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Track Time, by Ed N. White

27/12/2019

I didn’t live far from the railroad tracks and spent a lot of time there with my friends, putting pennies on the tracks, breaking discarded whiskey bottles and seeing who dared to be closest when a speeding New York-bound train roared past. The ultimate adventure was to sit in the escape box suspended under the bridge crossing over the Pawtuxet River as the train roared overhead. I never did that.
When the Barnum and Bailey Circus came to town, their railcars were shunted onto a siding below the embankment parallel to Wellington Avenue, behind the old foundry. As young kids, we would go there to watch animals and equipment being unloaded and dreamed of someday maybe joining the circus. When I was fourteen, I went there early one morning and stood in a line of other kids hoping to be hired as day laborers. I was put on the watering gang and repeatedly carried a full bucket in each hand to the elephants and other exotic animals—not jungle cats which were kept in the cage cars and attended to by their handlers. I also got the opportunity to pick up a lot of shit with a manure fork, dump it into a wheelbarrow and take it to the bushes at the bottom of the embankment and deposit it there in piles that remained long after the circus left town.
The most exciting day was when I went again early in the morning after torrential rain the night before, and there was a huge puddle that looked about 2 feet deep. Just enough depth to cover the knees of the three naked women who were bathing there.

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Hello, Goodbye, by Jim Bartlett

27/12/2019

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The crowd, large and boisterous, goes quiet as she arrives, then parts in the middle, opening a path to the hospital’s rear entrance that glows in the overhead lights. It’s not a partisan break, for there are those on both sides who reach out trying to touch her as she passes. A yearn to feel the warmth of the hope that she brings. They call out her name, not with appointed celebrity status, but rather in reverence. Awe.

Yet, at the same time she sees those who, with a scowl upon their face, recoil as though she was a leper. They shout angry and accusatory words, fearful of the fate she may bestow upon them.

As if she even holds such power.

When she reaches the door, it opens, a group of nurses or doctors – she’s not sure which – ready to lead her to his room. She stops and turns back to the crowd. Are they really here to see her?

Or to pay him a respectful farewell.

Or, maybe, by the looks on some of those faces, a good riddance.

“This way,” a taller woman says. “There’s not much time.”

With a nod to the crowd, she follows as they lead her down the white sterile corridor toward the elevators, their heads bowed in silence, a somber acknowledgement of why she is here.

When the doors open to the third floor, the air, unlike the warm yet antiseptic atmosphere that greeted her back in the lobby, is cold and heavy, and it weighs down upon her shoulders, pushes against her heart. They step out as a group, but the nurses and doctors all stop, as they seem to know that from here on she must make this journey alone.

“319,” says the tall woman, pointing.

Moving to the room’s doorway, she leans in for a peek. She gasps, the mere sight of him lying crumpled in that bed stealing her breath. She quickly averts her gaze to the monitor above him, where a green jagged line marches along its screen, chirping with each of his remaining heartbeats. To her right, a large clock with long black hands is centered on the wall. It looks out of place, something better suited to a classroom back in the 70s.

The time is 11:58.

“Come in,” he invites in a raspy voice. “Sit. There is so much I want to say. But no time...” He leans to the side, hacking out a series of coughs.

She takes the seat beside him, the first tears beginning to form in her eyes. “I am so lost,” she squeaks out.

“You’ll do fine. Everyone is lost right now. Compassion cannot be heard over all the noise. You can help silence that hate, let the world see love for a change. I—“

But his words die, as the does the jagged line, and the chirps revert to a steady buzz. 2020 looks to the clock – midnight – then she leans down to gently kiss 2019 goodbye.

