Blog Archives

Medical Dystopia, by David Margolin

28/4/2023

The art of medicine was relentlessly destroyed by big business. House calls, individual private practices, and physical examinations by laying on of hands all disappeared.

Medical practices moved from small offices to hospitals, and then into mega-corporation owned pharmacies (in between the toothpaste and the mouthwash). Surveys replaced service.

It was easier to break into a heavily-fortified vault than to see a doctor in person. Artificial intelligence overshadowed the natural.

Then one day this conversation took place through the patient portal: Patient, “I’m very sick, I need to see Dr. Cyborg today.”
Virtual receptionist, “I’m sorry, he’s out for repairs.”

Liar, Liar... You Know the Rest, by G. Lynn Brown

28/4/2023

She learned his secret but never let on she knew what she was never meant to know.

That evening, at dinner, he blew out the candles. "Darling, I've missed you so much."

She struck a match and relit the tapers.

He reached across the table, placing his hand on hers, and, again, he quenched the wicks. "And I love you even more."

Suddenly, it all made sense to her why he extinguished the flames whenever he spoke.

Liar, liar...

And, as a wearer of polyester, he couldn't take the risk.

Trapped Inside, by Keith E Maynard

28/4/2023

Three-hundred sixty-five days, but I actually stopped counting. I cannot argue with those who remind me how good I have it. I have a window, a companion, technology, financial resources available, and toilet paper stacked in towers to display my good fortune.

I’m in introvert heaven.

“Paradise,” they say!

Who they you say, the Voices In My Head, say.

One million fifty-one thousand two-hundred minutes, but I actually stopped counting time and rolls of toilet paper a long, long time ago.

Only if I could see the enemy, they say it is not alive, who they, too many to name.

The Worst of Times, by Cheryl Dahlstrand

28/4/2023

Betty looked out of the window and sighed with disappointment. It certainly would not be the day of celebration as planned. How could it be when none of her friends were coming? She fingered the list absently. No one responded to any invitation. What could have happened?

It must be politics she concluded. She thought controversy had been avoided because she kept to the middle road. After all, there were good presidents over the years on both sides: Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Reagan.

Now nothing- not even a card. One hundred and ten years old and not one friend was coming.

Into the Tempest, by Bill Cox

28/4/2023

Rain hammers against the window, relentless, just as his blows had rained down on her, not so long ago. She sits and watches the drops form into rivulets that slide down the glass, miniature streams that zig this way and zag that way. She refuses to look at him, as his anger spreads out on the kitchen floor, a scarlet diffusion of his rage. The knife sits in her lap, still coated in the stuff of him. Outside, the storm obliterates the world from sight, just as her future, once so clear, now vanishes into the tempest.

Melissa and Mary, by Tom Baldwin

28/4/2023

‘That’s a lovely drawing of yourself, Melissa,’ I said as my daughter added another carefully-considered line.

‘It’s not me, Daddy, it’s my friend, Mary.’ I couldn’t recall a friend of that name.

‘It looks just like you. Is this Mary from school?’

‘No, just around. We often talk about things.’

‘What sort of things?’

‘About the old days, and how hard life was. We’re lucky we live now instead of back then, aren’t we, Daddy?’ Melissa finished her drawing and sat back.

‘Why have you put ‘1842’ at the bottom?’ I said.

‘That’s the year Mary died.’

Dark Desires, by Sue Clayton

28/4/2023

“Stop that incessant barking.” Desiring silence I yell at my dog carrying on frantically outside.

“Couldn’t save her from the snake bite,” the vet commiserated.

“Wish I didn’t have to visit every Sunday,” my inner voice mutters a heartfelt desire.

“Sorry for your loss,” the aged-care home consoles at my mother’s passing.

“Rain is so depressing,” I sigh. Dry days desired.

“El Niño’s coming,” predicts a meteorologist. “Severe drought expected.”

“Don’t drive so recklessly,” in my deep desire for safety I grab his arm.

Wheels spin. Car tumbles. Tree crumples.

Darkness enfolds me as all my desires are forever quelled.

Days That Stretch Forever, by Scott C. Holstad

28/4/2023

Standing in line to get our food stamps I think of my love, tiny Asian stripper with two small kids, working it in a KCDC housing project bloated with bloody gangsters, and trying desperately to make it out while killing rats and visiting sewer roaches, wanting that degree, avoid the crackheads, escape.

Cops patrolling the streets stop me every time I enter the edge-wired hood, glaring hate. Nighttime together generates passion-steam but everything else seems cold and surreal. As I wait for the food stamps I flash back to Beverly Hills, Ferraris and an old dead life.

Cutting Back, by David Lowis

28/4/2023

Anne and Ray arrived at PriceRight for their weekly grocery shop.

"Crossaints?" Ray asked, eying a packet.

