Survivors with faded numbers tattooed on their wrinkled forearms slowly reboard the tourist bus. The archives they were supposed to visit burned down months ago. Yahweh beckons me forward with a curled finger. Don’t make eye contact, I remind myself. Seconds later I feel the blast wave on my cheek. It also knocks off my hat. “Look!” Yahweh booms in his usual angry voice. “Remember!” There are clouds, come evening, that will resemble bleeding stigmata. There are birds that return to nests in the eyeholes of skulls. I could try to explain it to anyone who asks. No one asks.

From Guest Contributor Howie Good

She watched the never-ending rotting seaweed wash up onto the mud flats. No one really came down to this area because of the smell, but the stench would cover the odor of a decomposing body for days. She had to return to the scene of the crime, she couldn’t help it. She had to see for the sake of her daughters.

One finger was sticking out of the muddy flats next to shore. It was harder getting the body to the flats than killing him. Her hurt was over, and he would never lay a hand on another woman again.

From Guest Contributor N.T. Franklin

NT Franklin has been published in Page and Spine, Fiction on the Web, 101 Words, Friday Flash Fiction, CafeLit, Madswirl, Postcard Shorts, 404 Words, Scarlet Leaf Review, Freedom Fiction, Burrst, Entropy, Alsina Publishing, Fifty-word stories, Dime Show Review, among others.

The atmosphere had been charged all day so when the storm started neither of them was surprised. The husband settled in to read; the wife paced the room unsettled.

“Whatever you want,” he said, and returned to reading his book.

Melissa Ridley Elmes

Melissa is a Virginia native currently living in Missouri in an apartment that delightfully approximates a hobbit-hole. Her poetry and fiction have appeared in Reunion; The Dallas Review Online, Eye to the Telescope, Star*Line, Gyroscope, In Parentheses, and other print and web venues, and her first book of poetry, Arthurian Things: A Collection of Poems, was published by Dark Myth Publications in 2020. Follow her on Twitter and Instagram @MRidleyElmes

The splinter was dug in so deep Jacob couldn’t see it anymore, let alone fish it out with the tweezers. By now the skin around the wooden sliver was red and hot to the touch.

“Not everything is a conspiracy, Jacob.”

More than spirits, ghosts are the chill of a finger tracing your spine, a whisper only loud enough for you to hear, a memory of something long gone. What happens when the ghosts I’m afraid of are the ones that are alive? Will they continue to feed on me until there is nothing left? Will I join the other ghosts then? Piece by piece, they keep picking away until I am nothing. Will they pity me? The girl they once knew was full of life; and now, she is no better than the rest of them. A bag of bones.

From Guest Contributor Kelsey Swancott

Kelsey is a senior majoring in English with a minor in Visual Arts and Spanish while also being involved in the campus literary magazine Angles. She plans on furthering her education by getting her masters degree in English as well.

The cabbage on the chopping block was a vivid royal purple. She couldn’t figure out why it was called red cabbage. It certainly looked purple, even after it was cooked. Her sheepsfoot knife was thinly slicing the quartered pieces with almost no effort. Good knives were worth every dollar spent on them, she mused.

She looked down and noticed blood on the board. Was that the tip of her finger?

From Guest Contributor Janice Siderius

“For two, please,” the woman muttered, fondling the wedding ring on her slim finger. The waiter escorted her to an empty table with a dim candle.

Happy anniversary.

From Guest Contributor Alex Vuong

Alex lives his life out loud and in vibrant color. He loves to put on his headphones and dance through his room. Alex is always looking for opportunities to learn new music and create more art.

Seven-year-old Ava Mendez fidgets with Mimi’s cellphone in her lap.

Daddy, in a holding cell waiting for deportation, has not forgotten nor heard her angelic voice in three days and nights.

From Guest Contributor Yknow

“I need a man that can put a ring on my finger.”

” . . . I don’t think this is going to work.”

From Guest Contributor Patrick Winters

Lillith’s earliest memory is of her nail poking at her father’s love handle. As if her finger was able to inject happiness, and heal the month-to-month worries that emerged as dollar signs in his eyes, just around his pupils.

On her thirtieth birthday, Lillith’s parents pulled up to her one-hundred-and-forty-four-square-foot tiny home. As Lillith washed the sand off her feet, her mother whispered to her father, “When’s she gonna grow up?”

From Guest Contributor Susan Shiney

Susan is a writer, painter, and teacher originally from Southern California. She is now living in Lille, France.