Hey, son. It’s your Mama. Hope y’all are doing good up there. I’m callin’ cause I’ve got a little problem here. So, did you hear about that storm we had a couple days ago, that derecho? Well, none of us had ever heard of one before, either. It was a perfectly nice day and then the wind starts a blowin’ and sounding like a big ‘ole freight train. The trees in the front yard were all bent over double. I’m telling you, it was like the end of days—I never heard such a noise … Continue reading Cats by Christine Tucker→
It’s just a stupid old oak tree, I keep telling myself, while I sit at the kitchen table and watch the white winter sunlight bathing its branches. It’s dying, I say, as I wipe away tears and busy myself with numbing, necessary tasks. Its branches are dropping and it’s trying to tell us and it’s going to kill someone in the process, I think, on frigid, windy nights when its massive canopy creaks and arches over yards humming earlier in the day with shrieking children and yapping dogs. It’s necessary, I explain to a … Continue reading Stupid Old Oak Tree by Kathleen McKitty Harris→
In the small Appalachian town where I was born lived a squat, bowlegged, hairless doctor. Some called him a quack and a dope fiend, but in 1954 he delivered me on his dining room table, spanked me ‘til I cried, and thirteen years later laid his cigar in an ashtray as his flabby fingers probed my pubescent neck while he peered through Coke Bottle lenses down my throat, past my recalcitrant tongue, exploring the mystery of vocal cords that refused to function. I cringed at his questions, so on point that I wept, as one … Continue reading Speechless by Peggy Schimmelman→
Twenty years ago, a reporter called me with bizarre news, so bizarre that I instantly wrote him off as a prank caller. He claimed he was from a town out West, maybe in Colorado? I am fuzzy on the details. I didn’t write down a word he said because I didn’t believe he could be serious. He asked if I was the author of Rats, Bulls and Flying Machines: A History of the Renaissance and Reformation. I replied in the affirmative, wishing he’d get to the point. At the time, I worked from home, a home … Continue reading Bonfire of the Vanities: Coming to a School Board Near You by Deborah M. Prum→
Here are things that I have done to avoid writing: chase my recalcitrant dog around the house for an entire afternoon trying to clip his nails, read all the comments on an article I wasn’t even that interested in, and although the effect would be transient at best, close my laptop to reorganize the kitchen cabinets. Last week, as I was struggling with the same sentence for more time than is either normal or healthy, the doorbell rang. An enthusiastic man introduced himself and his assistant. ‘I promise we’re not here to change your … Continue reading Time Suck by Erika Raskin→
Nancy Ludmerer is the 3rd place winner in Streetlight’s 2021 Flash Fiction Contest Before the pandemic, the desk had been his province exclusively since only he worked from home, but in their forced togetherness, they had to share it. He bragged about how he and Marnie, his ex-wife, rescued the desk during a snowstorm, when the Northwestern Law School Library replaced its wooden desks with metal ones. Had they not taken it, the desk would have been brought to the town dump, to be scavenged by humans or animals unknown. The desk was not without … Continue reading Susceptible to Scratches by Nancy Ludmerer→
Richard D. Key is the 2nd place winner in Streetlight’s 2021 Flash Fiction Contest In this episode of PTGTTS I’ll be talking about Earth, a little planet out at the edge of the galaxy, not to be confused with Erth-Ra, the much larger and more popular planet destination that you may be more familiar with. Earth (pronounced URTH) is off the beaten path, but worth the effort if you’re headed in that direction. Time on Earth is divided into “months” based on the one orbiting satellite, called “the moon.” Most of the inhabitants believe that … Continue reading Places To Go, Things To See by Richard D. Key→
Marjory Ruderman is the 1st place winner in Streetlight’s 2021 Flash Fiction Contest Phoebe was busier than ever, juggling depression and a midlife crisis. She dreamt of favorable circumstances becoming chaotic. A swimming pool displaced the boxes in her attic, its tiled bottom Escher-stepped and undulating. The water teemed with strangers. “Not serious buyers.” The Realtor at Phoebe’s elbow aimed her pen at the hordes of people there for the free swim in a structurally bewildering pool. Phoebe had never had a chance to enjoy the calm of a solitary swim, and now she … Continue reading Free Swim by Marjory Ruderman→
Jared lies in bed, propped up by his arms folded behind his head, a two-day stubble peppering his face and neck. One foot dangles off the side of the mattress. Dark, wiry hairs spring out of his leg, exposed by pajama pants hiked up mid-calf, bunched and wrinkled like old parchment because he doesn’t believe in ironing pajamas. You’re just gonna sleep in them and wrinkle them anyway. Besides, no one’s going to see them. No one except Lisa, who’s in the bathroom brushing her teeth with the door open. He half-smiles and says to … Continue reading Sliced by E.H. Jacobs→
He’s in one of my rooms. I pay attention to it now, because his window is closest to the nurses’ station and faces the automatic doors I push my cleaning cart through. I see him as soon as the doors breathe open and the negative pressure ruffles the gown’s paper against my clothes. Everything’s faster in here, no time to catch up on anything or anyone, other than the dying. I stay out of everybody’s way and clean wherever they aren’t. When I peek in his room, the machines and tubes are still at it, … Continue reading Like Savion by Bess Wiley→
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