Voting is now open via a poll on our Facebook page. Deadline for votes is the end of September 13^th.

Scavengers

Sheryl Anne Sanchez Lugtu

The darkness of the night lurks into the dewy atmosphere of the woods. It was 11 o’ clock in the evening and we are on our way home from the wake of Ka (Sister) Ibyang, a close family friend. We decided to pass by their house in hope to sip a single cup of coffee that they offer to the visitors. This would suffice to cover our hunger since we haven’t sold any of our kalakal (loots) today. I held tightly into the arms of Kuyang (Brother) as the cold wind blew.

He gave me a reassuring look. “Don’t be afraid. The aswang (Philippine Mythical Creature) is not true at all. I’ve been going home late since I started my new part time job. See, I am still alive,” he said as we continued walking.

“But, Kuyang, how can you explain the bodies of teenagers that were found around the Barrio lately. Kapitan (Town Officer) Lukas said that only an aswang could do such a horrible act, ” I argued.

Kuyang stopped walking. He put our kalakal down and faced me. He held my shoulders and looked at my eyes intently.

“Buknoy, do not be afraid of the aswang for they are not your real enemies. Be afraid of an empty stomach for it will eventually kill you even before the aswang could.” I shrugged but did not argue with him at all.

We continued walking. My hands were wet and my heart was beating rapidly. I could sense that I was shaking but I ignored it. The rustling waters indicated that we were near the river bank. On the other side was our small cottage where our sick mother was waiting for us.

We were about to cross the river when we heard a noise. Chills went to my spine as a big shadow approached us. I stepped back, trembling and panting.

“Run as fast as you can, Buknoy. Call Kapitan! Hide and don’t look back,” Kuyang told me. His voice was filled with fear.

I ran as fast as I could in the opposite direction, trying to follow Kuyang‘s instruction.

My whole body was shaking and I could sense that I wet my pants. I stopped.

“Sorry, Kuyang,” I uttered. I cannot fight my curiosity anymore.

Gasping for air, I looked back and saw how the aswang pushed Kuyang to kneel, took the kalakal and pointed a gun into his head.

Voting is now open via a poll on our Facebook page. Deadline for votes is the end of September 13^th.

A QUIET DAY

Brian C. Mahon

            Jacob anxiously stirred at his soggy, sugary cereal. Looking up, he quietly slipped off his stool when he caught his Mommy’s look and froze. She looked nice with her dark brown hair curled. She spent all morning working on it. Jacob didn’t know or care why. His attention was past the window above the sink, to the beautiful world.

            “I want to go outside, Mom,” he whined.

            She dried her hands, briskly stacked the cleaned salad plates to put them in the cupboard. Finished, she replied, “Are you done with breakfast, hon? You might just need that energy today.”

            “I’m not that hungry, but I promise to finish when I get back inside!” 

            She pursed her lips and walked over to him, putting an arm around his shoulder to kiss the top his head. Jacob could not see her close her eyes as she smelled his freshly washed hair. “Your cereal will taste awful by then. I’ll have some fruit ready for you. Go outside and say hello to the neighbors if you see them.”

            “I will!” he said hurriedly before bouncing off his chair and running out their townhome’s back door into a small, fenced in yard. Jacob ran to the corner post where he left his adventurer’s pack with all his prized possessions: plastic binoculars, magnifying glass, Swiss army knife, compass, and a small notepad with pencil. He quickly thumbed through to make sure they were all there. Smiling with just a bit of satisfaction, he threw the canvas bag’s strap over his shoulder and put his hands on his hips as heroically as the action movie heroes he loved. He walked around the yard and paused to run his hands across the grass blades, to feel the tender way they bent and shifted under his fingertips. He plucked a dandelion and three purple flowers from the yard. Jacob put them into his bag. No one else in their complex was outside. It was quiet outside. Jacob shrugged and look at the sky. It was different than yesterday. The red ball was closer, a lot closer than last night. Mommy said it was though, and she never smiled when she talked about it. Jacob grabbed the toy triceratops he left under their little patio grill and ran inside, hollering, “Mommy!”

