Sabrina T. Age: 9

She wishes for school not to be so difficult, for her mommy, daddy and pug-pug to be happy. She wishes for her friends at school to be happy too. Pug-pug is her dog. She got him last year. He’s described as being cute.

*

Katrina V. Age 22

She wishes for an apartment. She’s been working at the same job since high school. She’s saving up her money. She also wishes for a boyfriend.

*

Barry Q. Age 26

He wishes for fewer hours on his job and a raise. He says “Who doesn’t want a raise?”

*

Patty J. Age 65

She wishes for her husband to be in a better place. He died two years ago. She wishes that she could gain the strength to carry on.

*

Victor G. Age 32

He wishes for a promotion. He says he needs it. Says Christmas is coming up and birthdays too. He whispers “promotion” and yells “come on!”

*

Bridget C. Age: 40

She wishes to meet a nice man, also for the quick recovery of Minxy, her cat, one of five. Minxy is described as being all black with white paws and a white stomach. Minxy was a stray like the others. She says Minxy ate something that didn’t agree with her and she’s been sick ever since.

*

Calvin E. Age 46

He wishes for a bite to eat. He says he’s been up and down the streets for way too long. Says that sometimes he can find food from restaurant dumpers because they throw out so much but recently they’ve begun to place locks on the dumpsters.

*

Vikki W. Age: 18

She wishes for a new car. Says she’s graduating soon and she hopes her parents get her one. She hopes the car will be either pink or light blue. Says either is fine but nothing brown or grey. She says her friend has a jeep but it’s all black. It’s cool looking but she doesn’t like jeeps. She says she’s definitely not jealous.

*

Quentin F. Age: 20

He wishes for a girlfriend. Says he thinks Veronica likes him but he really doesn’t know for sure. He wishes he wasn’t so awkward around girls. Says that would make life easier.

*

Lacey P. Age: 24

She wishes for a bigger chest. She laughs about this. Says she’s always hated how they’ve looked. She wonders why she was cursed with a flat chest. Says at least let her come into some money then she could save for an upgrade.

*

Brittany A. Age 12

She wishes to see a movie at the theater with her friends. She says her dad said he would take them but he might not. Says for some reason Jasmine’s mom doesn’t like her dad. She says her dad told her that. She says her dad said that Jasmine’s mom said something that bothered him. She wishes for them to get along. She asks if she could have two wishes.

*

Warren O. Age: 54

He wishes the pain in his side would leave. He says he thought it was cancer but read online that it may be less serious.

*

Sammy H. Age: 47

He wishes the stupid kids next door would stop playing loud music. He says these are the types of people he wishes didn’t move into the neighborhood. He wishes they would leave. He

says the kids aren’t really bad just annoying but all kids are annoying so whatever. He says his wife says he’s too harsh on them but she doesn’t like the noise either. He says she’s just nicer about it.

*

Kevin C. Age: 29

He wishes for his moms’ recovery. He says she smokes and has had a bad cough for a long time. It put her in the hospital. He says if his mom doesn’t make it he doesn’t know what he’d do. He pauses, and says please let her be okay.

*

Bianca E. Age: 24

She wishes she didn’t have to do what her boss wanted. Says she wants to make it. Says she’s a good worker. Says she hopes there’s another way.

*

Naomi S. Age: 16

She wishes she could forget. She says she feels numb around him now. She just wants to forget.

*

Eric V. Age: 11

She wishes her mom and dad would stop fighting. She says Dad broke a glass today. Mom screamed and left. She wishes they would just make up.

*

Patricia F. Age: 36

She wishes for her sons’ safety. Says please keep him out of the streets. Says there’s nothing there for him. Says please protect him. Says let my son come back safe and sound, says a prayer.

*

Christina R. Age: 17

She wishes for a healthy child. Says her parents don’t know yet but she hopes when she tells them they don’t freak out. She pauses. Even if they do, she says, I’m keeping it. She just doesn’t want them to hate her.

*

Devin J. Age: 27

He wishes his parents would accept him. He hasn’t told them yet.

*

Irene D. Age: 26

She wishes for a better tomorrow. She works at the club. She’s a dancer. She says its fine but not what she wants. She likes photography but it doesn’t pay the bills. She says she’s sick of the club. She wishes for a way out.

*

These coins float within me. They are my dreams.

RICKEY RIVERS JR was born and raised in Alabama. He is a writer and cancer survivor. His poetry has appeared in various publications and is forthcoming in a Twist in Time Magazine, Dodging the Rain, Elephants Never (among other publications). Twitter.com/storiesyoumight / https://storiesyoumightlike.wordpress.com/

Image via Pixabay

Although she had three beautiful daughters, Christine also desperately wanted a dog. But her husband resisted.

