Love's Labors Lost by Bonnie Veaner

Bonnie Veaner's funny flash fiction about a childhood crush.

I was playing with other children on an over-inflated truck inner tube adorning the playground lawn of Green Meadow Nursery School.

"Okay, boys and girls," said our teacher, clapping her hands three times to get our attention. "Sit down on the inner tube with your feet in the center so you're all facing one another. Steady yourselves with your hands and bounce gently."

We positioned ourselves and began to bounce, some more enthusiastically than others.

"Goodness, Randy, not so hard," said the teacher. "We don't want anybody to fall off and get hurt."

Adrift in the Global Village by Fred Skolnik

An Algerian TV personality moves to Paris, where she lives alongside an Arab orphan, a German pimp, and an Israeli with mysterious motivations who has piqued her interest; by Fred Skolnik.

Samiyah was afraid one of the hotheads would do her in after she talked about masturbation on MBC so she didn't go back to Riyadh after they taped the show but went straight to Beirut from Amman and rented an airy apartment near the beach, but then the war came and though most of the bombing was in the south of the city she got jittery and flew to Paris. Meanwhile her Saudi husband divorced her so she couldn't go back there anyway without his consent, which was all right with her because she'd had just about enough of that godforsaken country, which was like a nightmare if you thought about it.

Samiyah liked Paris. She found a furnished one-bedroom apartment in the 19th arrondissement for 700 euro and settled in. A German pimp who brought in East European girls had the apartment above her and a little Arab boy who must have come from the projects attached himself to her from the first day, so these two became her new family. She let the boy sleep on the sofa and gave him the run of the apartment when she was out of the country. Samiyah had been born in Algeria but had made films all around the world and now she had the talk show which was being filmed in a different locality every week and transmitted by satellite from Dubai so she'd usually fly in in the morning and get the sheet with the list of topics an hour before the taping - wife beating, honor killing, masturbation, rape, or whatever else excited the minds of Arab men - and then fly out the same day.

Parma by Alan Nicholson Harold

Farmer Harold wakes up with trotters, and fears what fate has in store; by Alan Nicholson Harold.

TROTTERS! NO! No no no no no no no, aw fuck NO! No hands! Jesus Christ! What the fuck! Trotters? Tiny little trotters! Well then I'm a... oh shit that's bloody stupid! I can't be a... I'm human! Dream, obviously it's a dream, bad dream; got to be, but what if it's not? What if it's true? If that's the case what about... am I still male? Have I got... are they still there? So important. Can this be happening? No; it's, it's a dream, got to be, a bloody awful terrible realistic nightmare! It's got to be.

The two guys looked over the latest litter in the pen, 12 snuffling pink little bodies each intent on finding a teat, then perversely sliding off their prize to try and sample their sibling's teat, this causing a slowly revolving pink carousel of piglets.

The Intervention by Beryl Ensor-Smith

When the old church sisters have a big argument with the newer, younger members, their husbands are forced to stage an intervention; by Beryl Ensor-Smith.

"It's really most awkward," Marion Klopper complained when the group of older church sisters met for tea at the Welcome Inn. "The only time we can speak openly now that we've so many younger members is when we lot get together here or at the Astonishing Café."

"Without them, you mean," Suzie van Blerk said, adding mischievously, "so that we can moan about them."

"Well, we've got a lot to moan about," Christina du Plessis bleated. "They keep coming up with new ideas that make my life a misery. How can a woman of my age be expected to climb ladders, break her back packing and unpacking boxes and do all kinds of gymnastics to turn the crazy things they dream up into reality?"

Water and Ink Andrew Konicki

Struggling artist Jake accompanies his unconventional roommate on a roadtrip a mysterious purpose; by Andrew Konicki.

Jacob Ryan stopped at a rest stop just a few miles shy of Plighton, Maine. It was one of those places were the idea wasn't to rest so much as it was to take a leak, buy some snacks, and re-apply deodorant while standing by your car's open trunk. It was unseasonably warm for the spring here, and Jake had been driving for several hours straight, so he found himself doing all three activities with the rest of them.

Along for the ride was his roommate and part-time art critic, Clarence, who had propped an elbow on the open window of the car and was sipping a soda. Twice Jake had caught him rubbing a hand through his short blond hair and checking himself out in the wing mirror. Jake rummaged through the trunk, which was full of art supplies and clothing roughly packed into suitcases and backpacks. He procured his own drink from the cooler hiding in the depths.

He wiped some sweat from his forehead. "I tell you, Clair, if this whole deal is as god-awful as it sounds, I'm never going to forgive you."

Nobody's Bride by Anna Halabi

A baker and a jeweller in Aleppo are visited by a beautiful woman. This is one of eleven stories from Syrian Brides by Anna Halabi.

Abu Issam was smoking a cigarette on the sidewalk under the awning in front of his bakery.