            “Yes dear?” She was at the sink, leaning against the counter, looking through the window.

            “I got these for you, Mommy.” He handed her the flowers, and she hugged him, kissed his little cheek, tussled his hair.

            “Don’t forget to finish your breakfast, honey. Today could be a big day for us.”

            “I’ll finish it, Mommy. Love you,” Jacob said happily, returning her hug.

            “I love you too.” Jacob sat to finish his breakfast. Mommy watched the window. The big red ball continued to descend.

Brian Mahon’s Facebook Page

Voting is now open via a poll on our Facebook page. Deadline for votes is the end of September 13^th.

My Name is John

by Steve Cain

            So hot, he thought, wiping sweat off his forehead. He ignored the square of skin that flew with his perspiration. It hit the ground with a thud and stuck, sizzling in the heat.

            It had been hours since he’d drank. His mouth was dry; his lips were crusty. The moisture was evaporating from his body and his skin tightened. Ahead was another figure walking up Route 64. He tried to call out, but his tongue stuck to his teeth; he couldn’t make more than a moan escape his mouth.

            He paused, looking around for a bit of shade. There was only asphalt, sand, and cacti. The figure ahead shambled on, growing smaller as it moved farther away.

            He was disoriented. The heat was playing with his mind. Everything was fuzzy. He didn’t know why he was walking, but there was an urge driving him. My name. What’s my name? Something with “J.” His lips opened, and he stutter-whispered “J-J-J,” but that was all. Jimmy? Jacob? Jules? No.

            He walked on, nearly tripping over his untied right shoelace. He couldn’t fall; he might not get up. He was tired. T-t-tired.

            The road rose slight and looked like it dropped away into nothingness. Everything was hazy. He wanted to run, but his legs wouldn’t obey.

            J-j-john, he remembered, my name is John. A slight smile crossed his lips, cracking the red crust ringing his mouth. My name is John. He couldn’t remember where he was from, couldn’t remember his mother and father. Didn’t know if he had a wife, or kids. My name is John. He clung to that.

            He doddered on, following the figure in the distance, maybe a mile ahead. Other figures were with it now, close together. Not social distancing, he thought, not knowing why he’d thought it. What did it mean? I’m John, he yelled in his head, but they didn’t hear him. “J-j-j”.

            John came to a sign and stopped, trying to read it. “G-g-g,” was all he could muster. There was a vague recollection, but the letters ran together. Hole. He kept walking, dragging his left foot along now. The shoe pulled off, and the scalding asphalt burned through his sock. He ignored it. He was close.

            The figures ahead of him were gone, but he continued in the same direction. A path forked to the right, but he tottered straight ahead. He had an urge to see. The road ended at an overlook. Stumbling forward to a short rock wall, John looked down. Below were his people. Thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands? He didn’t know, but he could hear them calling him, hear them echoing off the canyon walls.

            “B-b-b.”

            “S-s-s”

            “L-l-l.”

            “J-j-j,” he replied, but he couldn’t remember his name. Just “J.” He was J.

            He turned towards the path he had seen prior to the rim. He would go there. That’s where he would join his family. “F-f-a,” he stammered. “F-f-f.”

           Amazon Link

Voting is now open via a poll on our Facebook page. Deadline for votes is the end of September 13^th.

Lights! Lights!

by Michael Anthony Dioguardi

 

I put down my fork as my cellphone lights up, but I don’t read the emergency text—I know what it says. Everyone on Earth lifts their heads in unison as the sirens begin to blare. I’m alone, yet connected to every being on the planet; our fate is a collective one. 

 

All I can think about is Pop; he’s the only family I have left. I have to reach him before it’s too late, before the fires stop me, or the raining debris impales me, or the radiation weakens my bones to gelatin. 

 

Flakes of my ceiling trickle down after the initial shock—the first of a seemingly endless barrage. By my estimates, we should expect a strike every ten minutes until the sun sets permanently on earth. 

 

What if Pop’s already gone? Surely, the staff would have fled to the nearest bunker by now. Would they take the terminally ill?

