THE GUEST ROOM

by Jeanette Cheeezum

Nina’s head pounded, eyes felt gritty and with a swish of her tongue she swore there was fuzz on her teeth. Had someone slipped something in her drink? They had arrived and set the suitcases in the guest room just in time for drinks to be served. That’s all she remembered.

The bed was empty next to her, maybe Tim had left her to sleep in. She slipped her jeans on and thought if she didn’t get something to eat soon she’d throw up.

No way! The door was locked. “Okay Asshole, let me out of here,” She banged and shouted.

No one came. She looked around, thankful there was a bathroom. This wasn’t funny.

What’s that in the bathtub? She pulled the shower curtain back then froze. Another woman was there. Nina nudged her knee, no response. Maybe she had the same thing to drink. She nudged again. “Hey, wake up.” Nothing…Nina reached out and touched the girl’s face. It was cold, very cold and lifeless. She backed away, nervously rubbing her hands on her jeans.

She needed a joint. No, she needed to get out of here. Where was her purse? It wasn’t visible if it was in the room. She searched through drawers, under the bed and opened the closet.

Her blood curdling screams were stopped when Tim’s body fell at her feet. His eyes bulged and a rope was tight around his neck.

Something shook her once, then twice. Her mother stood over her “You’re going to be late for school if you don’t get up now.”

*

Bio: Jeanette has been published in eleven anthologies and three poetry collections. Her work can be found all over the internet. She loves to write fiction of all types. She has completed four novels and a children’s ebook @ Barnes and Noble. If you would like to view her website go to http://cavalcadeofstars.wordpress.com/

SOMEWHERE SPECIAL

by Salvatore Buttaci

It was supposed to be a getaway celebration, our 10^th wedding anniversary. Turns out the operative word here is “getaway,” so forget “celebration.” We got away all right, so far away we ended up lost.

“Why not go somewhere different this year,” my wife said, weary of the same old Rustic Lodge five minutes from our home, the motel where we had so far spent nine over-nighters since that first July 10when we were pronounced man and wife.

With the help of Mapquestᵎ™ and despite several wrong turns (I have a sense of direction worse than a broken compass), at last we found the Concord Manor Hotel two states away in Pennsylvania.

We were both in a less than good mood, nearly running out of gas, which Diana said was my fault since I was the driver, to which I defended myself by hurling back, “You're the damn navigator whose job is to keep an eye on the controls!”

So I paid for the suite, carried in two matching luggage pieces, sat on the king-size bed and remote-clicked the TV on.

“I'm hungry,” pouting Diana whines, “so don't get too comfortable because those sandwiches we ate in the car hours ago were nowhere enough.”

My question, “Can't we grab a bite at Burger King™ next door?” met with a squinting killer stare, so we hit the unfamiliar highways in search of a five-star steakhouse and, not finding one, got terribly lost, and drove in the darkness for three grueling hours before we miraculously found our way back to the Concord Manor.

“Happy Anniversary, Honey,” I said, but Diana, without turning from the half-wall mirror where she was brushing her teeth, raised her other hand and flipped me the bird.

BIO

Salvatore Buttaci is an obsessive-compulsive writer who writes everyday. His work has appeared widely. He was the 2007 recipient of the $500 Cyber-wit Poetry Award.

His collection of 164 short-fiction stories, Flashing My Shorts, is available from Amazon.comat http://tinyurl.com/26u8huk His upcoming book, 200 Shorts, will be released in mid-2011.

He lives with his wife Sharon in West Virginia.

NEVER SEEN A NIGHT SO LONG

NEVER SEEN A NIGHT SO LONG

He lies in bed, ears perked to the plaintive cry of a whippoorwill somewhere in the darkness. Not in the sky. No, not there. Maybe hiding behind the blue rhododendron bush, nest-far and lonesome. Like me, he thinks, rising from the double bed, setting on fire a Pall Mall, inhaling a lungful of smoke. Hank’s never seen a night so long. He wonders where 1952 has flown to. He pictures one of those barrels where his grand pappy burned wood scraps back in Alabama. He reminisces and knows too well the pain of that. The way old men sit in rocking chairs and in between gusts of warm breezes say, “Yep,” and wish to God they could either travel back to the young old days or sleep forever in their rockers.

