Author: admin
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The Body Was Moved by Rhonda Rosenheck
(a triolet) The blood splatter suggests the body was moved,After being stabbed sixty-two, or -three, times.The deep shag rug was trampled and grooved.The blood splatter suggests the body was moved.The victim was heard by the maid to say, “It behooved…”his wife, instead of him, to admit to his financial crimes.The blood splatter suggests the body…
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Epitaph by Terri Metcalfe
His frontal cortex was the chain reaction at Chernobyland his amygdala was the exclusion zoneand his thought processes were steam explosionsand his whole mind was stage four cancer.His veins carried the instructions to keep working,his fingerprints were the emergency buttonand his hair was the flood of blue lightsand his liver filtered the excrement leaving dying…
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Cult of the War-Torn by Nate Ritchie
Deep in a forest of scarlet leaves,boys sunken-eyed and white-robed crowneda headstone with rusted razor wire andsplashed upon its crumbling bodyswirling vials of tainted blood.I asked them what the deceased didto deserve such grotesque desecration.“Nothing,”a pale boy answered.They simply needed his soul to suffereternal pain and humiliation.A reason behind the sufferingthey as individuals and their…
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Abby In The Mirror by Yvonne Aore
Abby stood before her bathroom mirror, staring at her reflection. The corners were still foggy.She tilted her head right, then left, then back to the middle. She smiled. Her reflection smiled. Then the reflection’s head tilted down, eyes fixed on Abby. The grin widened and crooked, stretching too far. The bridge of its nose scrunched…
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Fell Island by Nathan Poole Shannon
The scenery is losing its color. It looks like the landscape has been carved out of lead. In the shiny places it could be lit from within by ancient deadly radiations. Everything has been monochrome for some time, the flat charcoal of the water broken only by white ice, that of the land only by…
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Scorned by Kaitlyn Downing
A woman is most likely to be murdered by her husband. It took only minutes for the police to suspect that the woman who “must’ve drowned in the bath” (according to her husband, Sam) had been murdered. Sam huddled on the sofa, head clenched between his hands, face blank. Suicide was immediately ruled out due…
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Flatlands by Redfern Jon Barrett
It didn’t seem like anything odd. After all, children do childish things, especially ones as young as little Molly. She were out playing in the back garden as I watched from the window, making sure she didn’t wander out into the fields. Those endless flat fields, with churned black soil as far as the eye…
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The Boy in the Bayou by Alyce Lomax
Owen had lived nine years peaceful and alone in the bayou when it happened—the thing that changed everything. The dead boy. Owen was fishing on his boat, where he had seen all kinds of things float by on occasion. An alligator. An opossum, clinging to a piece of wood. A dead bear. An old tire…
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Hunted by Johanna Elattar
For the women who came before me, and the women who came after me. But I sincerely hope that I was the end for this monster. The motion light above the garage snapped on.The sound was familiar. My landlady fed a feral colony in the backyard, cats she called by name, so the light came…
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The House on the Hill by T. S. Parnell
Jamie stepped out of the taxi onto the gravel driveway. Pebbles popped under the soles of his polished shoes, unfit for countryside like this. He grabbed his suitcase and handed the driver a hundred-dollar bill for the extended trip. The driver gave him a curt nod before turning the car around and driving back down…