By Richard Evanoff

We wander, soul, we swim and fly and smile and, with delicate ghostly fingers, we retie the torn filaments and blissfully unite the disjointed harmonies. —Hermann Hesse

~

The ancients wrote about the music of the spheres. I shall write about the cacophony.

The composer was meticulous when placing notes on a score. Above all, he sought order, to translate the random noises of the universe into sounds and then to arrange these sounds in perfect harmony with each other. He composed endlessly, from morning till night, eating only when he absolutely needed to and bathing almost never.

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By Brian Christopher Giddens

Sarah wakes to the cries of Sasha, her beloved little mutt, putting her paws on the side of the bed. Where’s Stanley, Sarah thought, listening for her husband, as she had every day in the two years since he’d died. Stanley always woke early. She would lie in bed, listening to him unloading the dishwasher, going out onto the porch for the paper. Talking to Sasha in that voice that humans use to talk with animals, as he prepares her kibbles. Sasha’s brown eyes following Stanley’s every move, her scruffy ears perked, intently listening.

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By Jason Landro

Once upon a time, there lived a girl named Pandora. 

Louder than a sunflower, Pandora danced in summer rain, chasing thunder with a glass jar. She liked the feeling of wet grass on her bare feet, and she liked running her hands across the beaded blades in the morning dew, watching the little pearls of water roll off like marbles. 

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By A. Keen

“Ma’am.” Old Rogers touched his hat at Agnes and then stood stock-still in the windswept clearing. Far off, the blackened stumps of the harvest were only just visible. “The blight shows no mercy.” He shook his head, but when he turned to face her, his rheumy eyes gleamed with triumph and a sadness that only farm folk would know and appreciate.

He had seen their farm and perhaps a dozen others like theirs. He must know, as she did, that one blight was like another and that when a single kernel went bad, the rest surely followed. When the first flush of fury died down, Agnes could only feel sorry for him. Let him gloat, she thought. They were all tired, high-strung. There was nothing to be done about it.

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By Jerry Jerman

“How on earth are you going to find her?”

Melissa isn’t looking at me when she says this. She’s gazing down the side of the sandstone cliff we’ve just come up thanks to the rough-hewn ladder leaning against the cliff dwelling wall. I’m surprised we got here so quickly, especially given all the held breaths and wiping of sweating palms to ascend. I’m terrible at estimating heights, but it seems like we’ve climbed at least a hundred feet, maybe more. Now I’m dreading two things: the climb down because I hate ladders and answering Melissa’s question. How am I going to find Catherine?

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By David Sydney

Inspiration. 

“You know what that is there, Sam? It’s a country.”

“It looks like a little dot in a book you’re pointing at, Uncle Otto.”

“Actually, it is a small dot, Sam. But it represents the country of Liechtenstein.”

“Liechtenstein?”

“Exactly.”

“You mean there’s a country that rhymes with Finkelstein?”

“Exactly, Sam.”

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