"This damn rain. It's keeping the customers away," he murmured under his breath and took a long drag on his cigarette. He pleasurably exhaled the white smoke when a young woman walked past him and into his store.

He coughed awkwardly, flicked his unfinished cigarette into a puddle on the street and fondled his thick black moustache as he followed her inside.

"Ahlan wa sahlan, Madam! It's an honor to welcome you in our bakery. Welcome! Welcome!" he babbled.

The slender woman loosened the knot under her chin and peeled the wet, white scarf off of her head to reveal a long mane of black curls. The aide in the back froze next to the burning hot oven, the metal baking tray in his hand, lined with rows of pistachio fingers, hovering in midair. He stared at the beautiful customer, his lower jaw dangling loosely from its joint.

The Stars That Were Her Eyes by Dave Henson

Dave Henson tells the story of a loving couple, each with very unusual psychological conditions.

The landscape painting is square. The lamp shade is a cylinder. The clock is round. The nurse brings in a rectangle with my wife's supper. Dorothy says she isn't Hungary. They can drip away her pain, but not her fear, and there's nothing I can do about it.

---

My wife and I met more than 30 years ago. My Geometry Syndrome tended to flare with my emotions, and Dorothy - so pretty and smart - made me more than a little nervous on our first date. As she put on her coat, I looked around her entry, saw a carpet runner and said I'd made reservations at Long Rectangle's Fish House. When she gave me a look, I realized my mistake and told her I meant Landon's Fish House. Dorothy only smiled. Quiet girl. I felt stupid and, when I grinned back, her face blurred, and I saw her head as an oval. I knew I had to get control of myself, or the evening was going to be a disaster.

The Nests of Birds of Paradise by Bailey Bridgewater

Lynn works for an answering service and starts getting regular calls from a vulnerable psychiatric patient, in Bailey Bridgewater's moving story.

"Watkins and Kinny Psychological Services. How can I help you?"

There was flat silence on the other end before a wavering man's voice cut it. "Is this the answering service?"

"Yes it is." The handbook clearly stated that we should never tell people we were a call center representative unless they asked directly - then we couldn't lie.

"Thank you for telling the truth." Another silence.

"Can I help you with something?"

A muffled thumping like he was playing with the receiver of an old wall-mounted telephone. I pictured this person wrapping the curly cord around his fingers as he hesitated.

"I don't know. Maybe. No. I don't... There's another girl that used to talk to me sometimes. Her name was Sharon. Does she still work there?"

The Widow's Club by John Conaway

A mischievous group of ageing widows hire a male stripper for entertainment, but they don't get what they expect; by John Conaway.

Fran gets the chocolate chip cookies started while they wait for the naked house cleaning guy to arrive. She'd found out about the service through one of her friends and talked the girls into giving it a shot. The cost, based on the number of attendees, is $350.00. The woman who answered the phone tells Fran that the house cleaning will take about half an hour and that their cleaning guy's name is Steve.

The girls get together about once a week. They talk. Sometimes they watch movies. They smoke pot, get the munchies, and bake cookies. Lately they've been watching porno on Fran's laptop, something new to all of them except Fran. They always express amazement at the endurance of the actors - if that's what you call them.

They call it the Widow's Club although they're not all, strictly speaking, widows. Sandy was a widow but remarried. Fran's husband, from whom she's presently separated, was on the plane that crashed into the Hudson so she was almost a widow. She's always telling people, "If it wasn't for that fucking Sully Sullenberger I'd be lounging on the deck of my Palm Beach condo right now." They assume she's joking. Joan's ex died after they were divorced. Only Deidre and Deb are actual widows.

The girls agree to divide the fee evenly, $70 each. "What about a tip?" Joan asks.

When Coal Was King by Gareth Clarke

Gareth Clarke's character tells of his childhood in a not-quite-traditional Welsh mining town.

I was born in the mining village of Cwmstgwynfryn. My dad lives there still, and in the same house too - in his nineties now, and still cooking for himself. I make the journey back three or four times a year, or whenever I can. One of the few original terraces left (they've pulled most of them down and built a rash of one and two bed bungalows) though you'd hardly recognise it for the smoke-grimed terrace it was when we lived there in the late Fifties and through the Sixties. Now it's all bright colours, open-plan living, teak veneer and Audis parked outside.

The pit's long gone, of course, with little sign of it now but the concrete cap over the pit shaft. The slag heap's all grassed over, and there are woods on its slopes, mixed pine and deciduous. Different as you could possibly imagine from when I lived there with my mam and dad. The kiddies from the local school are taken for walks along the nature trails through the woods where we used to scrabble for fragments of coal for the fire.

I was an only child, unusual for those times. Now, whether that's because after having me my mother turned against all that sort of thing in an outpouring of Presbyterian virtue - striding along to the chapel as she would, massive legs placed firmly apart in her Sunday best breeches and donkey jacket, breathing in the spirit of the Lord along with the smoke-laden air - or whether she'd imposed a strict no-go policy on my father for reasons of her own, and which he would have had no choice but to respect, I don't know. Doesn't bear thinking about, to be honest. Still, there it is - at the end of the day I remained an only child.