Because they lived near a field where owners walked their dogs, Christine began to leave out raw meat in her garden – to lure passing pooches. She did this when her husband was at work, even though she was afraid he might return without warning.

She watched from her bedroom as the dogs – and there were many – were attracted into her garden by the smell of the beef, pork or lamb. Christine would take the animals into her lounge, stand them on a glass-topped coffee table and brush their fur with a wooden-handled brush, sometimes so hard that eventually there was more hair on the brush than on the dog. Or she would cover them in talcum powder and paint their toe nails purple.

Sometimes she bathed them in her own pink bath with lilac petals floating on the water. Or dressed them in the children’s clothes – coloured waistcoats, silky empire-line dresses or yellow duffle coats. Often she taught them to perform tricks, some taking many hours of practice – sitting up to beg, sleight of hand card tricks, and cutting a lady in half.

Finally, before her husband returned, she sought out the dog’s fretful owner to return the dog. Sometimes they commented on the dog’s baldness, or fragrance, or ability to perform unusually complex tricks, but more often they were so relieved that they gave Christine a financial reward.

Despite this small income, Christine ran out of money to buy meat, and so, one morning before they woke, she strangled her three daughters. As she tightened her grip on their throats, they made no sound – except, she thought, a kind of muffled bark.

Having dismembered their bodies in the kitchen, she stored them in an old chest freezer at the back of the garage. When he arrived home, she told her husband that they were staying with their aunt. She knew that by the time he grew to disbelieve her he would be ripe for dog food too.

If anything, the human flesh was more attractive to passing dogs than the beef, pork and lamb. And she found that the larger the piece she put out, the larger the dog attracted.

The day she placed her elder daughter’s torso in the garden, she saw the biggest dog she had ever seen. But, as she ran across the lawn towards the beast – to smother it in her love – she was stopped in her tracks by its rapacious shining eyes, and realised it was a wolf. She turned on her heels and fled back into the house, locking the door behind her.

The creature pursued her, opened the front door as if it held a key, walked to the kitchen and took a knife from the drawer, and, at the top of the stairs, plunged the knife into her heart – an unusual form of wolf attack – with the words, “That’s for the children.”

JOHN HOLLAND’S short fiction is published all over the shop online, in magazines and anthologies. He is the organiser of the twice-yearly event Stroud Short Stories. John’s website is http://www.johnhollandwrites.com Twitter @JohnHol88897218

Image via Pixabay

Jackie stands in the yard screaming. Dogs bark. Smoke pours from two chimneys at either end of the barn. Inside, the living room is lit by two fires and two table lamps. At the top of the two stairwells there are bedrooms. John finishes his tea and puts on his coat. He takes Jackie’s coat out with him and drapes it across her shaking shoulders before putting a woolly hat on her head. Her screaming subsides as he props open the back gates. He gets in his red car and reverses on to the old drovers’ road. She gets in her little blue car and slowly backs it out. John manoeuvres past her and parks his little red car back in the yard. He closes the gates as she continues to go backwards up the old drovers’ road.

Back inside, John makes another cup of tea and puts it on the table next to the couch. He puts his hands behind his head, flicks off his slippers and stretches his legs. There are starlings nesting in the bushes just beyond the door and he listens to their curious sounds.

After waking he pours the cold tea into the kitchen sink. The two fires are glowing with coals. He shovels more coal on each of them and smoke billows from both chimneys. Turning on the radio he listens to 70’s music and washes the wine glasses in the sink. A woman sings that she feels she’s made out of gingerbread.

Looking at his watch he turns off the radio and waits. Then he hears the car horn, one, two, three, four beeps. He goes out into the yard, opens the gates, reverses his little red car out and lets the little blue car back in.

‘Did you get them, Jackie?’ he says.

‘Yes, I got them.’

In the living room lit by lamps and fires she opens the Belgian biscuits and begins to eat them.

‘Why don’t you try something else, Jackie?’ he says.

‘I like these.’

‘I know, but don’t they have anything else in Aldi, Jackie?’

‘I like these.’

‘Alright, Jackie.’

Jackie sits on the couch with the empty box of biscuits. John looks up from his copy of the Hexham Courant. ‘Do you want your knitting, Jackie?’

‘Oh fuck. Okay.’

He goes to the drawer and takes out the long black and white scarf with the needles still attached and passes it to Jackie. She resumes the slow clicking and clacking and John goes back to his newspaper.