"Let's keep to the essentials," Anne said. "Money's tight."

"I guess beers are out of the question then?" he said, holding up a four-pack with pleading eyes.

Anne shook her head. "Put them back."

Back home, seated in front of the TV, Anne ripped the packaging off a luxury box of chocolates.

"Hey, wait a minute," Ray said. "We can't afford them."

Anne looked like she'd taken offence. Pushing two chocolates into her mouth, she said, "Everyone's allowed the occasional treat, aren't they?"

Singing in Vain, by J. Iner Souster

28/4/2023

It's all about the good times and the bad times. I should have paid more attention to the red flags going up. Obsession, betrayal and long, lonely nights crying in vain. Singing in the rain, why'd you cause so much pain?

We became obsessed, rewinding that tape over and over again. Each time, Gene suspended a little longer with each new watch. Longer than that first marriage, perhaps longer than the memory. And the realization that my top three favourite movies were musicals. A moment suspended in time when I had to re-evaluate everything I thought I knew about love.

Nothing Ever Tasted So Good, by Alyce Clark

28/4/2023

Long day. She’s tired. Shift’s over but chores await.

Clothes and dishes need washing. Dinner won’t make itself.

Eye lids drooping, she sits. “Just for a minute,” she tells herself, too exhausted to take her coat off.

Sleep comes quickly.

Hours later, her husband arrives.

Basket of undone laundry. Sink full of dishes. Nothing for dinner. And there sits his wife- passed out on the couch.

She awakens to a heavenly smell and smiling husband. “Come on darling, work’s done and dinner’s ready.”

Eyes trained on the man who loves her, she takes a bite. Nothing ever tasted so good.

New Era, by Don Tassone

28/4/2023

History books say the era now known as the Second Shut-In started with a BB gun.

Through an open window, a homeowner in Wisconsin took aim at a boy whose ball had bounced onto his front lawn and shot him in the butt.

Within days, other homeowners were firing all sorts of guns at trespassers too. Some even began shooting at visitors.

As the news spread, people everywhere grew skittish about leaving their homes. Many stayed inside and no longer opened their doors.

A pandemic caused the First Shut-In. Fear caused the second.

Job Seeking, by Rashna Walton

28/4/2023

Jack settles himself into the chair opposite Bob Underhill, Job Centre clerk.
So what is it you do? asks Bob.
I'm a Sixth Dimensional Geometry Light Worker says Jack, adding for clarity, A Tetragrammaton Technician.
Bob Underhill's pen comes to a standstill. Smart arse little bastard, he thinks but says, I believe we've got the very thing for you.
Bob goes into the back office where Katie only just manages to conceal her copy of Ascension Monthly.
Gimme that Waysave file please, Katie.
Back with Jack, Bob says, Shelving Technician suit you?
Great, says Jack, I can work from anywhere.

Home, by Malvina Perova

28/4/2023

Editor's Choice

(Image – Malvina Perova)

You grin through the bitter frown and talk about home, the taste of cherry buns your mother used to bake on Sunday mornings. I hold my tears back and say one day you’ll clasp her in your arms again. Even though I know, you know, the loss of blood is reaching lethal limits.

You’ll die, my bro, but you won’t die alone. Under shelling, yells, and rain of dirt, I’ll stay, I’ll pray and sing the silly song you loved the most before the war. In caring arms and talks about buns, you’ll go freely where all the heroes go.

The Photograph, by Stephen Goodlad

28/4/2023

Her veil blows across my face. We hold hands under a snowstorm of confetti in the porch. We are framed and propped on the bedside table. It rekindles my memory. She taught me all there is to love, then left me to learn the facts by heart. I lie on my side waiting for another lesson in the art of being alone.

I know what she would say:” Don’t look at me like that. I feel guilty coming here like this.” I look at that photograph and my angel says: “Just one more night.” As though I have a choice.

Slow Dance, by Brian Taylor

28/4/2023

Same old rundown bar. Dark, with only the jukebox and neon signs as light. Same slow song. I sit at this table, watching them dance. Closer to lovemaking than dancing. It hurts me deeply, but I must keep watching it.

I love her, but she rejected me. Later, I came here to drown my sorrows and saw her dancing with him. I lost it. I went out for my gun, came back, and shot them. Everyone screamed. Knowing my life was ruined, I took the coward's way out.

So here the three of us stay. Their heaven and my hell.

Pipes, by Cheryl Snell

28/4/2023

While workmen hammer wounds into basements, the man from public works scans the scene with cover- up eyes. Up and down the block, pinhole leaks have gathered momentum like some underground conspiracy. The rumor of mud spreads in the water, and a neighbor wrings his hands over wrecked carpets on the driveway. We ignored the warnings until our own pipes burst, and now we stand where a sinkhole will someday swallow the intersection, flooding the scent of wet wool and solder with new worst cases, a future plumbed with copper is only a future pockmarked by theft, and nighttime clang.

