When he slammed the door, he did not say goodbye. He just left. He left the house, the street, the small town, all the narrow-mindedness he had endured for eighteen years. No one was going to tell him what to do or what to believe.

It was 1942.

From Guest Contributor Anita G. Gorman

When Franz K. was taken off the train in the middle of the night, he came to on a street of futuristic glass towers that, from an architectural perspective, were already passé. “What are those buildings?” he asked his keeper, a tall, thin, priestly figure who emanated an aura of gentle authority. “You’ll find out,” the keeper said, smiling. He never did. By the time the sun rose, he was tied to a post, watching in terror the firing squad assemble. It was sort of like avant-garde cinema where a series of incidents doesn’t necessarily add up to a plot.

From Guest Contributor Howie Good

Howie Good is the author of more than a dozen poetry collections, including most recently Gunmetal Sky (Thirty West Publishing) and The Bad News First (Kung Fu Treachery Press).

Special trains departed every hour on the hour for labor camps and reeducation centers. Hatchet-faced men in leather trench coats would grab people right off the street. I struggled hard to keep the look of the panic-stricken out of my eyes, the hitch of the guilt-ridden out of my step. It wouldn’t even be noon, and the sun would already be a dying ember in an ashen sky. There was no specific end to the workday. Steel bars had been installed on factory windows and suicide nets on the roofs. Manufacturers knowingly sold baby food contaminated with the devil’s tears.

From Guest Contributor Howie Good

Howie is the author of more than two dozen poetry collections, including most recently Gunmetal Sky (Thirty West Publishing, 2021).

She was sitting on the bed, crying and feeling “something’s wrong, I should be asking for help,” but she couldn’t remember who or what she should be asking. Everything in her brain was white static. Secretly she wanted to see beautiful color, a purple that vibrates at the very end of the spectrum. Anyone observing her would have probably concluded she would never get away – away from clock faces with Roman numerals, the tyranny of structure, all those people going about their day on a busy street. When something needs water, you water it, you don’t just hope for rain.

From Guest Contributor Howie Good

Howie’s latest poetry collections are The Death Row Shuffle (Finishing Line Press, 2020) and The Trouble with Being Born (Ethel Micro-Press, 2020).

He doesn’t remember me. I used to be someone who was close to him. At least I thought I was close to him. He’d look at me as if I were a friend. He’d look at me as if I were a stranger but what exactly was in those eyes? In those sparkly eyes, was that affection, sympathy, or simply pity?

Seeing him walking down the street were the only happy moments of my life. Doesn’t he remember he saved me once and every day since then from all my misery. Well, the truth is I don’t remember him either.

From Guest Contributor Sergio Nicolas

I’m very excited to announce the winner of our Hubris Flash Fiction Contest, from regular contributor Lisa Scuderi-Burkimsher. I hope that winning doesn’t go to her head!

Congratulations Lisa! And thank you to everyone who submitted to the contest. It was difficult picking just one.

Bill combed his hair, gave a thumbs up to his reflection in the mirror and then left.

Bill stood for a moment before walking away and then sneezed.

From Guest Contributor Lisa M. Scuderi-Burkimsher

From the street outside, a loudspeaker boomed, “According to the decree of the 17th of this month on the Abolition of Walls.” I got up from the table where I was reading and went over to the window. Banners with the slogan “Public Interest Comes Before Self-Interest” fluttered in endless repetition down the street. Practically right under my window, officers were clubbing a man who lay crumpled on the pavement. I sighed, then went and sat back down and found my place in the book – sea nymphs with red seaweed hair were sunning themselves on the ledges of seaside cliffs.

From Guest Contributor Howie Good

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

She dances with the leaves on this late autumn night. They rise, fall, crackle, swoop back into the air, without reflection about their falls. No signs of injury. No self-pity.

The words float in her mind like sickly alphabet cereal. But another curtain of leaves showers her. She twirls, the leaves dancing with her, sky and street opening wider than ever before.

From Guest Contributor Yash Seyedbagheri

Yash is a graduate of Colorado State University’s MFA program in fiction. His work is forthcoming or has been published in WestWard Quarterly, Café Lit, and Ariel Chart, among others.

NATURE SUBMISSION:

Instead, Gordon returned to the spreadsheet open on his desktop.

From Guest Contributor Stanley Dutt

You stared out at our radiant world with an intense, even belligerent, expression. A ratty top hat, at least half a size too small, sat on your head at a treacherous angle. Your gaunt, wrinkled cheeks might have come from having lived on the street or being tortured in some foreign jail for political crimes, but didn’t. These were the years you renamed yourself, smoked a white clay pipe, worked in a carnival of night sweats and empty thought bubbles. Sometimes the stock market cratered. Other times you just wished we each could experience the irony of posthumous cult status.

From Guest Contributor Howie Good

Howie is the author of What It Is and How to Use It (2019) from Grey Book Press, among other poetry collections.