Rachel’s hands icy cold and legs so frail she could hardly stand, she gagged from her own body odor. The babbling of the malnourished became constant and she tuned them out. Her skin was riddled with bug bites, her teeth loosed from lack of nourishment, and her lips craved water. Rachel’s crime was being Jewish, and the suffering had only begun. She didn’t know where the train was going, but knew it was bad.

In the last minutes of her life, when she and the others breathed in the noxious gas in the dark enclosed chamber, she adhered to hope.

From Guest Contributor Lisa M. Scuderi-Burkimsher

Cold and hungry, I shivered on the platform.

I lowered my head and pressed my hand against “The Star of David,” sewed onto my fraying coat.

From Guest Contributor Lisa M. Scuderi-Burkimsher

Poof went my idea for a poem, off it charged into the common air. It could be anywhere on this train now, traveling up the coast. Maybe people are talking about it in the dining car, maybe the conductor’s thinking about it as he takes their order for dinner. It could be in the heart of the young marine from Camp Pendleton, a lieutenant, stationed there for three years. He’s on his way to San Francisco to see his girlfriend. He has something important to tell her, something that just came to him, while the sun set over the Pacific.

From Guest Contributor Linda Lowe

Linda’s stories and poems have appeared in Outlook Springs, Crack the Spine, New Verse News, Star 82 Review, Indolent Books, A Story in 100 Words, and others.

Aviva Blonheim stepped onto the train with her parents. As the German soldier closed the door, he chortled. Aviva, only ten years old, didn’t understand why Herr Hitler hated the Jewish, and as she glanced at her people packed into herds, unkempt, smelling of sweat and urine, she became more frightened. She tightly clutched her mother’s hand.

As the poison gas entered Aviva, she grasped her throat and collapsed into darkness.

From Guest Contributor Lisa M. Scuderi-Burkimsher

There’s so much still to suffer that even tediously waiting for a train that’s hours late would be a grateful interruption. People are digging in the burning soil with bare hands. My wife’s there. My mother, too. I was going to join them, but now I can’t. It’s as if I’ve become, without my consent, a junk collector. Strange items keep appearing outside the door: a pamphlet, “Human Beings against Music”; rusted bedsprings; a bundle of pencils with broken points; feathers from random birds. Someday, I suppose, children will ask me, “What was it like, the end of the owls?”

From Guest Contributor Howie Good

Just before dawn, the train barreled across the border. My carryall bag on the overhead rack contained an entire set of ant-dreams preserved in amber. Spies lurked everywhere, but, after the train pulled in, I evaded them by frequently changing my facial expressions. Later that day, I traveled by sampan and pedicab to meet my contact, an experienced agent posing as an English nanny. We met in a neighborhood playground beside a tree whose round fruit the children pretended were bombs. At one point I forgot the word “cremated” and had to ask her, “What’s it called – incinerating the body?”

From Guest Contributor Howie Good

Howie is the author of The Titanic Sails at Dawn (Alien Buddha Press, 2019).

I found a black widow shaking in the bedroom, sitting in the morning sun on the windowsill. She was mumbling the rosary in a small, desperate whine, like a faraway train trying to stop. Through a lace veil, draped over her head and the top of her abdomen, I could see the silhouette of the little beads slipping methodically through her jointed forelegs. She became still and silent and turned to me, her eyes, two rows of four, clouded and quivering. A tiny tear dripped off the end of her fang.

“Don’t worry,” I told her, “there is no Cat.”

From Guest Contributor Brook Bhagat

Brook’s non-fiction, humor, poetry, and fiction have appeared in Little India, Dămfīno, Nowhere Poetry, Rat’s Ass Review, Peacock Journal, and other journals and anthologies. She has completed a full-length hybrid manuscript, is writing a novel, and is the co-owner and chief editor of BluePlanetJournal.com. She holds an MFA from Lindenwood University and teaches creative writing at a community college.

Still tired, I wake in the darkness. In the distance, I hear a train and the rumble of traffic. I strain for the sound of your soft breathing next to me. An aeroplane passes overhead, now I hear the humming of the refrigerator. Eyes closed, I can feel the heat of you an arm’s length away; just an arm’s length. I reach out to touch you; I hear the angry hiss. Still not forgiven. My heart turns to stone when I glimpse your fury through clenched fingers. Everything turns to stone, hard stone. Hard words echo in the night air.

From Guest Contributor David Rae

I’d always known about my husband’s cheating, but when he was home, he was good company. Now he’d left.

Picking up my purse, I couldn’t wait for the train doors to open fully—my daughter cradling my granddaughter on the brightly lit platform.

From Guest Contributor Geoffrey Philp

Geoffrey is the author of the YA novel, Garvey’s Ghost. He teaches English and Creative Writing at the Inter-American Campus of Miami Dade College.

We’d barely set down our suitcases when Vic said he wanted to leave. “Let’s wait for a Howard Johnson. This place is a dump. Look, cockroaches!”

“Don’t be stupid,” he said. “Roaches are roaches.”

From Guest Contributor Brook Bhagat

Brook’s nonfiction, poetry, and fiction have appeared or are forthcoming in dozens of publications, including Little India, Outpost, Nowhere Poetry, The Syzygy Poetry Journal, and Rat’s Ass Review, and she is the co-owner and chief editor of BluePlanetJournal.com. She holds a B.A. from Vassar College and an MFA from Lindenwood University and teaches creative writing at a community college. She has completed a full-length hybrid manuscript and is writing a novel.