Here is a secret–it’s not about the pain. Rather, it’s about prolonging the discomfort.

…and you might just catch when my eyes roll back.
Mmmmmm.

From Guest Contributor Jeff H.

Jeff is a high school English teacher. He blogs at https://batchandnarrative.com/ with his wife, a dietitian, about writing, food, and everything else.

Adulthood in Texas means being old enough to get the electric chair if you kill someone. In 17th century England offenders sent to the pillory were pelted by the crowd with dung, dead cats and dogs, rotten vegetables, and, in extreme cases, stones and even saucepans. Some, though, flung flowers in Defoe’s face. It’s the difference between weather and climate. The least you can do is pretend to care. In Jewish tradition a righteous man is buried with 144 prayer books atop his coffin. When my Uncle Lou was buried, they put the books in cardboard boxes labeled Kitchen Utensils.

From Guest Contributor Howie Good

Howie is the author most recently of What It Is and How to Use It from Grey Book Press. He co-edits the journals Unbroken and UnLost.

The mist glistened with false promises. The canopy dripped the tears of myriad misled bards of all races who had put effort into the creation of tales only to be demeaned by the praising of the Mediocre tribe by the forest’s Editelves.

The trolls, in particular, grumbled angrily as the incantation of rejection echoed through the avenues, causing even lianas to cringe. “We have decided not…”

From Guest Contributor Perry McDaid

Max and David were inseparable. The scruffy Brittany Spaniel logged many miles around the family farm in the front passenger seat of the GMC half ton. David helped out his boys when needed, which was less and less each year. That suited David just fine. He enjoyed driving around the fields and his afternoon nap.

David did not wake up from his Monday nap. No one told Max as he spent the rest of that afternoon in the truck, waiting for David. One of the boys drove the truck to the funeral. Max sat in the cab, waiting for David.

From Guest Contributor NT Franklin

You must realize my darling, that men have more immediate needs than a woman? Allowances should be made for us. You women don’t have to contend with an unruly member when it gets a whiff of a beautiful woman, especially if she smiles back.

You truly don’t have to do this. Please let me out. If you send me back, I’ll not ever be able to return. Please, please, Ruthie, I swear to you I won’t ever stray again. It’s the only time-machine in existence, and I’m much too fat to run from the dinosaurs at my time of life.

From Guest Contributor Len Mooring

The soon to be father entered the delivery room wearing a hastily tied paper gown.

Tears of joy filled mom’s eyes as her daughter was placed into her arms, and she said with concern, “She looks like an alien.”

From Guest Contributor Eddie D. Moore

Eddie travels hundreds of hours a year, and he fills that time by listening to audiobooks. When he isn’t playing with his grandchildren, he writes his own stories. His stories have been published by Kzine, Alien Dimensions, Black Hare Press, Nomadic Delirium Press, Fantasia Divinity Publishing and by dozens of online publishers. You can find a list of his publications on his blog, eddiedmoore.wordpress.com, or by visiting his Amazon Author Page, amazon.com/author/eddiedmoore. While you’re there, be sure to pick up a copy of his mini-anthology Misfits & Oddities.

I went on my own because I couldn’t get anyone to come with me. What had once been an orchard was now a graveyard for old tires, sprung mattresses, rusty paint cans, even broken microwaves, scattered over the slope like the indecipherable wreckage of some puzzling event. The trees, untended for years, had long since stopped producing apples and been twisted into painful shapes by time and storms and then overwhelmed by creeper vines and opportunistic birds and insects. I just stood with my head cocked to one side as if trying to catch every single word the crows said.

From Guest Contributor Howie Good

Howie co-edits the journals UnLost and Unbroken.

“To bare one’s soul is a difficult thing indeed,” Pappa said.

Poppa rolled his eyes.

From Guest Contributor Perry McDaid

There’s a knocking on the spaceship door when there shouldn’t have been. For Chris-sake, I’m umpteen millions of miles from anywhere and here’s this knocking. It’s deliberate, and it’s the all too common knock of: knock, tiddly-knock-knock, knock knock. Is this a space hallucination? I’ve heard of them, but hell’s bells, I’ve only been up here for 50 days, surely it couldn’t happen as soon as this. Oh, mother, it’s peering in the port-hole now and looks just like me. I do feel a bit lonely now, maybe we could get along. I’ve just got to get this hatch open…

From Guest Contributor Len Mooring

It was a pleasure to burn. Of the eight, it was my most beautiful arm: the hillside slope of the shoulder, the tender elbow, that lilting wrist, narrow yet invincible. Had he seen it in the dance, or still in his Sistine posture, even Michelangelo would have known God is a woman.

The downy hair went up first, and then the skin, the perfect fingernails, the sizzling fat and muscle. There is always a relaxation in admitting the truth, even a truth that smells like sulfur and charcoal: I am the flames as much as I was ever the arm.

From Guest Contributor Brook Bhagat

Brook’s poetry, fiction, non-fiction, and humor have appeared in Monkeybicycle, Empty Mirror Magazine, Harbinger Asylum, MoonPark Review, Little India, Dămfīno, Nowhere Poetry, Rat’s Ass Review, Peacock Journal, Anthem: A Tribute to Leonard Cohen, and other journals and anthologies. In 2013, she and her husband Gaurav created Blue Planet Journal, which she edits and writes for. She holds an MFA from Lindenwood University, teaches poetry and creative writing at a community college, and is writing a novel. See more at www.brook-bhagat.com or reach her on Twitter at @BrookBhagat.