Across the bedroom in his favorite chair, the Gibson Audrey bought him rests against the red velvet needlepoint cushion Audrey left behind. His new wife Billie Jean hates it as much as Hank loves it and won’t let it go. “Audrey loves Hank,” says the needlepoint, and then in large flowing cursive, “FOREVER.”

“It's just a damn guitar!” Billie Jean tells him, the sour taste of jealousy frosting on her lips. “You got a closet full of 'em!” Then she pauses and drives daggers into his heart when she says--he suspects for spite-- “That girl knows as much about forever as that bottle you're pourin' knows how to stitch up a broken heart.”

Let it rest. What's done's done.

Whatever lyrics sing in his head he’ll keep up there. Still, he runs his thumb over his four fingers, itching to pluck the strings, hold down the frets, strum the chords into blues, sing his heart out, release the pain.

Without my guitar I'm nothing. Without me, Gibson's like the tree nobody's in the forest to hear crashin' down. But the two of us together…

Hank pours a full glass from the bottle on the end table. Then he shakes several white painkillers from another bottle, gulps them and chases them down with the lonesome-blues whiskey. Meanwhile, outside his window, stars go on twinkling, despite life without Audrey. The face of the moon hides behind dark clouds. Why should it let the world see its tears? And that old train, she keeps heading down the line, traveling the iron rails, heading for...heading where? He let the cities flash across the stage of his troubled mind. Nashville. Abilene. Birmingham. Chicago with its cold winds. Even New York City with its even colder people looking up at him performing, thinking, Who in hell's this country boy from Alabama think he is 'cept white trash who can toss out a song to make grown men cry?

Where is Audrey? he wonders. Absently now he lifts the guitar, slings the leather strap over his shoulder, and gives in to the six strings. Strumming, he fills the dark room with words that ride the chords like dauntless walkers on a high narrow tightrope. Once, before a preacher, the two of them swore to heaven the knot they tied would never be broken. The world out there could try all it could to pull them apart, but they'd hang strong and let love beat that world back into its corner.What happened? he wonders now, wonders the day long. The night. What made me throw it all away?

“The midnight train is whining low. I’m so lonesome I could cry.”

Now’s he’s searching through the contents of the end-table drawer for a pencil and pad. The Grand Ol’ Opry star finds both, balances the pad on the sound box, jots down the lines, and clamps the pencil horizontally between his teeth. He lets the pad fall against Audrey’s cushion.

“Did you ever see a robin weep when leaves begin to die?”

He repeats the line several times so it melds in perfect time with his plucking and continues.

“That means he’s lost the will to live. I’m so lonesome I could cry.”

When he manages three quatrains, each ending with what he will make the title of his new song, he removes himself from the Gibson. Again it leans against the red velvet lie. Again thoughts of the long-gone Audrey plague him. Once he believed she loved him. Now she expects him to believe she no longer does.

“I’m so lonely I could cry,” he sings. What could say it better? he wonders.

His head throbs with the booze and pills conspiring against him. Still, the duo are not strong enough to calm the agony in his back and the rawness in his heart.

Hank Williams stares open-eyed at the ceiling. Tomorrow night the Grand Ol’ Opry will explode in thunderous applause. Fans will scream his name like a litany to a saint. He will sing song after song. He will bow and exit until one more call for yet another encore will bring him back. Finally, he’ll quiet the crowd by removing his white cowboy hat, wave it, and return it to his head.

“Here’s my last for the night,” he’ll say. “This one’s for Audrey. Are you listening, Darlin’?”

Then the king of country music will sing every note from the depths of a heart so wounded, not even time can heal, “Hey, good lookin’.Whatcha got cookin’. How’s about cookin’ something up with me?”

