Moving Objects
A brother pulls off the arms of his sister’s favorite doll. He screws the severed handles of their mother’s teacups into its empty sockets. They are curved like ears, or maybe the neck of a flamingo. A pink one just escaped from a Kansas zoo only to surface in Texas. How did it get from one place to another? A train must have rumbled through the tracks of its life. If not a train, then any set of wheels aiming for an exit. How to decide what else to drive off into the night? A young hitchhiker with his guitar? When he plays it, the slap he delivers to the string sounds like a drum. Life begins with a slap, he reminds whoever's listening.
Cheryl Snell's books include poetry and fiction, with recent work appearing in One Art, Eunoia Review, The Ilanot Review, The Cafe Irreal, and other journals.
The extraordinary thing is …..
When it first appeared at the Spendthrift Mall, few people paid any attention to It.
The shoppers resting on the benches were the first to notice, then the older folk just wanting to get out of the house, the young mums feeding their babes, the homeless seeking shelter from the cold, and the teens wanting to escape the chaos of home.
When they related what they saw to others, they struggled to describe It. It was definitely there but It didn’t have a shape they recognised. They couldn’t say for sure what the main colour was; some said purple, some said red, one even said green, but all said It was different colours at different times.
It made a noise, not loud, but constant and rhythmic. The noise seemed somehow familiar but unlike anything they’d heard before.
Young men trying to impress the girls approached It with cool bravado and attitude but as they moved It was suddenly behind them, making them look foolish to the girls and everyone else who’d been watching It move, seemingly randomly but with an eerie sense of intention.
Security arrived and attempted to put a safety barrier around it, as if It was a ‘Slippery When Wet’ spillage. When they finished, It was not inside the barrier but had moved to the shopfront of the shoe emporium.
When the Police arrived, they ordered all customers and staff to evacuate the mall while they evaluated the threat, or at least what they imagined might be a threat, if only they could work out what It was. TV cameramen pressed against the glass doors trying to get footage for the 6 o’clock news without any real idea of what they were trying to film. Reporters quizzed eye witnesses who described in detail what they didn’t know about what they saw.
A couple of hours later, a bevy of what the Government hoped would be experts arrived. The selection was somewhat hampered by having no idea who might be an expert in these circumstances. An advance party donned HazMat suits and, escorted by a menacing looking SWAT team, made their way cautiously past Wendy’s, McDonalds and Smokemart to the Grand Foyer leading to the supermarket.
It appeared briefly, emerging from Kool Kutz and Tattoos, before disappearing up the escalator to Homewares and Furnishings. Using hand signals, the group leader indicated a need to retreat, although no-one really knew whether they needed to be safe and, if so, from what.
The media immediately besieged the team of experts and relayed live to air their potential concerns about what It might be, while being suitably evasive about what they had or hadn’t seen, in the interests of national security. The Prime Minister called an urgent press conference to announce that whatever resources were required to deal with this emergency would be made available and hinted darkly, without naming names, that certain foreign countries hostile to our interests may be involved but he didn’t wish to speculate further.
Meanwhile, back at the mall, at a hastily established Command Centre, a heated discussion was under way between senior members of first responder organisations and the military as to what was a safe point at which to establish a perimeter and what weaponry may be needed to counter the threat, just as soon as it was established what the threat comprised.
Social media was rife with both speculation and certainty that this was, amongst other possibilities, the first sign of the Second Coming, the symbolic heralding of the triumph of the One World Government, and Bill Gates demonstrating the launch of his Windows Of The Soul mind-control software.
In a desperate attempt to show decisiveness in the face of an unknown threat to his Government, the Prime Minister ordered the evacuation of all homes within a three-mile radius and called in an airstrike to totally eliminate the mall and any adjacent buildings that may be harbouring the threat.
When the dust settled, the rebuilding of the area became a pillar of the Government’s plans to stimulate the economy and provide new jobs. At the grand opening of the new Mall, the Prime Minister preened and beamed at the sea of smiling faces in front of him, oblivious to the fact that they were all fascinated by something of indeterminate shape and colour that was hovering and humming over his head.
Panic followed as the local residents fled to pack, ahead of the next air strike.
Doug Jacquier's writing meanders amongst the peaks and the swamps of various forms of short story, flash fiction, poetry, and non-fiction, from the lunatic to the lucid. For readers prepared to come along for the ride, he likes to make them think, laugh, cry or groan (and, sometimes, all of the above). His work has been published in Australia, the US, the UK and Canada. He blogs at Six Crooked Highways
Same Enough
Spreading wicked stories about the girls from St. Margaret’s might be a sin, but
so is eating someone’s brains, and try telling that to my zombie cousins from
New Jersey.
