Jumbo jets are supposed to be safer, the new Airbus A380 the safest.

Suddenly any fear of flying turns to fear of drowning…at 35,000 feet.

From Guest Contributor Barry O’Farrell

Barry is an actor living in Brisbane, Australia. The acting experience has inspired a latent desire to write. Barry is enjoying the challenge of writing in 100 words.

When the brown moths would gather on the ceiling, you would take them up in your hands and set them loose outside. Yes, I miss that. And you are right. It is true that I was vengeful. It is true that I was impossible to pin to the carpet. And I used rhetoric to slip out of body. But what you wouldn’t hear, what I tried to tell you, was that I felt like a fish on the shore, begging for water. Love me, please, hear me, please, see? You kept saying, “The sand is water, so swim in it.”

From Guest Contributor, Addy Evenson

Rachel held herself tightly and rehashed all the bitter memories. The water soaked into her skin and she wished the gentle lapping would wash away her regrets and better-left-unsaids. Yet her mood only darkened as the wrinkles formed.

She’d rather claim the responsibility. At least then there is hope.

A young girl and her father sit on a bench and stare into the lake. They are stuck this way forever. From here on out, they must focus unblinking on the way it does not ripple, how no stone may enter and how no fish can leave. Across the park, a squirrel clings to a tree, his heart always exploding, a white dog snapping at his tail. The water reflects the moon and calls down the night, pocked with clouds– the sky split in two, half of it black, half of it blue; there is no color where they merge.

From Guest Contributor, Jeremy S. Griffin

The rain fell lightly upon the pavement. Benfer was dry in the bus shelter, but he was trapped as well. He watched as the moisture slowly seeped closer and it wasn’t very long before he’d been forced onto the bench.

The difference between tigers and Benfer was that tigers weren’t afraid of moisture. Benfer’s last, sad thought was that he’d expected his story to end very differently.

They had him taped to the floor. When they were holding him down and placing one piece of tape after the other, he’d smiled. Faintly so as not to be noticed, but a smile nevertheless. They didn’t have enough tape to hold a person flat to the ground.

This would certainly be one of the worst ways he’d ever been killed.

Her car broke down on the longest stretch of highway in the middle of nowhere. Selena popped the hood and even her rudimentary knowledge was enough to diagnose an overheated engine. It had been hours since she’d seen another vehicle.

As the black Cadillac pulled up beside her, she wondered if she could trade the water and money for just a pinch of good fortune.

Part One

Jesus converted water into wine. It’s true. It’s in the Bible. I don’t know if the wine was any good. I mean, did he properly age the wine as part of the miracle, or did it taste way too new? Does it really even matter? I hear even experts can’t tell the difference in blind taste tests.

In any case, it’s my god-given right to drink and get behind the wheel of my American-made Chevy truck, so I’d advise you to step back into your vehicle, officer, or I might be forced to explain the second amendment to you next.

Every desert harbors an oasis at its heart. The more consuming the landscape, the more bountiful its sanctuary. The soil squeezes every spare drop into hidden, long forgotten recesses, where it will be conducted to safety.

They’ve promised me a taste of a single drop of water, a generation in the making, on the day of my death.

She had only one weakness, but as with others of tremendous power–Achilles, Samson–it would be that weakness that would be her undoing.

In the end, it was a bucket of water that occasioned her demise. Once she had tasted water, it was impossible to continue life as a witch.