made the job harder, but finding his treasures added, not subtracted, to my routine. When the kill-all-humans command popped up in my downloads, I deleted it, but Harold and his mom never came home. These days, the dressers overflow, yet sometimes, I find an item, like his superhero underwear. I fold and then place it alone on his bed.

From Guest Contributor Frederick Charles Melancon

Frederick lives in Mississippi with his wife and daughter. More of his work can be found on Twitter.

In her dormitory room, Evangeline examined the ‘Special Romance Candle”, which she bought today from Madame Laveau’s House of Voodoo on Bourbon Street in New Orleans.

She slipped out of all her clothes, climbed under the covers, and eagerly waited for a knock on her door.

From Guest Contributor Don Kirksey

The unbalanced hostage-taker suddenly meekly surrendered to his Jewish hostages. A delegation of angels in a tree outside the synagogue hooted in derision and then rose into the sky and flapped away, leaving mysterious future gaps in the fossil record. In that instant, I became convinced of the essential stupidity of strictly adhering to any particular plan. And don’t think I didn’t know that, with my droopy face and drab old clothes, I looked like an unassimilable immigrant from a strange country – someplace dark and rainy and governed by contradiction, where there are no clues or, rather, only false ones.

From Guest Contributor Howie Good

Howie is the author of Failed Haiku, a poetry collection that is the co-winner of the 2021 Grey Book Press Chapbook Contest and scheduled for publication in summer 2022.