Burned Out

by Krista Yoder

Don't bother trying to have a dreamy, romantic, candlelit dinner with teenage boys. All they will want to do is set their cups on top the candles’ flames to see what it will do, or flick their fingers through the flames to see if it will burn them, or rest their spoons in the flames to watch it turn black. They’ll probably even knock over a glass of water, trying to do something with a flame. We weren’t trying to have a dreamy, romantic meal, but I’m just telling you in case you wanted to. It was candlelit, though, because the ceiling light had flicked off once again, totally disregarding the claim on the box that said it would last 40 years. We had thought we’d be in our 70’s before we had to think about the kitchen light again.

6S

Krista Yoder hasn’t published anything to speak of. You can’t follow her anywhere, unless it’s up and down the stairs and out to the garden. Her work has appeared, or in a sense, dissapeared, in the lives of her seven precious children.

The Sleepwalking Murderer

by Emy Henson

She walks down a neighborhood street at midnight as icy cold December air lightly blows into her face, eyes closed and quiet snores escaping her slightly parted lips. The bloody weapon falls to the ground as her hand loses its grip on the sturdy handle. She had just killed a family of three, she had broken into their home and murdered the mother, father, and teenage son who had been living an ordinary life until this fateful night. She arrives outside a small home in the same neighborhood, walks up the lawn, and enters through the unlocked door. She walks down a hallway and through an open door to a bedroom, changes into silk pajamas, and gets into the large bed. She awakes the next morning, changes into her police uniform, gets a report of another murder just down the street from her house, and prepares herself to continue the search to find this unknown murderer, unaware that it is herself.

6S

Emy Henson is a high school student who just started writing again after losing her motivation during the COVID-19 pandemic and is trying to get better every day.

Casanova’s Bed

by Kip Knott

For more than two centuries I have tried to remember the manner of my death, but the moment remains shrouded in clouds of dust and time. Perhaps a rococo book-worm groupie took pity on me and delivered me to the Hereafter before the numbers of books I sorted and shelved became the sum total of my life. Is it too trite to believe that one of the other librarians did me in when they caught me flipping through the illuminated pages of the Kama Sutra with a lonely patron after hours? I shudder to think that I died among the best romance novels of the day, quietly pleasuring myself because no one desired a gray-haired, pot-bellied librarian. Some part of me likes to believe that I died with my face between dog-eared pages of The Song of Songs, savoring Paradise in wine drunk from the round goblet of a lover’s navel. But alas, all I know for certain is that now I sleep cold and alone throughout eternity in my toe-pincher bed buried beneath a heavy blanket of earth, yearning for words, for love, for one last taste of all the virgins forever out of reach in Heaven.

6S

Kip Knott is a writer, poet, teacher, photographer, and part-time art dealer living in Ohio. His writing has recently appeared in Best Microfiction 2024 and The Wigleaf Top 50. His most recent book of poetry, A Mob of Kangaroos, is available from East Ridge Review and on Amazon. You can follow him on Instagram and read more of his work on his website.