Night Watch

by James Rose

He is old, perhaps too old, to be a security guard. His family and friends don’t know why he continues to do it. Every other night, he drives out to the industrial park and takes up his place at the security gate, torch at his side, panic button just above his right knee; his book, flask of tea and sandwiches in a carrier bag tucked underneath his chair. But he rarely reads. Instead, he sits sipping his tea, observing the soft and subtle changes in colour as the day slowly fades into night and then, in the long dark hours before birdsong, watches out for the fox that searches amongst the litter, the rabbits that feed on the grass verge, the badger that ambles back and forth across the concrete, the owl that circles the perimeter of the building. It is in these insignificant moments of nature that he reminds himself of why he still does this job—to see what the sleeper will never see.

6S

James Rose cannot see in the dark, but he likes to write about what he thinks may be in there.

The June Lady

by Evangeline Moss

Every year, as June 1st dawned, the scent of honeysuckle stirred her bones and summoned her misty form into the world. She drifted through open windows and over porch swings, humming old lullabies no one remembered learning. Children called her the June Lady and left her bowls of strawberries, which she never touched but always arranged neatly. She loved warm thunderstorms and the hush before fireworks, and she wept quietly during weddings she watched from the church rafters. On the final night of the month, she curled up in a garden, wrapped in moonlight, and vanished without a sound. July never missed her.

6S

Evangeline Moss writes ghost stories with warm hearts and cool breezes.

Wine and Cheese

by Alan Keith Parker

I tore down the county courthouse with my teeth, biting through dingy concrete and gray steel until I cracked my molars. I never liked its smug midcentury façade. My friend from college, a brutal apologist for flat roofs, took my 1974 Alfa Romeo Spider and kneaded it into a bubbletop cruiser from The Jetsons. I scowled; she curtsied. We finally buried the hatchet on the town square where the courthouse used to be, bringing a picnic basket filled with Camembert, fig jam, and a Rochioli Chardonnay. After the first sip, she turned my white wine into a tasty Merlot, and I was good with that.

6S

Alan Keith Parker writes literary and speculative flash fiction. His most recent work appears in the June 2025 issue of Flash Phantoms. In May, he had stories featured in both SciFanSat.com and 10x10 Flash. Earlier publications include the March 2025 issue of Flash Phantoms and the August 2024 edition of Bruiser Magazine. He’s been publishing since the 1990s, with past appearances in Stories: One, Aim Magazine, The Fifth Di--, Zone 9, and on WLRH public radio. In the 2010s, he was a featured speculative fiction writer for JustUsGeeks.com and received a Freshly Pressed Award from WordPress in 2012. He’s married to his college sweetheart, whom he met at Birmingham-Southern College—a small liberal arts school where they studied physics, history, and beer. They have two children in graduate school and one cantankerous cat. To support his writing habit, he works as a modeling and simulation analyst at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center.