BIO: SALVATORE BUTTACI; Buttaci's poems, stories, articles, and letters have appeared in The New York Times, The Writer, U. S. A. Today, Cats Magazine,Christian Science Monitor, Bardic Echoes, Wind, Iconoclast, Chicken Soup for the Soul: Celebrating Brothers and Sisters, and many other publications here and abroad.

His newest collection of flash fiction, 200 Shorts, is available from the publisher athttp://allthingsthatmatterpress.com.  His first, Flashing My Shorts, is available at http://tinyurl.com/6bqu6b2

More than anything in the world, including the craft of writing, Buttaci loves his soul mate and wife Sharon Lee. The two of them live in Princeton, West Virginia. 

A NIGHT RIDE ALONG LAKE SUPERIOR

by Gita Smith

Each night, the porter went through the train car, pulling open the double decker bunks and lowering the ceiling-to-floor  curtains that offered visual privacy between strangers. I was seven years old, traveling across Canada from east to west.

I crawled into the dark, womblike space of the lower berth and drew the curtains around me. A button on the wall turned on a tiny blue nightlight, and in its glow I fell asleep. Rocked by the train, soothed by the white noise of the steel wheels humming over tracks, I felt none of the fear I usually felt at home in the city. The men and women sleeping all around me were simply benevolent fellow travelers on the Canadian Pacific Railroad whose tired faces I would see over breakfast in the dining car.

Sometime past midnight, I awoke to complete stillness. Deeply accumulated snow had blocked our train's progress, and in the brightness of moonlit frozen ground I saw prints indicating a scuffle between some animals. I could make out various paw prints and a place where the top powdery layer was stained with blood.

Lake Superior, vast and lonely, stretched away from us forever and, in that moment, I understood that only the thin tissue of the train's wall separated me from the brutal North.

BIO: GITA SMITH;...

GOING BACK

by Nadia Marie Perez


I am an endless wanderer but there is definitely one place that tugs at my heart strings every so often; it beckons me return to it, to know it once again. The feeling is mutual, of course, and my pulse quickens at the thought of boarding a plane again; engines roaring, speeding down the runway and then the lift off. There is no way to describe the rush of emotion that courses through my veins when a plane lifts off and I'm up in the air again gazing at the beautiful clouds that I often stare at from below.

Being there, in the stratosphere flying and looking down at the earth below eagerly awaiting the place which calls me back to it time and time again. Going over the blue water that is the Caribbean Sea, checking out the islands below and then getting closer and closer to that coast, my beautiful coast. The mountains come into view and I know I am back, back in my gorgeous and wild Venezuela. We touch down and taxi for a few minutes and then it's off to immigration and customs, gathering my cumbersome luggage once again making my way out to meet whomever has come to greet me and driving away down that old renovated highway toward the city which has become my home...Caracas. 

I get to La Candelaria and am greeted by the old familiar noise, faces and scents. The music from Pablo Electronica blaring out onto the street as I make my way to my grandmother's building to open the heavy iron door, I'm back home and ready for a brand new start...again. Until I board that jet plane once again for another destination yet unknown. 

BIO: NADIA MARIE PEREZ;...

ROUTE 13

She slammed the car door and walked a little ways down the dusty road.

He watched her wait for the next car to come along. What started the argument anyway?

She had insisted he put her out along the side of the road.

Maybe if he sat quietly she would return to the car.

This route was a long and lonely one. If she got into the wrong car she wouldn’t be in trouble because he would follow close behind. Making sure the next driver realized what he was doing.

The trunk load of contraband wouldn’t be in jeopardy as long as he made it to the border by half past eleven.

