HUBRIS CONTEST:

Almost exactly one year later, John’s film premieres to universal vilification.

From Guest Contributor Eduardo Felin

Oompah-pah music and traditional German drinking songs floated up from the street festival into the third-floor courtroom. I shifted uneasily from foot to foot as I stood before the scowling judge. One prosecution witness after another had described in specious detail my attitudes, conversations, habits, and interests. There was even testimony about the transparent Jewishness of my penis. Now it was finally my turn to speak. I had just begun when the judge interjected, “Spare us your life philosophy.” His face was grave. He studied me with cold, squinty eyes as if calculating exactly how much a person can bear.

From Guest Contributor Howie Good

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

NATURE SUBMISSION:

Nature wants nothing to do with Alicia’s existential crisis. It doesn’t care that it’s meaningless. It just wants to start recomposting her as soon as possible.

From Guest Contributor Laura Stacks

He was a firm believer in the order of things; a conscious universe. He was well versed in Newton’s 3rd law and the law of ‘what goes around comes around.’ He had reduced life to a mathematical formula.

He died with hurt confusion in his eyes, his pain-wrecked body mangled and torn. Had he gotten the formula wrong? Was there even a formula?

From Guest Contributor Minerva Athena

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.

The sun was shining for once, and I was sitting out on the patio with a book, Clare Carlisle’s Philosopher of the Heart: The Restless Life of Soren Kierkegaard, open on my lap, while I stared off into the middle distance, trying to think of a specific skill my angry beautiful workaholic father had taught me growing up – how to change the oil in a car, for example, or restring a steel-string acoustic guitar, or make sourdough starter from scratch – and I couldn’t, I couldn’t think of one, unless, that is, you consider being a yellow bull’s eye a skill.

From Guest Contributor Howie Good

Howie is the author most recently of Stick Figure Opera: 99 100-word Prose Poems from Cajun Mutt Press. He co-edits the online journals Unbroken and UnLost.

HISTORICAL FICTION SUBMISSION:

Nevada shivered from the rush of adrenaline. Life was not fair, so why should she be? She cried for justice for her daughter. He laughed. She had never fired a gun. So uninformed she didn’t know if she held a rifle or shotgun, nor the proper distance from her target. She took the gun, the one he used camping and to bag deer, from his end of the closet. She did not know the blast radius or the kick that would knock her on her ass. She did not know how to hunt a moving target, but she could learn.

From Guest Contributor Leah Holbrook Sackett

HISTORICAL FICTION ENTRY:

What came to pass? Life in red, gushing red. There was blood in the soup, blood in the stew, blood on the hands of my husband. I thought about the plagues in Egypt, the Pharaoh who knew about miracles turned against him. I thought about science. That what flows, surely ebbs? While the old king’s blood ran blue.

From Guest Contributor Linda Lowe

Linda Lowe’s poems and stories have appeared in Gone Lawn, Crack the Spine, What Rough Beast, New Verse News, Tiny Molecules and others.

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.

Pete was a common sight on the pier. Not surprisingly, as he had spent most of his life on the docks. He was adored by everyone. After the accident, Pete no longer had a fishing vessel. He would see the boats off in the morning and wait on the pier for their return. The unloading fishermen were met by Pete. In turn, they would greet Pete and pause so he could check out their haul. Pete’s reaction to the catch would let them know if he approved.

Everyone was sure Pete knew his owner died at sea three years ago.

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.