In the afternoon John looks at his watch and sees that it is time for Countdown. He puts on the TV and Jackie puts down the scarf when she hears the theme music. They watch in silence, relaxing to the considered requests for vowels and consonants. John puzzles over the conundrum, and the contestant, a seventeen-year-old boy, figures it out before him.

In the kitchen, Jackie cooks her speciality of chilli con carne as John attends to the fires. He folds out the tiny dining table and they sit at either end over their steaming plates just as The Simpsons starts. On the screen, Homer strangles his son Bart in a running visual gag. John watches as Homer goes to Moe’s and sits at the bar with Lenny and Carl.

When Jackie comes back downstairs in her dressing gown, John has a glass waiting. The yard is filled with empties and John thinks to go to the bottle bank sometime. At the end of Mrs Brown’s Boys, John turns smiling to Jackie and sees her sleeping on the couch. He finishes his glass of wine and lifts her into his arms before carrying her up the stairwell and putting her in to bed.

Back in the living room he puts more coal on both fires to keep the bastle barn warm through the night. He throws the empty box of biscuits in to the flames as the last westbound train passes. There are highlights of the England game on ITV. He has avoided hearing the score and is lifted by news of the 2-1 victory. Hodgson seems to know what he’s doing but neither side is like they used to be during the time of Bobby Moore.

After the football he looks more closely at the leaflets that came through the door while Jackie was out. Under a heading, ‘Quiet Revolution’ there’s details of a plan to put some wind turbines just across the river below Willimoteswick Castle. A meeting has been set up at the newly constructed village hall to organize a petition. The other leaflet details the upcoming production of As You Like It at Henshaw School.

The first eastbound train of the morning passes. As it fades away John hears the young starlings. After the starlings there’s the screaming. Dogs bark. John gets up and comes down his stairwell, sees the front door open and Jackie standing in the yard in her dressing gown, looking up at the blue sky. John starts the fires and then brings her inside. Later, as they go through the routine with the cars, John sees the police van by the side of the old drovers’ road.

Image via Pixabay

Passing by the lily pond in that deep December snow, you glimpse the goldfish, a prisoner below thin ice. I break the surface with the heel of my boot, plunge a hand into the water, then clench my fist for a moment, immobilised by an irrational fear of touching the glint and gleam of the fish.

I picture my childhood pet, Pepper, thrashing on the polished wood of the dining table. I’d forgotten to put the lid on the tank after feeding him, and he leapt to freedom. I screamed for my mother, tentatively holding my hand out towards the fish, already imagining the cold wriggle of him, the possibility that he would slither from my grasp and land on the parquet floor.

Pepper’s body gave a final jerk as my mother arrived in the room. She dropped him back into the tank, but he stayed on his side, floating amongst the flakes of fish food, his mouth open in surprise.

My mother took me into town, we bought new shoes and ate ice cream sundaes, but it didn’t help. Back home, we buried Pepper in the garden, and the following week I chose a new fish from the pet shop. He was silver, and I called him Salt. But he didn’t overwrite the memory of Pepper; instead he was a daily reminder that I’d allowed him to die.

And now, this opportunity to make amends. I reach for the fish, teeth gritted, feel him quivering as I scoop him up with a paper coffee cup. You carry the cup home, so carefully, in your tiny mittened hands, heating it with clouds of chocolatey breath.

The goldfish spends winter in a borrowed bowl, and we admire his shimmer as he circles the pirate ship, weaves through weed in a one-man glittering shoal, makes eyes at the mermaid with the yellow plait.

In April, we carry him back to the pond in a jar, squat down at the edge to watch him explore, but his tail flicks once, and he’s already gone, leaving only a ripple between the lily pads to say he was there: just as though he never knew us.

AMANDA HUGGINS is the author of the short story collection, Separated From the Sea, and the flash collection, Brightly Coloured Horses. She was a runner-up in the 2018 Costa Short Story Award, and shortlisted for Bridport and Fish. She is also a published poet and award-winning travel writer.

Image via Pixabay

The old woman loved the falling snowflakes. They were big and sparkly and kept fluttering around her, distracting her from the police who came into her home while she was laying on the floor. She had no idea how the officers got into the apartment, and why she couldn’t get up. She must have slipped while walking to the kitchen. She must have tripped over one of her son’s roller skates. He’s so careless.

The wet snowflakes on her wrinkled face triggered a memory of her son as a little boy, bundled in a snowsuit with black goulashes and mittens tied to his sleeves. She often pulled him on his Flexible Flyer along the snowy road with the other children. She watched him slide down the big hill on Penny Way as he laughed and played with his rosy-cheeked friends. She prayed that he didn’t hurt himself on the sled; that he would have the presence of mind to be careful. She worried about her husband coming home in such stormy weather. He was a good driver, but the roads were icy and slick.

