When I step into the taxi, what happens next is something I will never forget…

As I’m loaded onto the ambulance in a stretcher, fading, my handkerchief lays torn on the ground.

From Guest Contributor Lisa M. Scuderi-Burkimsher

Of course Mickey was very honored that the great wizard Merlin asked him, an apprentice, to fetch an important ingredient for his secret potion.

‘I should bring some home and who knows, Merlin could find some use for these too.’

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.

My clammy hands make the number I pulled soggy. I roll the paper’s corner between my fingers until it looks like the twisted end of those poppers you throw at the ground. The chairs are ice cold and don’t warm up to me. Who am I waiting for to call my name? The slip is blurry. There’s no number after all. My skin is on fire. The paper disintegrates. Now I’ll never know when I’ll be called. The gift of creation is eating me alive. I really wanted to get that checked out. But I don’t think anyone is coming.

From Guest Contributor Madeline van Batum

Madeline lives in Colorado with her cat and hopes that one day she can go back to her home country of the Netherlands to finally meet the Flying Dutchman.

I was still in my twenties. A woman at the bar grabbed my arm and asked for my help. But I also would have rather done the tying than be the one tied up. Faraway in time, my doctor was phoning me with the results of the biopsy. I had what he called “an oddball cancer.” Of course, I did. What other kind would a poet have? The woman, her back now to me, was singing along with the jukebox about all the lonely people, a small, crumpled sound like foul dead flower water at the bottom of a vase.

From Guest Contributor Howie Good

Howie’s newest poetry collection, Heart-Shaped Hole, is available from Laughing Ronin Press. He co-edits the online journal UnLost, dedicated to found poetry.

I recognized the helmet on the unearthed body as the same customized gear hidden in my private lab. The ancient, scarred face underneath it, not so much. The damage was far too extensive. Even so, I knew.

But now I must do it. I need to find out what could cause me to write that warning.

From Guest Contributor Sean MacKendrick

I stepped off the bus, my body drenched in sweat. I couldn’t wait to remove my uniform.

The bath would certainly wait.

From Guest Contributor Lisa M. Scuderi-Burkimsher

Bio Lab meat? Are you eating your Uncle Fester’s cancer DNA? Bio lab fish genes are spliced with cancer to create a quick-growing mermaid that is evil. Hybrid children being eaten by everyone in this realm. Shame on evil. Bio Lab meat with chicken? Did you eat chicken man? Or a cow and human? Did you eat a Minotaur?? Who is speaking for the Hybrid children of this realm? Did Orc originate from a hybrid pig human escaping a bio lab meat factory? Did you eat your own flesh today in this weird reality where the law says it’s okay?

From Guest Contributor Clinton Siegle

The debate about the affair between Jersey and Nathan’s wife largely resolves to one public codicil: does Nathan know? Most admit Nathan should know. In a town this small you can sense by smell the presence of others. But the knowledge is not certain. We wait for Nathan to show in Thole’s parking lot, or be sitting at The Credible Bakery. Pick-up and drop-off would be the most convenient reveals. Or perhaps Nathan knows and is unconcerned his wife is weekly on loan. Could be he appreciates the entertainment as much as we do. Not much else keeps us guessing.

From Guest Contributor Ken Poyner

The old master carved the tortured limbs and anguished face out of the stone.

For centuries after his death, visitors stood in awe before his creation that spoke of suffering and, to some, redemption.

From Guest Contributor Ian Fletcher

Harvest missed, starlings busy with unworked seed, overripe corn, a laugh with the scarecrow – leave toward evening. Leaves of fall turn red like the blood fingering across the green linoleum kitchen floor after the thud of the back of your head, split like a too-ripe pumpkin. A widower falls in the kitchen, no one hears it, did it make a sound? The trees in the yard mourn the wood you stacked anticipating winter, as it dries, rots, quietly decays. Equinoxes later it splinters, skips off across tan, fallow fields in a cold wind, wet with the rustle of black wings.

From Guest Contributor Craig Kirchner

Craig thinks of poetry as hobo art. He loves storytelling and the aesthetics of the paper and pen. He was nominated twice for the Pushcart Prize, and has a book of poetry, Roomful of Navels. After a writing hiatus is being published and has work forthcoming in a dozen or so journals.