You hear the thin cries of a drowning man. You notice that seemingly innocent words like “today,” “yesterday,” and “tomorrow” have been censored. You pick quarrels with the baggers at grocery stores. You try but fail to ignore the prevalence of right-wing militias, foreign movies dubbed in English, shark sightings. You prefer baseball to football and a medically induced coma to either. You wonder what it’d be like to suffer a gunshot. You have a recurrent dream you’re lost in an old abandoned warehouse, usually with a friend you had growing up whose brother played Russian roulette once too often.

From Guest Contributor Howie Good

Howie is the author of THE DEATH ROW SHUFFLE, a poetry collection forthcoming from Finishing Line Press.

HISTORICAL FICTION ENTRY:

The three sisters couldn’t spend their summer at home because of smallpox in the town. Their parents acquired the old farmhouse close to the boarding school and their favorite teacher agreed to spend her vacation taking care of them. She told them why the house was empty, of the little girl, who drowned in the cow pond. In time, the spirit came to each: in a dream; as a light over the field at dusk; and to the third sister, as the woman she spent the rest of her life with, from the age of twenty-eight, in a Boston marriage.

From Guest Contributor Jon Fain

Thus far in 2020, Jon’s fiction has appeared in 50-Word Stories, Fleas on the Dog, City. River. Tree., and Blue Lake Review.

I dreamt that the ocean was a woman and she swallowed me. One second I was laying in my bed, and the next I was sliding down her throat. As I tumbled down, I felt seaweed and kelp cocoon around my body, wrapping tighter and tighter as I dropped further and further down her gullet. Her stomach was bedded with coral that deeply cut my arms and legs. All I could do was lay there, bloody, defenseless, and petrified.

Suddenly, I awoke from the dream, jumped out of bed, and walked towards the ocean to feel it all over again.

From Guest Contributor Melissa Maney

Our 93-year-old dad, without his hearing aids or even his three-pronged cane, still managed somehow to give everyone the slip, sneaking off to Monte Carlo Night down in the cellar of the dream factory, where he coolly turned over his hole card and won the pot, after which he started back upstairs, but on the way, and despite struggling for breath, charmed a roller derby queen on a royal visit out of her skates, so instead of ever returning to his rooms at the assisted living boarded a ship they say was built in the same shipyard as the Titanic.

From Guest Contributor Howie Good

Howie is the author most recently of Stick Figure Opera from Cajun Mutt Press. He co-edits the journals Unbroken and UnLost.

Auntie asks my mother and I to move out of her house. She says I make too much noise when I sleepwalk and my rock albums are causing Uncle Herman more brain damage from his tour of duty in Afghanistan. Upstairs, I take down my posters of Geronimo, John Lennon, and James Dean from the finely cracked yellow walls. Exhausted, my mother sits on my bed and breaks down. “It’s all your fault,” she says. As if I had the power. At night tiny policemen march into my ears. I’m not sure it’s a dream. They say come with us.

From Guest Contributor Kyle Hemmings

Kyle’s latest collection of text and art is Amnesiacs of Summer published by Yavanika Press. He loves street photography, French Impressionism, and 60s garage bands that never made it big.

I’m wearing my navy blue, long sleeve shirt that says, “Nevertheless She Persisted,” just like the one I have in real life. I’m standing on the shoulder of a mighty highway, with my thumb out! Me, looking to hitch a ride to Washington DC! Was Mitch even there? Was Congress still in session? What about security? That’s the trouble with dreams. They’re stingy with details. I’ll leave them to my ride, who’s shown up driving an eighteen-wheeler. He’s honking and honking that bazooka kind of horn. It’s saying hurry up. It’s saying you’ve got work to do, girl. Get in.

From Guest Contributor Linda Lowe

It was just a dream.

Was it real? It really didn’t matter.

The black clouds rolled in at a frightening pace, so close now that the lightening and thunder arrived simultaneously. His boat pitched up and down with such force, the hull strained at the seams and might break apart at any moment.

His remarkable life deserved something more than such a futile end.

He’d risen early this morning to plan the house his wife had dreamed of, but the hilltop’s stark beauty had rooted him to the spot.

He reflected on the nature of sirens.

From Guest Contributor Perry McDaid

He walked along the beach he’d frequented as a child in holidays long ago.

Yes, it would soon be time for his return to the dust from whence he came.

From Guest Contributor Ian Fletcher