One-Sentence Stories
Sunday Mornings
by
Dave Erlewine
I pretend to take a shit while my wife screams at Robby to let her make him some eggs already and I recall our cafe-filled Sunday mornings years ago, where I'd have laughed if you'd told me I'd leave only a note saying sell the dump and go live your with brother in Red Bank.
Untitled
by
Samantha Killebrew
A friend was telling me the most interesting story over the phone as my children shrieked in hyperactive abandon around me; she stopped mid-sentence and said: "You really should start drinking scotch."
Fever Dream
by
Sarah Black
This is probably a hot flash, but I’m really hoping for a fever, a whopping 102 or better to explain the ache in my bones and the heavy wet heat in my cheeks, because a fever is good for a pound a day weight loss, minimum, I can already picture the fat melting away just under my skin like a piglet roasting over a spit, and of course a fever suggests my immune system is standing tall and strong like a battle-hardened Gurka, rushing white blood cells and those war-like antibodies to my rescue, but most of all I hope this is a fever so I can have a fever dream again, walk through the cantaloupe-orange grass in scorched bare feet, see a scarlet jaguar drop from a banana tree and lick my poor face with a sinuous tongue the color of new grass, but it’s probably a hot flash, because I fear my time for fever dreams has passed.
The Blue Jays
by
Michael Hemmingson
One summer, when I was nine, my cat Smokey ate the hatchlings from a blue jay nest and the blue jays held a grudge and sought vengeance: first, two blue jays would torment Smokey all day; later, they enlisted others and I witnessed a formation, making a V, of ten blue jays, who swooped down like kamikaze divers one at a time, their beaks pecking at my cat (this would start at sunrise: 5:30 a.m.) and it woke me up every morning and I was getting annoyed, school was out, this was my vacation, so with my BB-gun, I shot all the blue jays and some died, some flew away, one remained in a tree, staring -- staring -- and I could feel its hatred for me, its need for justice, its desire to peck at me and so I aimed, fired, and shot the bird in the head and it fell to the grass and I decided to leave the body there for Smokey to eat.
Self Inflicted
by
Kevin Sampsell
The hair on the back of her head was teased up and ratted out, which made her profile look like a photograph of someone getting their brains blown out.
Motion
by
Mary Lynn Reed
Not two hours since your smile framed the car window I reached through to kiss you--once more, please, just one more moment to touch you--and now my train rocks forward, forward, then it lulls back, steady rhythmic its motion like the sweet grind of your hips pressing, pressing down onto mine as your back gently arches, your long torso rises above me, your mouth achingly open, faster, faster you tempt me, but always, always, my body, my heart, yearns for these moments to pass slower.
Untitled
by
Peter Clarke
I want to be with the straw hats that stay out of people's faces, silently catching all their sunshine--and when it rains I'll stay inside.
Monday
by
Gordon McKee
He is vanishing – an exaggerated raise of the brows brings him partially back, holding hope, taking one deliberate breathe after another behind his locked office door.
Execution
by
Frank O'Connor
It began with a capital crime but the perpetrator was quickly apprehended, judged, and according to his sentence, brought to a full stop.
Extra Lives
by
Aaron Burch
I try to tell her, like it will explain more than anything else I could put into words, that there was supposedly this move where you could jump repeatedly, endlessly, on a turtle on a large staircase and build up extra lives, all the way up to 99, but I could never master it and always just ended up killing myself.