I lost a mango but found a DREAM

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A story of how childhood misfortune situation propelled one to chase a bigger dream.

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…ripe one! Hit the ripe one! exclaimed the stubborn adventurous voice in me. Coupled with my hunger on a hot Saturday afternoon, as my patchy dried lips could no longer be greased by my saliva, and my barefooted wandering about had yielded no result. I sighted this beautiful ripe mango, defying gravity as it hanged on the biggest tree that gave shade to passersby and family or friends who waited fervently for visiting hours to enter in to the Suleimana memorial…

By Hamza Ayub

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The Mind of Layla

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Layla never really believed in UFOs. She has a rude awaking and so the the Aliens who are in her bathroom!

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…the hell is up and talking loud enough to wake her up. Layla open her eyes and raised up on her arms. She couldn’t believe it. Standing in the doorway of her bathroom, was a short grey alien like you see on television. She felt something try to push into her mind, but the alien couldn’t do it. Layla reached for her gun that she kept under the pillow she didn’t sleep on. Relief went through her as her hand grasped the gun. She felt a harder push and raised the gun, shooting the alien in the head. The alien fell to the floor. A tall darker grey colored alien stepped into her view. Layla watched as the tall alien turned his head sending power towards her. She shot him before the power tried to push into her mind. It stopped as soon as the darker alien joined the other alien on the…

By Hope Strong

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Ashes of A Fleeing Life

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This short story was inspired by the work Junji Ito, a Japanese author who relishes the freedom of horror stories that thrive on not answering every question the reader might have.

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…had been a week since Max’s funeral. His family had chosen not to have a casket. Our guess was there hadn’t been enough left of him to put in one after the accident. Instead, his grandmother had him cremated and put his ashes on display. I remember noticing the box then. I’d only ever seen urns used for ashes, and a box didn’t seem like it would hold them…

By Nick McCusker

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Fear

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…stared hard at her. “You don’t look that scary.”

She snickered and tilted her head to the side, as if to acquiesce. “I get that a lot.”

She waved her hand nonchalantly in the direction of the Ferris wheel that had suddenly appeared. “After you...”

“Uh...wait. Hang on. I take it back. You’re extremely intimidating and... and... WAIT. NO!” He shrieked as she gingerly rested her hand on his shoulder and he begins to walk towards the carnival contraption against his will.

His eyes rolled back in his head and he begins to wail in earnest as his body…

By L.E.

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Monster Truck

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…daisies with downward facing petals

You’re in a monster truck

Driving off the road

A child chases after a wild animal with claws

Insincere recommendation for a main course

Temper tantrum over tanzanite studs

Hose running onto the sidewalk and onto the street

A watering hole

Found a crow corpse

Wants to spoil me

Life holds on to us

Waiting for the wind to settle to…

By Samantha Merz

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Martha.

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…journey continues into the cold, empty void of space. Martha's voyage takes her far beyond the scope of what we have explored.

She leaves another mark faintly with a pencil on the metal of the cockpit wall. One for every 24 hours she is contained in this cage.

Space is a horrible place to be left alone. She started this voyage in hopes of finding someone, or something. When traveling at 95 percent the speed of light with no objects nearby, one loses track of everything: speed, direction, purpose and reason. Her metal sarcophagus continues to drift through the great…

By Jason Garden

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Fallen Apple

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Some writers have great skill and determination. Some just have luck.

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…the daughter of a famous suicide is a valid career path. One bullet and no door has ever been closed to me.

On the last Tuesday of October in 1962, a jewel of a day with the kind of blue sky that makes you want to cry, my mother put her notebooks in order, chronologically, and sent a final draft of her last poetry collection to her agent. My sister and I were at our babysitter’s so the only one to hear the report of the pistol was our…

By Remington Write

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Seven For A Secret

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I sometimes enter the submissions for short plays by theatre groups, I’ve never been selected but they get hundreds for only a few slots. This doesn’t stop me being proud of my work and so the following is a short play I wrote. It’s an Agatha Christie style mystery.

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ACT I

Scene 1

…old fashioned sitting room (1920s esq). There is an analogue clock on the wall saying seven to twelve but it doesn’t move for the whole play. There are three people. ANTHEA in her 20s with a string of beads round her neck, the flapper. She is standing, just right of the centre of the stage, by a table looking in to a mirror. Near her is an empty wooden…

By Arthur Hofn

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Mind Numbing

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…broke my first neck when I was eight. I didn’t even know I had done it when it happened. I just stared at the stupid PE teacher who was yelling at me and I wanted him to lie down and die. And he did. Just like that. It was the first of many neck breaks. And car crashes and plates broken. But, like I said, I wasn’t even aware that I had done it. Ost of the kids were just scared and screaming as the blood escaped from the corner of Mr. Brightman’s mouth. His eyes were wide open staring…

By T Gamache

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Into Lightness

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Previously published in Shirley (issue 2, 2015)

This story is about a dog that escapes into his dreams.

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…air was warm and the ground beneath me was soft, and wet, and I was running. 

The earth was moist, and I was sniffing the earth, letting my nose guide me to the answers that lay underneath the ground. 

Maybe I had escaped my kennel, or maybe someone had unlatched the door, but that ceased to matter to me once I scratched the ground and found earthworms, chicken, twigs. The smell of food was thick enough to chew on. I heard barking in the distance, and ran to meet…

By Monica Macansantos

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