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The Rose, by Doug Bartlett

27/12/2019

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Rose, a beautiful young lady, was having a relationship by correspondence with Tom, who appeared to be a wonderful young man. This had been going on for a little over a year. Tom was overseas and they had never met in person. They didn’t even know what each other looked like. They only knew what they had told each other about themselves and they seemed to be a good match for each other.
Tom was flying into LAX tomorrow morning and Rose would be there to meet him.
“But how will I know which one is you?” Tom texted.
“I’ll be wearing a yellow rose,” she responded.
Anticipation,anxiety, fear, curiosity and other emotions kept disturbing Rose’s attempts to sleep the night before.
Rose awoke early the next morning remembering to pin on her yellow rose as she got ready.
She nervously arrived at the airport forty-five minutes before the flight was due. She found herself packed in the middle of the crowd.
her anxious thoughts began to dissolve into ones of doubt.She was a beautiful woman on the inside as well as outside. But no man in her past ever appreciated her inner qualities only her outer beauty. This led to her experiencing much pain. Would Tom fall into that category?
Would Tom like her for only her outward beauty? Would he continue to like her as her external beauty fades with age? Had she made a mistake coming here?
The passengers began disembarking the plane and were flooding into the terminal.
She spotted an unattractive homeless woman and an idea popped into her head. She went over to her and quickly pinned her rose onto her.
She then stood back to see what Tom would do, if anything.
A tall nice looking gentleman approached the homeless woman.
He gave her flowers, a hug and a kiss on the cheek.
Somehow, Rose knew everything was going to be just fine.

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Whack, Whack, Whack, by Doug Bartlett

20/12/2019

Elizabeth was somewhat of a tomboy when she traipsed off to summer camp. She was pleasantly surprised that her parents let her attend as they were very abusive to her.
She loved competition and would compete not only against the girls but boys as well.. She was determined to win the hatchet throwing contest that would be held at the end of the week. She practiced diligently every free minute she had and became quite adroit at handling that hatchet.The competition was intense but she persevered and took first place.
Camp was now over and parents were picking up their children. As she got in her parent’s car her newly fond memories soon soured as she realized what was in store for her that evening when they returned home. Then a strangely devious grin slowly crept across her face as her mother asked her what she was holding. She proudly showed her the trophy, a shiny new axe engraved with “First Place --- Lizzie Borden.”

...He remembered! but..., by Yashwant Lokare

20/12/2019

It was happening again. Slowly from the bench he sat upon, a fresh green of lush lawn started spreading out like an oil drop on tissue paper of wide expanse of snow. As it went further and further, it brought everything to life. The leaves appeared on bare stubs , the frozen white of the stream came alive to blue as the atmosphere came alive to usher in the warm sunlight that let loose it's blue horse. Trees bathed in warm golden glow as came out the flowers among the leaves .Dewdrops shone from grass blades . Then came the chirping and Twitter and the scene was alive. It kept changing though , as if someone was fast forwarding the slides of nature's shades through some heaven-located projector. It went on transforming until it was...
whoa! It was a garden , the one he fleetingly remembered ,a remote memory; it slipped more out of mind the harder he tried to grasp the Sandgrain-vestiges of it.
It was hopeless ..but he could not rest either without placing it right . He knew it was unreal but he was curious and ,strangely, comforted by it.
Then came - sounds of laughter, as two childish silhouettes appeared . One blew soap bubbles and the other jumped and clapped them off . One bubble drifted along the breeze, went near the acacias on the tree .....and sat on them......
And the girl ....,a girl? Yeah, a girl! It was Jessy! Jessica ,he now remembered. He remembered, how she clapped when she saw the bubble alight on Acacia flowers and then he too clapped -
And now he found himself clapping and those around him looking at him .He smiled apologetically at his neighbours and then to himself. He was back on the bench where it all began and was waiting for her now. Waiting for who? He tried very hard to recall but he could not. he'd had a lapse again. then ,a bubble came drifting and he remembered,...
that it was his grandchildren playing bubbles and was supposed to take them back home.

The Haunted Mansion, by Sivan Pillai

20/12/2019

“Doctors have given your old man just three months and he is drawing a will,” Uncle John informed me.
“I don’t get anything, do I?”
“You made sure of it by disobeying him, didn’t you? Anyway, the will is yet to be finalized.”
Father had declared me persona non grata and shown me the door on the day I told him there was no going back on my decision to marry Martha, the daughter of his friend-turned enemy. He had conveniently forgotten that it was he who had declared Martha as my girl when we were children.
Uncle John was a trusted friend of my father with whom he would discuss all important matters.
“Who gets the old mansion?” I asked.
“Your eldest brother.”
Though I had worked as hard as my brothers and father on the farm, I was not keen to have a share of the property. The old mansion was, however, different. I had a lot of sentimental attachment to it. It was there that I had spent my childhood with my late mother and dreamt my dreams before the family moved to the present house. It was an old-fashioned, beautiful wooden structure, situated at the edge of the forest. There was a narrow road in its front and beyond that a deep gorge. One could see miles and miles of the beautiful valley from the mansion.
Suddenly, I wanted it. By hook or crook.
I called on Joy, a close friend who headed an amateur drama troupe, the following day.
Within a short period, the mansion had become the talk of the town. People were reported to have seen strange flashes of light and heard blood-chilling shrieks from the locked building at night. Some neighbours would swear that they had seen white-clad figures floating in the air in and around the building. Dogs were heard howling continually at night. Neighbours would take care not to go anywhere near it after sunset.
“Congratulations, Jacob,” Uncle John told me a few days later. “Your brothers have refused to have anything to do with the haunted mansion and your dad has bequeathed it to you in his will. Nothing else.”
“He wants the ghosts to keep us company?”
“If you don’t want it”, Uncle John whispered with a mischievous twinkle in his eyes, “Joy may perhaps be interested in buying it from your dad.”

