They had forgotten how arduous this hiking trail could be, but for seasoned walkers Joan and Kevin, they somehow couldn’t help themselves. This wasn’t the most popular of routes, being as it was, one that segwayed off the more popular Pennine Way, and was quite rough in parts. It was also raining heavily, but there was no wind to push at them, and it wasn’t cold. Hills sloped upwards on either side, dotted with coarse shr...

The first bus into town filled up after three stops. The one nearest our house was the second, and it usually meant that the queue was large and messily scattered across the footpath. People chatted in groups, dotted incrementally in random patterns. They stood together in twos, not all of them couples, not all of them of mixed sex. Some, like me, preferred their own company and suffered the sympathetic nods of recognitio...

The town of Hazzard was a quiet place, the kind where everyone knew everyone. Or thought they did. The kind of place where the wind whispered secrets through the endless cornfields and the river carried the weight of unspoken truths. A place surrounded by beauty that belied the darkness that seeped from its soil. For me, growing up in Hazard was like living under a microscope, every glance a silent judgement, every whispe...

Every night at 3:33 a.m., she heard the familiar voice and laughter. “Come play.” She thought it was a recurring dream about her childhood memories filled with fireflies and sidewalk chalk. She sat up in bed and saw the loose floorboard jiggling to break free again. “Are you finally ready?” She pried open the board. She reached down into the darkness. A warm hand grasped hers. The world flipped. She was six again, barefoo...

She would pour milk into a bowl of cookies and call it cereal. As for me and mine, we just cook with turmeric and thyme. Chia seeds and pineapple always adorn his pizza. As for me and mine, we just cook with turmeric and thyme. Starting each morning eating melon clean down to the rind. As for me and mine, we just cook with turmeric and thyme. Pan-fried salmon in cornbread mix - cakey fritter snacks, but always seasoned wi...

After the fields, he doesn’t get soap; the music’s what cleanses him, revealing his roots. When the moon says, “My turn,” to the sun, his fingers, numb from pickin’ cotton, find their feelings. His toes start tappin’. And others come a-running to hear him play the banjo. He sings spiritual songs from his homeland—reminders of hope. Black feet remember their steps from long ago on African soil. Dancing shakes loose the dir...

Klaus and Dieter, two recent arrivals from an eastern part of Germany, were eager to immerse themselves in Austrian life. The tram hummed past, its red and white silhouette gliding along the grandeur of the Ringstraße. Klaus and Dieter stepped onto the pavement, the scent of roasted chestnuts curling through the crisp autumn air. “Wien,” Klaus muttered, drinking in the golden domes, the baroque facades, the precision of o...

They buried him on a day that dared to be beautiful. The sky was a tender blue. The sun showed up without apology, casting its light over everything like a blessing no one asked for. Birds sang. Somewhere, a child laughed. None of it touched her. She stood there, hands clenched around wilted stems, watching the earth open its mouth to take him. No breeze blew. No shadow shifted across her path. And yet she shivered. Becau...

Talvia was still breathing hard from the terror of the situation. It was something she had been scared of ever since she had started living alone. That someone might come and take her away. It wasn’t common, but it did happen sometimes to little girls and young women. Maybe Bivala would stay closer to the hut from now on as a result. Maybe Bivala would even live inside it. The thought gave Talvia hope. Now, she tried to f...

The food, as it turned out, was soporific. To Fred’s horror, Enzo collapsed and lay motionless. Fred's panic surged as the hawker straightened, his movements unnervingly deliberate. With a slow, mocking gesture, the hawker reached up and peeled away his mask. Fred’s breath caught. Beneath the worn disguise, Ruggero’s familiar, wicked grin emerged. Only now did Fred realize—it had all been part of Ruggero’s sinister plot....

Eliot Ambrose was a man obsessed with time. Not in the way of punctuality or schedules, but with the very fabric of time itself, the way it slipped through his fingers, the way it stretched and compressed, and the way it left him perpetually longing for more. He was a clockmaker, and his shop was a museum of ticking, whirring, and chiming. Grandfather clocks with ornate faces lined the walls, pocket watches gleamed in vel...

I grew up being told what I was before I even knew who I was. "Coloured." Like that answers the question. Like that explains everything- and nothing- all at once. My people? We got history in our blood and displacement in our bones. We know how to live between things- between languages, between expectations, between the cracks of a country that still doesn’t know where to place us unless it’s behind something. I’ve been s...

When one survives a date with death, one must live with what follows. The aftermath. The echo. The wardrobe of regret... and the color never quite fades. I’m back in court again. Not legally. Mentally. This is my sixth trial since her funeral. Same courtroom: a dimly lit room in my head. Same furniture: cracked floor tiles, a flickering lightbulb swinging like guilt’s pendulum. I’m on trial for the crime of survival. Same...

Never had Koushik come to this part of the main village before. It was situated on the very edge of the cluster of huts, and only a few miles from that, the village ventured into the nearest rainforest.  If Abbu and Ammu knew where he was right now, they would yell at him and never let him out until he was grown. But Ammu and Abbu did not have to know, did they? And his guard could be dim-witted at times, so Koushik did...

Black Box Theatre Presents EDGAR DRAMATIS PERSONAE Edgar, forty-year-old male, children’s books author, married to Lenore Lenore, forty-year-old female, housewife, married to Edgar Raven, black bird, lives in a tree on Edgar’s property INTRODUCTION Music plays thirty seconds of Pachelbel’s Canon in D Major, then fades. ANNOUNCER: Good evening, patrons of the arts. Welcome. A reminder that no flash photography or smoking i...