BIO: JEANETTE CHEEZUM; 

TO UPROOT A PECAN TREE [TAKE ME BACK TO THE BALL GAME]

I don’t mind branches; they bare wonderful things like fruit, nuts, flowers, & foliage.  I've lived life being the roots of things, aiding them along and helping them grow.  Most folks forget about what's in the dirt, but I've always known it’s a whole world below affecting everything around it.  I left Phoenix, AZ for Nashville, TN... The prodigal daughter returned to the south after a ten year hiatus.  It gave me fireflies and moonlight, and just before I became too fanciful- a mosquito bite the size of Gibraltar appeared.  Home gives perspective, so I had to reroot myself back to the source because some seeds don't grow everywhere--- if you force it, you'll find you've over watered it with love.  In places of our beginnings we learn who we are; who we used to be; and who we can become.  So I’ve slid home and I don't care if it grounds me.  If I stand with a cruddy face and motley clothing know that I'm no worse for wear when standing to dust myself off.  You just gotta make sure you stand back from the mirror next time you see yourself rounding third, and the people you care for provide shade.


BIO: SOUTHERN QUILL; Kimberley Gladney is a modern day renaissance woman.  She has performed spoken word under the alias "SouthernQuill" in venues across America; sang her heart out in smoke filled rooms and crowded bars; and regularly bares her soul to followers on her blog site Brown Girl in the Red, White, & Blue.  She has hosted open mics, acted in plays, had her paintings up in various galleries, and is currently recording her first album ep.  She currently resides in Nashville, Tn, with a 1940s antique typewriter and a host of family and friends.  

BREAKFAST BUFFET

Russians approach a smorgasbord like a small boy whose parents are not paying attention.  They pile their plates high with food, far more than they possibly can eat.  Sometimes two plates, one in each hand. Perhaps a legacy of food shortages in the Soviet era, or a persistent ancestral  memory of hunger.

The hotel where I stayed in Murmansk offered a buffet breakfast, heavy on protein, eggs and cheese and meat.     Cold, flat, fatty strips of bacon that were eaten, tidily, with knife and fork.  Lots of bread and pastry.  Not much fruit, at least not in  March, when winter still gripped this northern city and it snowed every day, sometimes at blizzard intensity.  

 My Russian-born  father, who  survived the famine in Berlin after World War I and had seen people starving to death in the streets,  could not bear to see food wasted.   I wondered what he would have thought of the towering piles of food that remained uneaten on every table, which seemed to surprise no one but me.

Bio: ANN MINTZ; Ann Mintz has had six careers, five dogs, one husband, and has lived in seven cities, if you count Philadelphia twice. She has written radio scripts, text for museum exhibits,  websites, speeches, grant proposals, numerous articles and one book.  She blogs at 6S, T-10 and Pen Ten. 

THE WORLD IN PIECES

There is a man who sees the world in pieces. He wears an old top hat, and shattered glasses that keep him blind. He sees what is there, and he sees what isn't there, because it is. No one can see him. Pacing, he walks among us; unburdened, he observes. He walks alone, through the days and into the nights, pausing only to stare a while at something that has caught his interest. He leaves no footprints, and is followed by no shadow. It would be easy for him not to exist. It would almost make sense. Still, he walks.

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Bio:  FABLE LADEN; Fable is a young New Hampshire writer who is just starting to get her feet off the ground. Her work has appeared on FLASHSHOT.

WHAT IF

  Did you ever stop to wonder "What if?"  You're walking along the street when you come upon a shiny new dime.  You stop, pick it up, look at it in the palm of your hand, and read the date.  It's this year.  It's brand new.  How lucky is that?  You reach the street corner, casually looking both ways.  You step out into the street just as a motorcycle whips around the corner and flies by you at an incredible speed.  Wow!  If I had been a second sooner… .  People crowd around you, asking if you are all right.  Yeah, you did stop for the dime.  Man, I'm really lucky!  You cross the street, finally, just in time to miss your usual bus, thanks to the dime.  Maybe I'm not so lucky.  I could keep these steps of "bad luck" up until I get to the part where an ambulance hops the curb and launches you across the street, where you are squashed by a cement truck, as a collapsing building comes down on you and the truck with such force that it causes the street to cave in, just as the subway train runs over you.  Whew!  Wadda trip!  But you get my point.  Well, sometimes I wonder what might have been, if… .