Comeback, by Sterling Warner

13/12/2019

Rex stopped and savored his environment. The grove in Henry Coe State Park smelled of evergreen sap and centuries of nature’s teardrops glancing off ferns, moss, Douglas fir needles, and dead redwoods. From across the meadow, a burbling brook trickled over rough and worn rocks and scattered pinecones, sounding like low pitched, murmuring windchimes. Then, from a distance, a hoot owl sounded an alarm causing rabbits and deer to take flight.

Overcome by wilderness awareness, sights, sounds, smells seemed to merge into a sensory chorus. Like a harpsichord picking strings, each became one with the moment and strident thoughts and emotions appeared to vanish like vapor into dense fog. Ultimately, Rex felt cloaked in nature’s overcoat of Zen. In such moments, today became tomorrow, and tomorrow became yesteryear. Then Linda came to Rex in an ephemeral mist, a reminder that nobody but Linda ever evolved so thoroughly from a dark, nocturnal shroud to life.

A gust of wind blew Linda’s long, thick hair from behind and billowed around her dress like a sail. “Stay with me awhile longer Linda,” Rex pleaded as he observed her chameleon-like body taking on characteristics of the elements.

Rex watched through the trees as rain clouds gathered above, and the quaint forest smells became mixed with the smell of rotting timbers, dried grass, and musty flowers. Linda’s apparition had long since melted into the shady gloom. Once it began to pour, Rex turned to go back home, but the warm rain felt like nature weeping on his body and sounded like a gentle voice backed by an angle choir—crying.

As the nebulous form dissipated into nightshade, Rex stopped speaking, and for the first time in years, he knew that he ‘d always be alone…. The shadow through the mist might have been anybody; his wife, Linda, had died the very moment she gave premature birth to their son.

Time Lapse, by Joanna Mehzabeen

13/12/2019

Find me in my floral print pajama and plain t-shirt. Notice how I pull up the silk curtains and let the warm air fill up my tiny haven on steamy summer nights. Watch me under the shimmering light that is coming up from the streets and notice how the loose strings of hair from my messy bun fall on my unbaked face and down my sweaty neck on a steamy summer night. Watch me as I bite my lips and dust the bed clean with my bare hands to make you a comfortable sitting space.
Welcome to my station. Pause here, now, for a few moments before your next train arrives. See how I paint the cracks on the walls of my life. Look around. Do you see that small corner between the dressing table and the window, where it seems that my butt will barely fit in? That's where I sit down and let my mind drift to afar galaxies and think of the possibilities of the existence of a land of lilliputs and how many dimensions Voyager-1 might have crossed by now- does it feel very lonely sometimes?
Sometimes I think of you, too, until my face reddens with shyness and then my eyes become hollow as I take a leap of million seconds of lifetime left behind in silence. I brush off the tiny flakes of memories floating carelessly in my heart and crush them underneath my feet creating yet another void in time- will you ever care to know what's on the other side of my event horizons?
Then go through my diaries with which I sat down on starry nights and wrote pages after pages about how I couldn't get enough of your smile. Press your fingers on the soaring turns of letters with which I proclaimed how I'd always be by your side.
Pull out that photograph. Do you see the faded dots of tears all over your face? Can you count the number of dots or how many times each dot was remade on that photograph? Stop. Your train has arrived. What my swift hands have written to you with love and without love will never find an escape through your tongue.
Will you remember how on a steamy summer night I caught your fragrance in the air? Unfair, isn't it, how the silence weighs so much on the flurry of forgotten times? You may leave now. Perhaps, someday soon, I will hop on another train of thought, hoping against my mind that it leads to you.

