Beth dies the night she packs her honeymoon suitcase. She folds a red-fringed shawl and places it carefully on top of her clothes. She zips up the suitcase and wheels it to the front door.
“I’m good to go.”
Her husband, Pete, walks into the room.
“What do you mean you’re good to go? Where are we going?”
“Oh, Pete.”
I’m well aware there are endless possibilities, limitless universes where people live rather than die, where situations work out rather than fall apart, where superb memories are made rather than never created, and where love blossoms rather than weakens. I’m unsure how to reach these complex destinations, but I know they’re out there, situated somewhere on a higher dimension or hidden behind the veil we call reality. They conceal all the could-have-beens, circumstances that might have occurred if given the opportunity but, of course, never came to fruition due to some seen or unseen event…
Continue reading “The Could-Have-Beens by Mason Yates”
SUNDAY 7:00 p.m. … Cynthia closes the door. She earned the privilege. Privacy. The quiet of the dayroom after hours. She turns on the lamp and positions the green upholstered chair, its back to the wall of windows and next to the table with the telephone, completing the ritual she’s performed every Sunday, Wednesday, and Friday evening for two months.
Continue reading “Evenings by Joanne Parsons”
She comes every June to set us free. Zooms into our neat little neighborhood, somehow boiling a cloud of dust from Grandma’s swept asphalt, brakes squealing like a stunt driver. Grandma’s jaw works but she forces the corners of her mouth up, tries to smile a welcome. The car fishtails in, parks crooked as a middle finger. A brown foot, naked, toenails the color of a freshly skinned knee, heels open the driver’s door and a cardboard cup in a long-fingered hand appears. Immediately upends. A brown waterfall of liquid and half-melted ice splatters the driveway, and as it rivers down to the street I hear it: that wonderful voice. Yuck, flat, Aunt Glory announces, and summer begins.
Continue reading “Dirty Summer by Jennifer Maloney”
“I won’t talk about the past anymore,” she said. “I’m only talking about what will happen from now on. I’m using this pain to make something wonderful.”
He held her hand, like he had so many times. Her masculine hands. Creative hands for making wonderful things. Like her saddest smile.
Continue reading “Doll Parts by Ximena Escobar”
When things became worse, I brought my mother to our abandoned-since-Dad-died beach house for the summer. A sabbatical and a newly west coasted daughter freed me to lug Mom like a bag of silent, bewildered groceries into the passenger’s seat of my car. We sped along the highway from the city to the coast, chasing the rickety car of Mom’s memory, lumbering just ahead. I savored the hopeful sensation of control and the encroaching smell of sulfury sea air.
Continue reading “Things You Shouldn’t Say to Your Mother with Dementia by Maggie Nerz Iribarne”
Jennifer finished the last slice of defrosted quiche she’d bought from the freezer shop on Monday. She switched off the gas fire. In the kitchen she rinsed off the plate under the tap, pastry crumbs, and slotted it on the drying rack. She put on her coat, shoes, unlocked the back door, stepped outside, locked it, and walked the five minutes to the bus stop nearest her house.
Continue reading “The Circle Route by Paul Kimm”
Darla pulled into the alley behind the bar and parked under the streetlight. Before she undid her seatbelt she sat in silence for a moment. She adjusted her rearview mirror and looked at her bloodshot eyes, the rims rubbed red from blotting tears. Over the two weeks since Joe Harrington dropped dead, Darla struggled as much with the prospect of her own future as much as her loss. The same thoughts ran over and over thumping her mind like a shoe in a dryer. I’m 64, I have no retirement savings, no real family. I need to keep working but my knees hurt all the time. How long can I keep this up? Her tiny self-chosen family had just lost their most stable member; she had lost her best friend and former lover. She took a make-up bag from her purse and went to work on her eyes.
Continue reading “Joe Harrington’s Wake by JD Clapp”
After about seven months of being alone, Beth began to see the ghost of her son. Or so she thought. The audience knew better, but she didn’t.
The experiment had always been designed for Beth. It’s not everyday that a colleague’s child dies mysteriously, creating a rare opportunity for “Science.” She, of course, didn’t know this. She believed she had volunteered and won the opportunity fair and square. The opportunity? To stay in isolation for one year in a submarine on the ocean floor to test the viability of long-term survival in similar crafts. That’s how it was sold to her by the scientists, anyway.
Continue reading “What You See Is What You Get by Scott C. Thompson”
Jim Hedgerow was the boss of Riverbank Cemetery’s burial crew, and this morning he was scratching to make sure he had enough help to “open up” a few places for “quick deposit.” At 7:30 the sun had jumped overhead, birds had their choirs in practice, and he had seen hard evidence of overnight guests in among the trees and full foliage at the edge of the cemetery along Fiske Brook.
Continue reading “Also Henry by Tom Sheehan”
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