 

The front door to my apartment swings inward, dislodged from its jamb. My exit into the street is followed by a paralysis of fear. Crevices run like tributaries through the streets, steam hovering above their abysses. Hundreds of sirens for miles in every direction blare out in an uneven cadence. So many people, deformed to unrecognizable lumps of charred flesh lay steaming among the wreckage. There are few whimpers: vocal cords are thin and easily singed. Breathing is becoming difficult. I remember reading about the metallic taste in the air, like biting into a battery.

 

The nursing home down the road is lopsided, one third of it already underground. Luckily, it’s not Pop’s wing. A woman is crawling out from the front entrance, foaming from her mouth, blood streaming from her eyes. I follow her bloody hand and knee prints to deformed steel steps. The banisters are sticky with more blood, and there’s a half-burned man huddled in the corner feeling around like a beheaded animal.

 

REAGAN ALZH— —ARCH CENTER

 

The sign has a crack in it but I know it’s Pop’s floor. I have to crawl under the doorway’s steel cross into the ward. It’s as dark as the stairwell, and the smell is just as putrid. With each passing step, more glass crunches beneath my feet; every window is shattered, but the natural light filtering in is gray and dust-ridden.

 

I pause before a chasm in the floor. As I look up, I see him. He’s smiling, sitting in his wheelchair with his favorite blue blanket draped over his knees. His customary shakes hadn’t dissipated yet. He looks happy, at peace. He turns to me, reaching out with his hand. He doesn’t know who I am—hasn’t for years. But he’s alive and we’re together—and that’s all that counts.

 

“Pop!” I shout.

 

He nods back at me—his head bobbing as his fingers shake at the glass-flaked window frame. I feel another rumble, followed by the last siren fading to silence. An orange hue grows over the horizon.

 

“Lights! Lights!” Pop shouts.

 

More flakes fall from the ceiling.

 

“I love y—”

 

END

Michael Dioguardi

Voting is now open via a poll on our Facebook page. Deadline for votes is the end of September 13^th.

Ava’s Life

By Dale Parnell

“What are you reading?” asked Ryan, dumping a large box of clothes by the front door.

“It’s one of mum’s books, I found it in the attic,” replied Ava.

“Well could it wait, the estate agent will be here soon,” said Ryan, before stomping back upstairs.

Ava sighed. She was already struggling to deal with her mother’s death, but the fact that Ryan had been so distant lately made it almost unbearable.

Ava had been close to her mother; growing up they did everything together, and after Ava moved out they spoke on the phone almost every day, so she was surprised that she had never mentioned the book before. It was the title that made her pause; ‘Ava’s Life’. The fact that it was printed in 1953, thirty years before she had been born, made Ava wonder if she had been named after the character in the book.

“I could use a hand!” shouted Ryan from the top of the stairs, making Ava flinch.

“I’ll be up in a minute,” she called back.

Ava realised she was still holding the book, and despite Ryan’s obvious impatience to get on with clearing her mother’s house, she couldn’t help but flick through a few more pages. It was uncanny; it seemed like whole passages in the book mirrored her own life – a sheltered childhood, art college, a failing love affair with an older man and the sudden death of the character’s mother. Ava sank down onto her mother’s worn, familiar sofa, her attention now completely taken with the musty smelling book.

The sound of creaking hinges startled Ava, and looking up she saw Ryan was standing in the doorway staring at her, his face red with barely contained fury. She hadn’t heard him come downstairs. All she could focus on was the last page of the book.

“What it is?” asked Ryan angrily.

“This book, it’s about me,” she replied shakily.

“What do you mean?”

“Everything that happens in this book has happened to me,” Ava said, frantically flicking back and forth between pages.

“So how does it end?” asked Ryan uneasily.

“It says you kill me,” replied Ava, looking up at Ryan, his face set like flint.

“I wish you hadn’t said that,” said Ryan coldly, moving slowly into the room and closing the door behind him.

Weblink –

www.facebook.com/shortfictionauthor