Freedom, by Bruce Levine

6/12/2019

It flew around the room without regard to anyone or anything other than what appeared to be the simple joy of flying. How it didn’t bump into anything seemed almost astonishing, but then we poor mortals are not created with the same flying attributes.

Four times. Five times. And it continued around and around. If we didn’t know better it would almost seem as if it were set on a specific course, almost like a NASCAR race, but without the competition to interfere with its path.

We continued watching, but now we started feeling our own desire to be as free, to be able to fly without fetters, just for the simple joy that freedom could induce.

For nearly an hour it flew without seeming to tire.

We left the windows open as we exited the room, just in case it wanted to leave.

An hour later it was still flying.

Two hours later it was gone.

The apparent joy of flying around the room had transfixed us with a new sense of freedom. Now we wanted to spread our wings and fly too, but, as humans, our flying would be restrained by gravity, but not our hearts and minds.

We too would fly.

The Sweet of Memories, By Yola M. Caecenary

2/12/2019

It stunned me for a few seconds when on my random research; I stumbled upon a picture of my childhood—until now—sweets. A flash of memories struck my present and occupied my rainy nighttime. I never got enough with this sweet. Probably the whole family’s favourite, including our mother.

The sweet is milky white, chewy, and thick. A clear thin edible filament rolled around the cylinder-shaped sweet then wrapped in its recognisable logo wrapper. I reminisced, Mum used to buy them in kilos and kept them in a hidden place so we, the children wouldn’t jeopardise our tooth health. Each day, Mum only allowed us to consume five pieces, which definitely not enough, but nothing we said or did could break her decision. As more mature I became, these sweets remain one of my favourites. They held my nostalgic childhood.

As for the last time I had these sweets with my mum was the end of summer in 2018. Just she and I, we spent the afternoon watching a movie in the cinema. We bought these sweets to accompany us during a 90-minute film. And, no, Mum didn’t limit the sweets.

A flash of light and a roaring thunder awoke me and brought me back to my night. I sat at the kitchen table. In my hands was an unopened sweet and a warm tear streamed down my cheek, as an In Memoriam album opened.

As The World Turns, by Sankar Chatterjee

2/12/2019

After a day’s long work in the Wall Street, Ms. Nancy Gibbs, a young and energetic New Yorker returned to her sixth floor apartment on the Madison Avenue. On her way back, Nancy stopped at the corner grocery store, now putting down those grocery bags on the kitchen counter. Before beginning to prepare her evening meal, she then turned on the TV that sat in her living room. Through an opening on the wall between two rooms, Nancy began to watch the world news. Soon, she succumbed to a pain on her left chest while feeling light headedness, reminding her of a similar recent experience. She immediately dialed the emergency medical number and proceeded to keep the front door unlocked. Then Nancy collapsed right there.

The arriving medical team found her body and transferred Nancy to the ER of nearby Mt. Sinai Medical Hospital. The doctors revived her from an apparent heart attack. They ordered several diagnostic tests and kept her for an overnight observation. As the various test results began to flow back in, the current doctors and the nurses in the ER realized that Nancy was treated there just three months ago for a similar episode. And like previous test results, there was absolutely nothing alarming with current test results. Her blood pressure and cholesterol level were normal. None of her arteries were clogged. Nancy never smoked. She also exercised regularly in a neighborhood gym. In fact there were no culprits that could be blamed for Nancy’s two episodes of heart attack within three months. A medical mystery shrouded her and the medical team.

That’s when, Albert, the robot walked inside Nancy’s room. A product of modern day artificial intelligence (AI), Albert unfurled its various display screens. Attending physicians then connected Nancy and Albert via various wires. Soon, Albert began its interrogation. But nothing in the background information (familial or medical) of Nancy would create any blip on any of Albert’s screens.

Like any smart sleuth, Albert then changed its tactics. From its built-in search engines, Albert pulled out the historic segments of the TV news that Nancy was watching during those two episodes. While the news reels kept rolling on two screens, another display screen stated to show the tightening of Nancy’s arteries, constricting them and blocking the blood to travel to heart to cause an imminent heart attack. In the news segments, the current strongman from US was meeting his counterpart from UK, first time in Washington, recently in London. Albert turned its search engine off. Relaxed Nancy requested a glass of martini.

Soon, a research paper would appear in the journal Lancet, alerting medical community about this new risk factor of a sudden heart attack in otherwise healthy persons.

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