Rose City Sisters

It started with a quiet rumble and escalated into a mega quake. When the dust cleared, the entire department was gone. Years of work forgotten. The dust of a corporate layoff. The end forced a new beginning. Letting Go became a mantra, Letting God became a directive. Soon the ashes stimulated new growth. Creative energies were flowing. And suddenly, it was clear that what happened was required to shift direction toward a new path of living. A divine intervention of sorts. Change is never comfortable, but in the end a shake-up does a body good.

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MaryJane (MJ) Thornburg is a Rose City Sisters reader who decided to take up the challenge of writing a 100-word story. She says she has more stories in the works.

Left holding the diaper bag at the park, my head shakes. New girlfriend’s frown reflects in your windshield. Streaks run down my face like those muddy tire tracks you’re leaving behind. Smiling in my arms, our baby giggles. Hush now, my love, everything will be okay.

Straight like an arrow to the source of all your problems, gamemaster kept score, assigned blame. I’m sorry. It’s my fault. Perhaps my muddled mind clears, watching your gaslights flicker.

Right at the beginning I knew. Love at first sight, two as one, kissing passionately. I love you. You might have even meant it.

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Eric Schweitz is a writer and blogger. Comments are welcome.

Elinor screamed as her treasured magnifying glass dropped in the water.

Rumor was: this shallow puddle never evaporated. If you touched even a drop – you were cursed. Back in ’06, Jimmy Flanders dared, and boy did he regret it. Or he would regret it, if he were still capable of clarity.

But Elinor had explorer blood. Couldn’t help it. If she could study the water, she’d know its depths. Using tongs, she slowly retrieved her magnifier. The tongs slipped. The glass dropped. Water splashed. Cursed.

Now Elinor’s brain can only consume memes dispensing self-righteous half-truths. Incapable of seeing anything whole.

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Kim Dixon Perez ghostwrites for executives and entrepreneurs by day, and lets her word-goblins loose at night for some fun toggling between short fiction and APA-style academic nonfiction in pursuit of a master’s in environmental management. Find her at kimdixonperez.com.

Plodding down well-hewn gashes of the south Arroyo, we escape grand houses that question our presence. Laughter splashes up from the regimented pool of extracurricular children. We joke that, not long enough ago, we would’ve found an idealized underbrushed overlook to share the revelations found in a cloud of skunk. Reigniting that haze promises madness. Age has saddled us with reputations and tremulous futures that depend on them. The grand houses lurk aloof, waiting to withhold their equity. Stay the trodden trails. The dead squirrel merits half a pause, and we continue descending. We give no time for its truth.

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Rachel S. Reed is a Pasadena-adjacent writer spinning whimsy during her down-time. She has a soft spot for sci-fi and quells her irrepressible penchant for nostalgia with frequent hops on the lindy circuit. You can check in with her on Twitter and relive the adventures of inanimate objects by subscribing to her newsletter.

Horace Parker had known he would lose his mind one day, he just hadn’t thought he would lose it in the back yard.

“I had it only a moment ago,” he thought. “It must have bounced.” Then he forgot what “it” was.

He was on his knees, weeding among the tomatoes, when he felt it fall, like so many feathers brushing past his ears. His reaction time was quick; he reached out his garden-gloved fingers to catch it in mid-air. But when he opened his palm he found not one, single feather. Only tomato leaves, shriveled and brown.

© Copyright 2016 Petrea Burchard. All rights reserved.
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Petrea Burchard enjoyed a 30-year acting career before morphing into a writer. She is the author of the novel, Camelot & Vine, as well as Act As If: Stumbling Through Hollywood With Headshot in Hand, essays about the life of a journeyman actor in Hollywood. She gained a following in the anime world as the original English voice of Ryoko, the sexy space pirate in the cult classic, Tenchi Muyo!, and continues to work in the voice-over field.

After months of glances and weeks of conversation, he worked up the nerve to suggest dinner, but was drowned out by the blaring bus horn. They laughed. He tried again. She accepted. Several regular passengers applauded.

She blinked back tears when he did not appear at the restaurant or answer his phone. While she died a little inside, he died outside under the front wheels of a crosstown bus.

“He ran right in front of me,” the bus driver said.

“Why was he in such a hurry?” an old man asked.

“Who were the flowers for?” asked his wife.

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In addition to publishing 1,000-word flash fiction stories, the Rose City Sisters now accepts your micro fiction. Keep your story to 100 words or less (not including the title). Submit by email.