The house whose elderly owner didn’t believe in staging finally sold, for way below market value. The old man called Jane twice to back out, overcome by nostalgia. When it sold he moved in with his daughter. She lived nearby.

The buyers threatened to call the police if there was a fourth time.

From Guest Contributor Todd Mercer

Todd writes Fiction and Poetry in Grand Rapids, Michigan. His collection Ingenue was published in 2020 by Celery City Press. Recent work appears in Praxis, The Lake, Literary Yard, and Star 82 Review.

The enormous house consisted of large acres of land with an abundance of flower and vegetable gardens. Violet’s only companion was her cat Missy.

In the basement, the deceased prior owner chortled.

From Guest Contributor Lisa M.Scuderi-Burkimsher

is custom made to look like my house, our house. My new wife’s idea—for Sarah. Same front elevation. Duplicate floorplan. But my step daughter’s attempt to match furniture placement is off. I nudge the miniature hutch to its true location. She frowns, pushes my hand away, makes me move to the front yard, so to speak. I look at her through the windows. She appears as if a Goliath child. My sling: empty after repeated attempts to penetrate the four walls of her heart. I lean low, peer inside the front door. “Knock, knock,” I say. She never answers.

Keith Hoerner lives and pushes words around in Southern Illinois.

Curtain rises.

Get out.

From Guest Contributor Erik C. Martin

Erik lives and writes in San Diego. He misses Comic-Con, his critique group, and SCBWI meetings. Follow him on Twitter at @ErikCMartin.

NATURE SUBMISSION:

The woman who planted the Agave was just ten years old when she and her dad had picked placed the little cactus in their front yard. She’d decided to hold onto the house after her parents moved to Florida hoping to see it flower someday. Now, despite the crowds and reporters, the long wait had been worth it.

From Guest Contributor Alice Ryder

NATURE SUBMISSION:

We had come out of the root cellar, its door fortunately hidden by an overgrown raspberry patch, where we’d hidden from marauding mobs that had fled the cities, and hidden again when the pursuing troops began shelling. Our house and outbuildings were charred skeletons, the animals gone. We were still holding hands.

From Guest Contributor F. J. Bergmann

Everett was swinging back and forth on his porch enjoying a glass of iced tea, sweet tea, watching the annual 4th of July parade make its way past the little house he’d lived in all his life.

Back when Everett was young, girls, black and white, twirled batons. But the world today was meaner. Neighbors didn’t even try anymore. Or so it seemed to Everett.

From Guest Contributor Brian Beatty

Brian is the author of four poetry collections: Borrowed Trouble; Dust and Stars: Miniatures; Brazil, Indiana: A Folk Poem; and Coyotes I Couldn’t See. Beatty lives in Saint Paul, Minnesota.

Oksana pounded the door of Zoya’s wooden house. She screamed.

Zoya embraced her daughter. She heard a crashing sound. When she realized the smoke was coming from above, she said, “I love you Ekaterina. We’ll be together in Heaven.”

From Guest Contributor Deborah Shrimplin

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.

Rain blackens the windows, dime-sized water balloons of toxic ash. We haven’t had sun in months, and now this. You look up and say, Think it’ll stop? I love how you still look up, that instinctive angle of hope, of God.

We stand on the porch and watch the rain. Our last neighbors emerge from their house, wave, then slow dance down the street. By the time they reach the corner they’re convulsing like punk rockers. I ask you to dance but you pull me back inside.

From Guest Contributor Charles Duffie