Posts Tagged ‘Dead’
Mar
My Father
by thegooddoctor in 100 Words
My father says it’s okay to be scared, but now it’s time to be brave. I trust and look up to him, so when he tells me to hide under the floorboard because the Nazis are coming, I do so.
There’s banging at the front door, and then it bursts open. Footsteps and yelling are what I hear. My legs are cramped and I’m sweating from my forehead to my cheeks.
My father is crying, pleading with the Nazis and I feel helpless hiding. I want to show myself, but I’m too frightened.
Gunshot, thump, silence.
My father is dead.
From Guest Contributor Lisa M. Scuderi-Burkimsher
Dec
Kesaran-Pasaran
by thegooddoctor in 100 Words
When I walked into the village, white fur balls kept falling from the sky.
“What are they?” I asked a villager.
“They’re kesaran-pasaran.”
They floated through the air like dandelion spores. On sunny days, they fell and covered the ground. On rainy days they spread and multiplied. The dead ones fueled the city. Their spirits harvested crops and generated electricity.
“What do we know? Our livelihood totally depends on them,” the villager said, laughing.
One day I left the village. When I turned back, the village was gone. Instead, white fluff balls spread as far as the eye could see.
From Guest Contributor Yukari Kousaka
Translated by Toshiya Kamei
Born in Osaka in 2001, Yukari Kousaka is a Japanese poet, fiction writer, and essayist. Translated by Toshiya Kamei, her short fiction has appeared in New World Writing.
Nov
Brumal
by thegooddoctor in 100 Words
“I often find myself laying still in bed with the ceiling fan on and windows cracked. I’ll wait for the cold air to shrink the tissue in my joints, for my nerve endings to cool, and to feel the agony of hypothermia even though I am perturbed by all things cold; snow, door knobs, the hands of people with poor circulation. I am fazed by freezers; and those stainless steel stretchers that will latch the cold onto my body.
I don’t think I’ll mind dying as much as I’ll mind sleeping in a freezer—my brumal body boxed beside strangers.”
From Guest Contributor Shanique Carmichael
Oct
Hurt
by thegooddoctor in Uncategorized
“We’re joined today by the great Cuban émigré slugger Robinson Falco Villegas, Jr.”
“Hola.”
“Robby, rather than talk about your recent injury, why don’t you tell us why you and your father were named after Jackie Robinson?”
“I wasn’t named after him. I was named after the great irascible poet, Robinson Jeffers. I learned English so I could read his poems.”
“I didn’t know that. Can you quote your favorite lines?”
“I’d prefer to paraphrase.”
“If it makes you more comfortable, go right ahead.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes, go for it.”
“Were it not for penalties, you’d be dead now.”
From Guest Contributor Clyde Liffey
Sep
Mask
by thegooddoctor in 100 Words
Jonathan burst into the office, waving a bunch of papers and screaming out loud: “It’s all a scam, it’s a hoax. I’ve got proof in my hands. It’s the government trying to control us and all of our movements” as he rips off his oxygen filter.
Just seconds later he starts gasping and drops dead almost immediately.
Proof was indeed given to be very careful with skepticism.
Little did they know he died of acute heart failure.
And that’s why till this date the inhabitants of Planet Ksam are being closely watched and are all wearing very uncomfortable oxygen filters.
From Guest Contributor Hervé Suys
Sep
On The Floor
by thegooddoctor in 100 Words
Marty was a penny stock trader back in the 80s. A breathtaking collection of liars and cheats, everyone doing blow. Stock exchange officials were bribed. Client accounts were bled. It was something to behold.
His supposedly statelier sales manager was all smiles but for the dead shark eyes. He would say, “If people want yellow ties, sell them goddamn yellow ties.”
Once or twice a month, after market hours, Marty would go out and stick up random banks, his rickety scheme to salvage honour.
His profession was put early to the silicon sword. Mercifully, Marty never saw the party end.
From Guest Contributor Kevin Campbell
Kevin writes in Vancouver, Canada.
Aug
A Piece Of History
by thegooddoctor in 100 Words
The suicide stopped drowning for a minute to pose for the art students sketching on the riverbank. It happened about the time Sartre claimed he was being followed through the streets of Paris by a pair of rare blue lobsters. The bearded lady sat at the window, beautiful in her own way, but struggling to decide whether or not she should start to shave. Even though Hitler was dead, the screams from the gas chambers went on. People in the surrounding area would later say they thought it was just the collection of apple-cheeked Hummel figurines above the fake fireplace.
From Guest Contributor Howie Good
Howie is the author of The Death Row Shuffle, forthcoming from Finishing Line Press. He co-edits the online journals Unbroken and UnLost.
Aug
Thanks
by thegooddoctor in 100 Words
I cannot thank you,
little cat with serious eyes,
for your gift of a dead mouse.
I flee from reminders
of killing. I am a vegan, and it would
be easier if you were too.
But then I would lose
your playfulness and pounce, and turn
you into a timid, nibbling rabbit.
I love you for those things,
for your wish to feed me, and for
your love for me, strange as
I must appear to you: so huge,
so hairless, so hopeless a hunter. I am thankful
for what I cannot understand, this strange
love than can span species.
From Guest Contributor Cheryl Caesar
Cheryl lived in Paris, Tuscany and Sligo for 25 years; she earned her doctorate in comparative literature at the Sorbonne and taught literature and phonetics. She now teaches writing at Michigan State University. Last year she published over a hundred poems in the U.S., Germany, India, Bangladesh, Yemen, and Zimbabwe, and won third prize in the Singapore Poetry Contest for her poem on global warming. Her chapbook Flatman: Poems of Protest in the Trump Era is now available from Amazon and Goodreads.
Aug
Lucif And Mi
by thegooddoctor in Uncategorized
Lucif turns to his friend Mi. “Let’s go.”
“Nonsense, we have yet to explore.”
“With days of darkness, how can this be a safe home for our families.”
“No, we are staying.”
Lucif makes a run for the spaceship. He almost reaches the lever for the door when Mi pulls him back, knocking him to the ground. They struggle and with one sweeping kick, Mi flies in the air and lands hard on his head, yellow eye wide open. He is dead.
Lucif leans over his friend and closes his eye, then heads to the ship.
He is going home.
From Guest Contributor Lisa M. Scuderi-Burkimsher
Jun
Dust To Dust
by thegooddoctor in 100 Words
NATURE SUBMISSION:
The dust swirls through the late evening sun, catching the light just so. Growing up, people used to say the dust was your dead skin. A few of my more morbid friends even said it was the skin of dead people. Dust to dust after all.
I wonder if that’s true. The poet in me wants to believe it is, that we’re surrounded by our ancestors at all times, that their spirits live for eternity on the winds.
The claims adjuster in me turns back to my computer screen. Perhaps if I concentrated a bit more I’d be home already.
From Guest Contributor Angie Thrush