Doug Mathewson isa multiple Pushcart Award Nominee who writes short fiction, His recent book, “Nomad Moon” is a collection of
24 flash fiction, and micro fiction stories dealing with love, war, family and aging. It is now available from Cervena Brava Press, as well
as Amazon and Barnes & Nobles. He is also the Editor of Blink-Ink, a quarterly journal of contemporary 50 word fiction.
The Care of a Ball Python
When they started dating, Irene appreciated Reg’s shyness and expected that he would unwind. He did and warmed her with easy smiles. She cautiously appreciated he had a reptile as a pet—a ball python. She googled and read carefully about the care and the kind of home a ball python needs.
Ball pythons are generally a bit shy, but they make for ideal captives.
Ball pythons as “ideal captives” conjured S & M for Irene. But neither she nor Reg harboured an S & M vertebra in their bodies.
Adult female ball pythons average 3 to 5 feet long, and adult male ball pythons average 2 to 3 feet in size.
Reg appreciated Irene’s Amazonian good looks, and walking beside her he seemed to stretch taller. That half inch inspired confidence.
Irene never mentioned size.
With proper care, ball pythons can live 30 years or more.
Irene planned on a lifetime with Reg.
Ball pythons are secretive snakes…
When Reg was away and she couldn’t find the python inside the terrarium, it unnerved Irene. Although contraindicated by the care manuals and forbidden by Reg, Irene tapped against the glass to rouse the python.
Finally, when the python slithered out from under her hide box or peeked out from the tropical flora, her cold eyes stared into Irene’s.
The ambient temperature should not fall below 75 degrees.
Although not yet menopausal, Irene tended to overheat in bed. Sometimes she needed to throw off the covers, open the window. Open windows disturbed Reg. Shifting temperatures put his python at risk.
“It’s her or me,” said Irene.
Reg grabbed a blanket on his way to the couch and rolled it against the bottom of the door keeping his python safe from harmful drafts.
Feed your ball python an appropriately sized rodent weekly.
Irene watched Reg watching as the python snapped its jaws around the stunned mouse, embraced it with coils. Swallowed, the lump travelled down the reptile’s body. Eventually it disappeared.
Ball pythons are well-known for not eating at certain times throughout the year…
When the python did not stir but lay listless on the bark chips, Irene saw Reg’s face pale in distress. When the mouse bit the python under the eye, Reg knew it was serious. This was not the normal seasonal ball python fast.
Full of concern, he conferred in lengthy consultations with the veterinarian who specialized in exotic animals.
Never use any substrate containing cedar, as it contains oils that can be deadly to reptiles!
Irene did not accompany Reg to the exotic animal vet for the pre-cremation rites. Instead, she hauled the bag of cedar chips hidden in her corner of the closet to the garbage. Cedar chips that she had sprinkled discreetly in the terrarium the past months.
Now nightmares. A sudden embrace and waves of muscle grip her in a dark, suffocating space.
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Quotes from reptilesmagazine.com. Ball Python Care Sheet - Reptiles Magazine, Kevin McCurley
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Fran Turner grew up on a farm in the southernmost part of Canada, but Toronto, where she's lived most of her life, is the place that's home. She's worked as a nurse, shiatsu therapist, and on cancer programs. For decades her heart has been on the Aikido mat, training and teaching at her own dojo. She enjoys working on flash fiction and has stories published in Ekphrastic Review, Dodging the Rain, and Adelaide Review.
PASTWORD RESET
For the life of me, I could not remember what I’d created. Two Bs (maybe), a groan of vowels, one capital Y. Numbers—nines and naughts. Some unsightly combo of symbols—exclamation points, asterisks, a dagger of a dash. At signs, dollar signs. The dubious promise of an ampersand.
I racked my brains to bring it back. Rattled every key. Years of “error” and “try again.” Finally, a failure, I crossed fingers and surrendered securities to the machine. Soon, a message pinged. I opened it, welling up at my now and future code, convoluted as before, but beautiful because random.
Michael Cocchiarale is the author of the novel None of the Above (Unsolicited, 2019) and two short story collections--Here Is Ware (Fomite, 2018) and Still Time (Fomite, 2012). His creative work appears online as well, in journals such as Fictive Dream, South Florida Poetry Review, Fiction Kitchen Berlin, The Wild Word, and The Odd Magazine.