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Submitted to Contest #329
“Hey, are you alright?” a voice asks me, waking me from my sleep. She smells like cinnamon and coffee. But I wasn’t just asleep. I was on the way to dying. For a second time, I suppose. I mean, I was already dead. But that’s the strange thing about being a vampire– you very well may end up dying twice. I hear the rustle of a plastic grocery bag and I open my eyes to blinding sunlight. “Oh god!” I wail, slapping my palm over my suffering eyes. “How is it morning already?” I can feel the sun sapping my energy. Everything hurts. I am always hid...
Submitted to Contest #309
Most people forget their previous lives upon being reborn. Occasionally you hear stories of small children recalling memories that they certainly couldn’t have experienced, such as being married or having babies of their own. But as they grow up, these memories fade into the new ones being made and all such history of a previous life is lost to the mystery of time. But some small things may linger into adulthood. A kinship with a location or time period. A style of music or a type of cuisine. I was born and raised in Oregon’s vast Willamette...
Submitted to Contest #308
It rained on the midsummer solstice. The sky drizzled pathetically, conjuring a mist that hovered just above the ground as I picked black feathers off a dead crow. This weather was abnormal in every possible way, no doubt spoiling the midsummer festival. Not that I would have gone anyway. Like I said, I was busy scavenging what I could from a corvid that had been run over by a wagon wheel. “Poor thing,” I cooed, plucking feathers from the corpse. Its bones had been crushed and ground into the muddy road, so there wasn’t much left but a few f...
Submitted to Contest #307
“You’re not even going to ask who she is?” I said as Dr. Dearborne studied the photograph I slid across the desk to him. His office was in the basement of the natural sciences building, which I had thought would be gloomy and perhaps even soggy. But the professor kept a homey space, lush with exotic plants in glass containers and leather-bound books in languages I did not recognize. “It’s not in my business to ask,” he replied, pushing his round spectacles up his nose as he studied the photo of Gemma. It was the one I took of her on our beac...
Submitted to Contest #306
Fresh Start CakeServes 6-8 I discovered this recipe by accident when I was in my early-30s. I’ve since tweaked the ingredients and steps now that I know what I’m doing. Enjoy! Ingredients:- A repressed queer identity. Store bought is fine, but it’s best if it is sourced from a religious upbringing.- A husband. Doesn’t matter where you found him, his quality is irrelevant to the final product.- A new living space. Must be as fresh as possible.- Friends. Best if sourced from the queer community.- A new life goal, preferably one you previously...
Submitted to Contest #305
I stared the goddess down, knowing that she could ruin my fragile mortal self with a flick of her finger and spat, “You know what? I quit.” “You, what?” she asked, aghast. It was clear she did not expect this from me. How could she? She’d given me more power and privilege than any humble human ever expected to receive and here I was, turning my back on her. “I’m done,” I reiterated, crossing my arms over my chest. I could feel the big sweeping wings adorning my back, the one’s she’d given me, ruffle in the breeze. They were keeping me afloat...
Submitted to Contest #304
In the liminal space between Christmas and New Year’s, Juni experienced the first of what she would later describe as “visions”. She’d just gotten off of work and arrived home after dark. She fell into her usual post-work routine, and then it hit her. A character. A place. A murder. She whipped out her phone and opened up a blank page and began frantically writing it all down. She didn’t consider herself a writer in any form, yet whatever it was that popped into her head compelled her to commit the vision to text. So she did. The first story...
Submitted to Contest #303
Lucy shrieked and brandished her spoon as a mouse scurried across the cabin floor. The meat in the pot on the woodstove needed tending and her cutting board was full of half-chopped parsnips and leeks. “Violet is going to be here at dusk!” she called to the black cat sleeping on the heavily clawed armchair. “Get up you lazy bones, and do something about that mouse!” She returned to cooking, trying to avoid a late dinner. She wanted to impress Violet and having a mouse scampering around the cabin was unacceptable. But making their meal was ru...
Submitted to Contest #302
“Hi Janie, it’s Rachel. I just left ballet class and I was hoping to catch you before your shift started. I wanted to let you know how much I love you. You’re so thoughtful, kind, and smart. I am so lucky to be your girlfriend. Can’t wait to see you tonight! Love ya.” The voicemail arrived in Felicity’s inbox mid-morning on a Tuesday from a number she did not recognize. Felicity was busy and gave the voicemail a single courtesy listen before carrying on with her day. She didn’t delete it, though. Perhaps she planned to text the number that h...
Submitted to Contest #301
Melanie ran as hard as she could into the woods. She would have run farther had a tree root not tripped her, sending her flying face first into the dirt. As she laid on the sun-dappled ground, spitting out evergreen needles and moss, a voice greeted her. It was a strange voice, like the ones Melanie’s grandmother had told her not to listen to the forest at dusk. “What are you running from?” the voice asked. Melanie knew she ought not to reply, but instead to run back the way she came. But the fear of what lingered for her at home was far wor...
Submitted to Contest #300
Blood dripped into moonlit snow as I trudged towards either life or death. The healer inside the cottage was my only hope. But as I wrapped my cloak tighter around my body, knowing what I had just done, I feared she would turn me away. Or worse. Murder wasn’t typically in a healer’s wheelhouse, but I knew what she thought of me. Or at least what I imagined she thought of me. Or maybe just what my terrible, self-hating inner monologue assumed she thought about me. Maybe I deserved death.Or maybe, just maybe, she would spare the dying.Though I...
Submitted to Contest #299
Martha donned her black cape with the red velvet lining and packed her bag of essentials. There was no doubt that this would be a make-or-break career opportunity. She’d landed this gig by pure luck and she wasn’t about to mess it up. She checked herself in the mirror before she left her house, making sure there wasn’t any spinach in her teeth. The crowd tonight would be discerning and scrutinous. The event was a dry one, and without alcohol to smooth over any rough edges within the audience, she had to be perfect. She arrived a few minutes ...
Submitted to Contest #298
Both forearms broken, the crimson water rushing over my face and filling my lungs, I was supposed to die. This was how it was supposed to end. I closed my eyes and accepted my fate. But fate would not have me. She shook me by the shoulders and whispered in my ear that it was not my time to die. My time to live, in fact, was only just beginning. “Get up,” she said. A disembodied voice that I was certain did not belong to a mortal. Was it a god? I somehow mustered the strength to push my face out of the water, choking and sputtering as I did. ...
Submitted to Contest #297
In the middle of my morning pep talk to myself on the drive to work, I hit a deer with my car. Or maybe the deer hit my car with its body. I just needed to make it through the day and already things were off to a rotten start.I pulled to the side of the highway to survey the damage. The front of my beat up Toyota was even more beat up than usual, but still drivable. The deer however, was a goner. Well, almost a goner. It twitched as its intestines spilled out of it like tubes of red spaghetti. Steam rose off its body in the sun dappled fog. ...
Submitted to Contest #296
“Turn back,” I whispered, my voice nothing but a breath of wind on the rugged mountainside. But she did not listen. She did not care. She was oblivious to my watching. Sara trudged forward, her snowshoes crunching in the snow as it piled higher and higher around her. The water in her hydropack began to freeze in the tube between her sips, the reservoir still liquid only because it was pressed against her body in the pack she wore. As the white-out conditions intensified, she pulled out a compass to check her bearings. She was already fifty m...
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