Jed, by Brian Mackinney

28/4/2023

When he was ten Jed was expelled from a sink school. After he was transferred he quickly made friends with the miscreants and threatened to cause havoc in his new surroundings.

He proved to have perfect balance and captivating rhythm loving the Music and Movement lessons. He was transformed, played for the school football team and was selected for the City boys.

When Jed became a regular grass on the misbehaviour of the others little did we know that he would become a career criminal, spending his life on the most wanted list but he was always a loveable rogue.

Opening Day, by Ed N. White

28/4/2023

The rainy season was underway in Florida. The wet queue stood hunched and hooded, waiting for Weapons Wonderland to open. Forty-three men and six women have been in line for hours. Stragglers were added as the time ticked by.
David Alan Coe blared from the speakers in a jacked-up black F350 with wheels spread wider than they should be. Stars and Bars and NRA decals. Similar vehicles crowded the small parking lot.
July 1, 2023: new statute allows purchasing and carrying firearms without permit, training, or brains.
The line grows longer. Feet shuffle. Anticipation is high. Trigger fingers are itchy.

When They Ban Books, by Sankar Chatterjee

28/4/2023

(Photo credit: Sinjinee Chatterjee)

Adventurer John Hughes, on a hiking-trail, read the news on his smartphone. His state’s Yale- and Harvard-educated strongman governor just banned Nobel Laureate Tony Morrison’s debut novel “The Bluest Eye” that dealt with sexual abuse and racism.

Recently, specific books that center on racial inequality or those address LGBTQ-themes had been targeted by country’s moral police. John remembered Holocaust in Europe, preceded by Nazis’ book burning. Now, standing on a mountaintop, John noticed a halved grapefruit-like sun amidst mystic surroundings, as if it lost all its energy and brilliance.

John’s recurring fear crept. “Is our civilization finally heading to oblivion?”

Personal Best, by Ian Willey

28/4/2023

To leave Earth you must pass a rigorous test. First you must run across a savannah with a lunar module strapped to your back. Then you reach a pedestal where you must solve a really difficult math problem without a calculator. Then you have to run back. If you’re time’s above the cut-off point, you’re stuck.

Needless to say I’m one of those who didn’t pass. There isn’t much to do each day as we await the asteroid, so some of us take the test again and again to improve our time. We all want to achieve our personal best.

Last Call, by JD Clapp

28/4/2023

Ten thirty-seven, Wednesday morning, the crow perched on the branch above his window cawed; his dog Paco whined; Marco his sponsor felt queasy; his daughter Kimmy called him; his shadow raced across the empty bottle; his neighbor doubled her batch of sweet rolls; the gulf wind gusted, while sodden summer thunder clouds passed overhead.

Ten thirty-seven, Wednesday morning, the mother of the boy he put in a wheelchair the night he drove drunk heading home from the annual office Christmas party felt a pang of anger, then relief. Ten thirty-seven Wednesday morning, his wife knew but she kept folding laundry.

Whistle The Dog, by David Milner

28/4/2023

Snowflakes versus Hailstones is how someone described the meeting.

“A hundred years the team have had the logo!”

“It’s time for change.”

“You know nothing.”

It was heated with sulphurous debate.

“You don’t even like football.”

“The whole city is linked to cotton and slavery.”

A cup was smashed.

Then a voice, plaintive and reasonable, hushed the crowd.

“Eradicating the logo denies the heritage.”

“Yes!” I piped up, confidence rising, and continued, “It’s part of a history we must live with and learn from.”

No one heard me. The game ended a scoreless draw. Both sides feeling they had lost.

An English Major’s Regret, by Frederick Charles Melancon

28/4/2023

Worlds of literature cannoned throughout our thoughts when we first met in that college class. So, we did what every good student is trained to do. We fought over our inherent logic in other people’s words. Not even wanting to persuade, we devolved into discourses pertaining to parts of speech. We witnessed our nouns predicate off each other hoping to conjugate when only contracted sounds came out from the other person, of course. Somehow, our world became only these words, and control hinged on an in-depth analysis, which, in hindsight, meant that one night our bodies diagramed in the dark.

Finding a Connection, by Cathryn Moore

28/4/2023

My hands move rhythmically, unconsciously, as I knead the dough. The sound of my daughter’s nonsense song floats through the kitchen as her little fingers poke and prod her own ball of dough. I remember my mother’s guiding hands when she taught me, the strength in her fingers, her sure movements. I remember her stories of my grandmother showing her and think of the generations of women leading to this moment. This one moment shared with my child, connecting us to the women before us and to each other. I help my daughter shape her roll and smile to myself.

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