            I have played a lot of pool in my day.  I started out playing at a place called "Toms", in Brooklyn, NY, at 10 cents an hour per stick.  The last time I played regularly, it was about $12.00/hr, and that was over 40 years ago.  I was 21, full of "piss and vinegar", nothing could stop me, and so this is the story.  The "Triple Triangle", a billiard parlor in the west end of Richmond, Va., was a favorite haunt of mine.  I made a modest income there, and continued to frequent the establishment, after beginning my latest stint at "Fuqua and Sheffield Florists".  How are these places related?  Why, through the "Toddle House", of course. 

            We, some friends and I, closed up the pool hall about 11:00PM one evening, and meandered across the street to the Toddle House, an "all-night" breakfast place, for something to eat.  Our food arrived and we ate.  As we were sitting there sipping our coffees, a gentleman walked in and asked if anyone had a driver's license.  I looked at him like he had 2 heads, and finally, with reservation, said that I did.  Now, Mr. Forester was a gentleman in his late 70's if he was a day.  He was dressed in a Chesterfield overcoat and fedora, and a gray suit with tie.  Since he looked quite respectable, I couldn't imagine what he could want with myself, as I appeared quite the ragamuffin.  It was simple, he needed my youthful eyes to drive him in his Cadillac Brougham sedan, to Norlina, NC.  So, I figured, anything for a joke, and I said OK.  The first stop was at his house in Richmond.  Now, I didn't see how anyone could have lived there.  The living room and dining room were literally covered with architectural plans of every description.  He gathered some things, and we were off to his "ranch" in Norlina.  The trip was uneventful.  The house we stayed in that night, was apparently better taken care of than his other house.  I awoke the next day to walls that could not get any whiter, in a very sunny room.  The house, though very old, was in excellent condition.  I am certain he had a staff that catered to at least this house.  On the way home, feeling more at ease with each other, we started chatting.  He told me that the miles of tobacco land that we had just driven through, were only a part of his land, and he was considering sending me to an agricultural college, to learn how to manage his plantation.  He was well up in years, and I assume no relatives, at least, those with which he wished to socialize.  We parted company amicably, and I waited patiently for him to send for me.  A couple of times he stopped by the florist looking for me, in my absence, and the dullards there didn't even bother to get a contact number from him. I felt the pangs of disappointment welling up in me each time.  I never saw him again.  What if… ?

BIO: Jim Hunkele... 

TIME THIEF

She took it.  I knew she was going to the minute she sat down next to me in the airport.  She looked at me with large round eyes and a stupid smile that was probably meant to be cute and disarming.  It may have been cute once upon a time, like when she was around the age of 7, but now, not so much.  I’m thinking that maybe the guy with her had her convinced she was still cute but I didn't think she was cute and I wished she stop looking at me with those big stupid eyes.  She was trying to come off as innocent but I knew, from years of traveling, that she was a practiced beggar and sure enough she took it.  The thing about people like her, they do that sort of thing for so long that they don’t even see it as stealing, maybe just relieving you of something they needed more than you.  I, however, needed mine, and I gave her a hard discouraging stare at the onset but she easily had twenty more years of practice than I did and she didn’t even blink.  Later she dashed off when a voice on a loudspeaker made it’s usual announcement about not leaving your things unattended and not accepting anything from people you don’t know or whatever it is they say exactly, the point was that suddenly she was gone.  I sat there wanting to sink in my chair as I surveyed my magazine and few worldly possessions and I knew I’d been robbed of the thing which had come to mean the most to me after the difficult months I’d just had: my precious time.

BIO: Rhonda M. Smolarek hides writes under the nom de plume of Olive Rosehips, where she makes up things all the while using proper grammer and spell checks.  She generally does this in stiletto's with her pedicure in vivid shades of red. Why? Don't ask me, I just work here. Word is she also does website design/re-design at OliveRosehips.com  and plays at getting absurd songs stuck in people's minds in order to amuse herself... I know, right?