Electricity by David Rogers

A man whose life is plagued by visions is confronted by one realer and yet more fantastic than he could have imagined; by David Rogers.

The whole sky flashed, a searing electric blaze, fading to the blue-brown of the horizon. Lightning here did funny things to a man's vision. The clouds were patchy, silver gray, like the plains of an airless moon.

Masters checked the zippers on his wetsuit, snugged the goggles down over his eyes, and waded into the surf. The water was cold. He'd have to make the repair fast and get out.

This was his first real job since the last episode. He'd been turned down by half a dozen companies before he decided in desperation to change his name and doctor his resume. Not that he felt bad about the deception. At least, not most of the time. After all, didn't people usually do the opposite of what he did - claim skills and experience they didn't have, in order to get jobs they were not qualified for? But he'd been told he was overqualified enough times to know it was code for "untrustworthy." So he did what he had to, in order to survive. It was evolution at work. Natural selection. Not that it had been easy, even so. The first three employers he applied to checked his references and invited him to go away, without bothering to be polite. Not that he blamed them. That was how things worked.

The Best Revenge by Patrick Ritter

Mike fears his mother has been conned and wants revenge, but is it too late? By Patrick Ritter.

It came back right after dessert.

"Happy birthday, Mom," Mike said, unwrapping a small birthday cake. "I couldn't fit eighty candles on it, but I know you don't like too much fuss."

"It's perfect," she replied. "What a nice surprise, Michael. And I have a surprise for you too."

"Oh yeah," he said, cutting each of them a piece of cake. "What's that?"

"I know you've wanted me to sell the farm property in Merced and move into that senior home. Well, I'm finally going to do it."

"That's great Mom, you really deserve it. The money from the sale will make your life so much more comfortable. When are you going to list it?"

"Oh, I already have someone who's going to buy it," she said chomping into the cake.

Soldiers' Children by Harrison Abbott

Harrison Abbott tells the chilling tale of a wartime raid.

The villagers had been receiving panicky messages from relatives and friends throughout the night. The invading soldiers were heading north, and the village was directly in their path: they needed to escape before the soldiers reached them. There was no resistance to the invasion anymore; the capital in the south had fallen, and the soldiers were flooding across the nation. Doing what, the villagers couldn't know. In the northern mountains, few people even understood why the invasion was happening.

Only one man made it out of the village before the platoon arrived. The rest of the families were thrusting survival goods into their cars, when the platoon's jeeps appeared on the long road from the hills, just as daylight had emerged. The jeeps did not snarl or send black fumes against the snowfields. They only petered down to the village at a calm pace. Ten vehicles, clad in military gear. And all the villagers could do was stand and watch and imagine what was going to happen.

When the jeeps arrived, the soldiers alighted with controlled expressions. The morning temperature now seemed warm, the snow light, the flakes dallying about their uniforms. Slowly they approached the locals, who were terrified of their machine guns, but even more by their serenity. All the soldiers did was ask that every adult villager gather in the main street, so they could be spoken to.

Follow That Car by James Paul Close

James Paul Close foresees a fundamental problem with self-driving taxis.

I could hardly say, "Follow that car," so what else was I going to do?

I simply said "Amsterdam Avenue," because I knew it was the same direction the car in front was heading. It was late, I had just left the nightclub, and I was feeling quite tipsy. Needless to say, things didn't go to plan. The autotaxi replied with its off-the-peg voicefile, sounding all cheap and synthetic. "Amsterdam Avenue is only zero point two miles away from your current location. Travelling short distances will incur the minimum fee of twenty dollars. Do you wish to proceed?"

"Yes, dammit, go!" I barked.

I had to catch that car in front. It was getting away, the rear lights of the silver Mercedes blurring into the rain-soaked night. It was a classic model - manually driven - and I could just about make out all five silhouettes; especially his large frame filling the driver's seat. That was definitely them.

Prayer for a Punch Line by Michael Guillebeau

A priest hears a confession that creates a difficult moral quandary which makes him question his own career choices; by Michael Guillebeau.

"Forgive me, Father Carson. I've killed a girl."

I started to laugh through the confessional partition. Freddie liked to joke, or at least try. But even a priest who liked jokes in the pulpit couldn't allow jokes in the confessional - and there were enough people who thought I didn't take my calling seriously enough as it was.

"Freddie - my son - this is not a place for jokes. Begin by saying something like, 'Bless me, Father, for I have sinned.'"

Freddie was crying softly. It was the first time I had heard a man crying in confession. Of course, it was only my second year hearing confessions.

"My son," I said. "We both know you're sometimes confused. Perhaps you're mistaken."

"The news man says she's dead. They haven't found her body, but they said she's pressured dead."

"Presumed dead. OK. Perhaps we do need to talk about this."