The car is in park, with the air-conditioner cranked. I finish my ice-cold soda, and would like another, but I’m not leaving this spot. It’s broad daylight and people are walking to work or taking their kids to school. I can’t wait until this is over so I can go home and get some much-needed sleep. A cold beer and cool shower will do nicely too.

My payment awaits.

From Guest Contributor Lisa M. Scuderi-Burkimsher

‘Can you please complete your homework?’ the frustrated dad nagged his uninspired child, for three consecutive days, rather the Sony PlayStation grasped her attention.

‘Dear Mr. So and So, it saddens us to summon you to school like this,’ the Headmistress began to berate him, ‘your child has complained to us regarding her inability to complete her homework due to you occupying her time after school.

From Guest Contributor Imraan Ganie

Imraan is a seasoned technologist, father of 3, and a lyrical addict who writes short stories, poetry, and limericks in his spare time. His quirky take on life, inspired by his curiously unconventional life experiences lead to twists of humour and tales that are always entertaining. Imraan lives on the Southern Coast of KwaZulu Natal in South Africa. Imraan has two short stories published in 2021 in an anthology called Taxi through Mzansi featuring short stories by twenty of South Africa’s finest authors.

The second hour of the sweat lodge was conducted in total silence and reflection, as was the first.

“I lost a grandchild as well, but your path leads to darkness and solves nothing. Keep searching, the answer will come.”

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 ruler of the rubble sits at the end of a table that reaches around the world. Who will live to see his reign unravel? The babies, who grow up somewhere else? Will they return middle aged, full of stories from their broken parents, and older brothers and sisters who went to school in their own country, saluted their own flag, played in the sea that belonged to everyone? Surely they will come, full of sadness and anger, looking for remnants of family left behind. Grownups, who pick up handfuls of rubble and say, this used to be my home.

From Guest Contributor Linda Lowe

Ice cream? Al declined. It hurt his teeth.

Another school needed to heed to the call for ice cream.

From Guest Contributor Krystyna Fedosejevs

Krystyna writes poetry, fiction and creative nonfiction regardless of the season. Although she prefers spring.

It was the end of the American Century, and as if at a secret signal, the streets suddenly filled up with dancing grannies. I looked in their doll-like painted faces for an explanation. What I saw instead were suicide nets, abortions by wire coat hanger, piles of broken bricks. Life in our little town was becoming more and more like life elsewhere – a movie trailer for the Apocalypse. I would shake my head in an attempt to get rid of the eerie images, but every morning children would once again be walking past the slaughterhouse on their way to school.

From Guest Contributor Howie Good

Howie is the author of Failed Haiku, a poetry collection that is the co-winner of the 2021 Grey Book Press Chapbook Contest and scheduled for publication in summer 2022.

One night our guy grabs the deck of us and off we go to school. “Pick a card,” he says, walking around the classroom. Yes, we’re old, with some bent corners and a few stains, our winning days behind us. But to be held up and fanned out? Like we were some old chorus line, called up for one last show. I go right after my buddy, the Four of Clubs, to someone who sticks me in a book called Misery. And how! I was never one for the solitary life. All I wanted to do was play my part.

From Guest Contributor Linda Lowe

Linda’s stories have appeared in Misfit Magazine, Star 82 Review, Bombfire Lit, and others.

A friend says he thinks of Andy Warhol and his pop art when he sees Campbell’s soup cans. But when I see Campbell’s soup cans, I think of my mother.

Now an old man, I still sip Campbell’s soup and remember my mother’s radiance lighting up the room and her deep blue eyes sparkling under the overhead light in our old kitchen. She’s been gone years, but I feel her presence.

From Guest Contributor Lisa Scuderi-Burkimsher

HUBRIS CONTEST:

When he inherited the family business, he was both horribly unqualified to run a company and incapable of conceiving of the possibility of failure. Thanks however to his tremendous hubris, the company continued to thrive under his direction.

From Guest Contributor Mindy Storr

Me and Dale chuck rocks at it. Before school, while we wait for the bus on Highway 62 and after school or on Sundays. It’s not all we do. We sit and talk about which girl at school we’d most like to bang. I’m more of an ass man. Dale really likes big boobs and has lots of ideas about what to do with them. Dale has a .22 rifle he shoots stuff with. I tried to get him to shoot Plastic Jesus but he said the bullet might ricochet and kill us. That would be a miracle, I said.

From Guest Contributor John Riley

John is the founder and publisher of Morgan Reynolds, an educational publishing company. He has written over forty books of nonfiction for secondary level students. His fiction and poetry have been published in Smokelong Quarterly, Connotation Press, St. Anne’s Review, The Dead Mule, and other many other journals both online and in print.