The policewoman turned to the back of the patrol car. “Everything will be okay, Mrs. Dowling. You’re going to a wonderful nursing home.”

The old woman didn’t know why the policewoman called her Mrs. Dowling; that’s not her name. Maybe she made a mistake. Perhaps it was the elderly lady with the henna red hair that lived on the next block with the same house number.

Although the old woman was annoyed by the police, she smiled anyway, grinning without teeth, only her gums showing. Her false teeth were floating in a coffee cup on the bedroom dresser. She didn’t think of taking them when the police picked her up from the floor and carried her away. She put up a fight, but the officers were persistent. They kept saying that she couldn’t live by herself anymore; that it was too dangerous, and that she would fare much better with around-the-clock nursing care.

The old woman watched the snowflakes fall and thought that she should have left a note for her husband. She hoped that he would be home soon and that he doesn’t worry about where she is. She worried about her son dressing warm enough and remembering to wear the woolen sweater that she bought for Christmas.

“My son is off from school today, and we’re going sledding,” the old woman said. “My son loves being out in the snow with me.”

The female police officer smiled at Mrs. Dowling. “Your son must be thrilled to have a mother like you,” she said.

“He is,” replied Mrs. Dowling, “he’s with his father now.”

Mrs. Dowling looked out the patrol car window at the falling snowflakes, feeling comforted by the policewoman’s kind words, somehow knowing that her son was all right; that he would slide down the hill like the other kids and reach the bottom safely. She knew that his father, who was off from work, would make sure that their son was okay.

MARK TULIN is a former family therapist who lives in Santa Barbara, California. His poetry often finds richness in the lives of the neglected and disenfranchised. He has a poetry chapbook, Magical Yogis, published by Prolific Press (2017), and upcoming poetry book entitled, Awkward Grace. His work appears in Page and Spine, Fiction on the Web, Amethyst Magazine, Vita Brevis, The Drabble, smokebox, and others. His website is Crow On The Wire.

Image via Pixabay

“Real freedom is discipline,” she said as she slipped another pin into the linen.

I stared at my hands as they pleated another line in the evening dress. She was always saying things like that to us. I don’t mean to imply that she talked much, or that she was the chatty sort – she was, after all, a serious woman – but there was a gaiety about her when she paid us a visit. Somehow she felt that these visits must always involve imparting nuggets of knowledge that she had gleaned on her travels.

It was said in the newspapers and whispered amongst us that she was the best travelled and most international Irishwoman in the world. There was a strong hope that the First Lady Jackie Kennedy would wear one of the dresses our hands had pleated – and perhaps even pose for a portrait!

“I have to feel what’s being made,” she said later that same day.

I watched her fingers caress the material she said was inspired by the ground beneath our feet – the colour of peat – and saw the beginnings of a frown on her forehead.

“Is it that you don’t trust us?” My stomach plummeted at my speaking out.

In the silence a tremor crossed her face; her body seemed to deflate a little. I couldn’t take my eyes off her, suddenly desperately wishing she would raise her voice, shout at us, and exclaim that we were ungrateful country girls. Tell us that they – the naysayers – were right all along, that there was no reason to employ local girls as seamstresses, for they always betray you. I willed her to say it aloud. That our combined jealousy – for that was all we girls had in common – would be the ruin of her. The woman modelling the sample dress wobbled in shoes that were a size too big, hardly daring to breathe. The air itself seemed to pause.

“It is that I don’t trust myself,” she said calmly, “without having touched the fabric.”

She didn’t look at the model, or the dress, or even the material. She looked beyond us, beyond everything. And then she smiled. Her full lips, pink with lipstick, stretched over her straight white teeth and I thought then that she was the most beautiful woman I had ever seen. I felt an urge to embrace her.

“But of course you must know that we trust you,” I said, looking around. Though my lips were bare and cracked and my teeth crooked, I too smiled. “All of us girls trust you…” – I paused, my throat going dry – “and even love you.”

A sound of satisfaction escaped her lips. I watched her let the fabric slide from her hand and with a swing of her green skirt walk towards the bare wall at the back of the room. She slipped gracefully through the door that led into the yard where the rain was falling heavily.

SHAUNA GILLIGAN is a novelist and short story writer from Dublin. Shauna is interested in exploring the crossover of art and literature, the depiction of historical events in fiction, and creative processes. The Sunday Independent declared her novel Happiness Comes from Nowhere to be “thoroughly enjoyable and refreshingly challenging.”

Image via Pixabay