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Submitted to Contest #338
Dr. Thomas Whitaker stood beside the narrow examination table and listened. The patient sat on its edge, jacket folded neatly on the chair, a blue tie draped over the back. His shirt was open at the collar, his feet not quite reaching the floor. There was, in his posture, something boyish, a grown man waiting to be told he was all right. The room held the familiar blend of antiseptic and tobacco. Somewhere beyond the door, a typewriter struck a few efficient keys, then fell quiet. The stethoscope was cool against his chest and the pulse was ...
Submitted to Contest #337
I wake facing the ocean. My name is William. Or at least it once was.I was born to kind parents. I fell in love and married my wife. We had two children. They gave my life weight and direction. At 44, I fell ill, and three months later I died. In my final days I grew weak. My body no longer did what I asked of it. I grieved for what I was to miss but I was not afraid. Near the end, I returned to my faith. It asked little of me. I held it quietly. My breathing slowed. Then it stopped. There was darkness, and then a sudden intensity that is ha...
Stillwater was the kind of town that didn’t change unless something broke. Main Street was three blocks long, paved uneven, its storefronts looking much the same as they had a hundred years ago. Joe’s Barber Shop still had its red-and-white pole spinning, though Joe himself had died years back and Joe Jr. cut hair the same way: high and tight. Kessler’s Pharmacy still wrote labels by hand and sold milk from a back cooler like it was a general store from the 1950s. The diner still served early-bird prime rib on Tuesdays. Houses in Stillwater ...
Submitted to Contest #336
TRANSMISSION LOG Timestamp: November 8, 4016 / 03:17:42 UTCTransmission Number: 1,241,850System ID: TYSONFunction: Autonomous Biosphere Survey - Segment 12Operational Status: NominalPrimary Receiver: ARCHIVE NODE A-0Receiver Status: No response recorded STANDARD ENVIRONMENTAL REPORT Atmosphere:Composition stable within post-detonation baselines.Residual radionuclide traces present.No atmospheric signatures associated with respiration or combustion. Ocean:Thermal and salinity profiles stable.Isotopic markers consistent with historic fallout.N...
Captain Williams woke before the alarm. He ran two and a half miles, showered, and dressed. By the time the sky began to pale, he was steady, breath slowed, body prepared. He stood at the counter and watched the clouds gather as rain began to fall. Captain Murray came down long after she had started her day, hair loose, coffee poured and forgotten.“Morning,” she said.“Morning,” he answered.They stood a few feet apart, accustomed to the space between them.“You should take an umbrella,” Williams said.“I’ll be fine,” Murray replied, a half-smil...
Submitted to Contest #335
I’ve always loved the days between Christmas and New Year’s.As a kid, it meant time off from school, sledding at the park, and playing with whatever new toys had taken over the living room floor. Now, it’s something quieter. A pause between the chaos of the holidays and the resolutions of the year ahead. The decorations are still up, but the pressure is gone.I’ve never been one to take time off during this stretch. This week, work feels manageable. Almost peaceful.A few weeks ago, I was promoted to Vice President of Human Resources for ZG&am...
I don’t know what I am, exactly. I’m not breathing. I’m not blinking. I’ve never done either. But I know I am… something. Trying to explain it to you would be impossible - your mind isn’t built for what I am right now. I exist outside your categories.Not alive, not dead,You may describe me as “supernatural” - not earthly.I simply am - a presence that has always existed,far beyond the reach of clocks, seasons,or anything you would call time. Just… me. And I have a number.119,595,959,595 I like the sound of it - nineteen-five-nine-five-nine-f...
Submitted to Contest #334
The Witch March 12, 1964 The lambs woke me again before the light came up. The smallest one kept crying like it thought someone would answer. I named him Jonah. Bess, the brown cow, chews loudly. I like listening to that. They made a place for me in the barn when I came here. It isn’t really a room, but it has boards and a door that leans the wrong way. The cot is narrow, but it’s a bed. I keep a tin horse Mama gave me on the shelf and a book with the cover torn off. The blanket smells like hay and I don’t mind that. Before this, I lived wit...
Submitted to Contest #333
“Let’s EEEAT!” Joey Bites leaned into the camera and tore into a wing like it had personally challenged him. The lights above the table were harsh and white, flattening the colors of the sports bar into something shiny and disposable. Neon signage buzzed behind him. Flatscreens lined the walls, each tuned to a different game no one was watching. The place was called Firebox Wings, a campus-adjacent spot built for volume and turnover. Joey Bites chewed loudly, nodding with exaggerated concentration, eyes half closed as if parsing something sa...
I’m hungry to feel. It’s been exactly one month since Skye died. Gone as quickly as she came into my life. People talk about time stretching after something like this, but mine has stayed rigid, measured in appointments and thank-you notes and the quiet efficiency of days that continue whether I want them to or not. Skye had jet black hair that never stayed neat, no matter how carefully I brushed it. She smiled with her whole body, as if joy were something physical she had to carry. She was small for her age, quick to laugh, slow to sleep, s...
Submitted to Contest #332
The calendar hangs crooked by the stove. I lean in to stir the kettle and my eye catches the date: Thursday, January 12, 1888. I don’t give it much thought. The fire’s going, the house is warm enough, and through the window the morning looks plain and still. A few light flurries drift down, the kind we’ve had off and on all winter, the air calm and quiet. Thomas stands where I tell him to, nine years old and already serious about it, while I button his coat clear up to his chin. Henry won’t keep still. He’s six and full of motion, hopping fr...
I wake up before the alarm, 4:27 glowing on the clock. Three minutes to spare. Linda’s still asleep, curled toward my side like always, so I slide out of bed slow so I don’t wake her. The floor’s cold on my feet, but that’s nothing new for a storm morning. I stand up and my knees remind me I’m not a kid anymore, just a little stiffness to work through. I head toward the window and look out at Fairview Ave.—the snow’s just starting, and the salt trucks are already moving. They say we’re getting a historic blizzard today, supposed to rival the...
Submitted to Contest #331
Michael Thomas woke to the sound of a single knock at the front door. The wind outside howled along the siding, rattling the gutters as snow hammered the windows in frantic bursts. For a moment he thought the storm had made the noise, but then it came again—soft and deliberate. He reached for his phone on the nightstand.11:59 p.m. His wife slept beside him. His infant son breathed steadily in the bassinet at the foot of the bed. Michael blinked into the dark, letting the sound settle into him. A knock at this hour made no sense. He eased him...
I remember the snowfall before I remember him. November 1st, 2003 — just three days earlier it had been seventy-four degrees and sunny. But that morning, a thin veil of early-season flurries brushed over a deserted Lavalette beach, the flakes melting as soon as they touched the sand. Nico always remembered everything. The first restaurant, the first movie — even the name of the Paris cab driver who sang to us on the way to that tiny hostel on our first trip to Europe.Every beginning stayed with him. But the moment etched deeper in me than an...
The oil tank is leaking — I know it is. I jolt upright, chest cinched so tight I wonder if this is a heart attack, if this is the moment I die while that rusted coffin under the ice bleeds poison toward my girls’ rooms. But there’s no time to die — not tonight. I have to get out there. I have to stop it before the fumes seep up through the ground and take everything I love with them. I go to grab my robe, a hat, gloves—my hands shaking so badly I drop them twice. My scarf is missing; of course it’s missing when I actually need it. So I yank ...
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