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In response to the open call, I submit to you a glimpse of a man who doesn’t have it bad, but also doesn’t have it good, that is to say, he doesn’t…

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Bo heard a thousand screams. He laughed, and a city fell. On his morning jog, oceans sloshed and spilled over coastlines, drowning the praying tourists and locals. It was indiscriminate destruction. Unintentional, mostly.

Bo belched, and with it came a collective cry for mercy. He shrugged. What was he to do about it? He’d tried everything he could think of: he ingested Ipecac, punched himself in the stomach, got black-out drunk, ate ghost peppers—it only made him feel sick. Sure, some of them were vacated in the violent discharge of various bodily fluids, but these things were resilient.

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Liz Zimmers | Edith Bow | Sean Archer | Bryan Pirolli | Andy Futuro | CB Mason | John Ward | NJ | Hanna Delaney | William Pauley III | Jason Thompson | Nolan Green | Shaina Read | J. Curtis | Honeygloom | Stephen Duffy | K.C. Knouse | Michele Bardsely | Bob Graham | Annie Hendrix | Clancy Steadwell | Jon T | Miguel S. | A.P Murphy | Lisa Kuznak | Bridget Riley | EJ Trask | Shane Bzdok | Adam Rockwell | Will Boucher

BLINK TWICE IF YOU CAN HEAR ME, by Sean Thomas McDonnell.

Maestro Walter Gillian waited for the applause to die down. The audience’s optimistic faces beamed in anticipation, making him feel unsteady. At that moment, he hated them fiercely. He wanted to step down from the podium and slap each of them—to yell into their giddy faces—but he smiled back and bowed his head in thanks. It wasn’t the people themselves but rather their enthusiasm that caused his distress; they didn’t understand the pressure it placed on him to justify their excitement. Sure, he wanted this opportunity. He’d fought for it. Still, he couldn’t help but feel exposed and, in some undefined way, cheated.

The orchestra was patiently waiting for the Maestro to face them and raise his baton to begin the concert, but he hesitated, his gaze lingering on a couple in the fourth row. There was nothing obviously interesting about the man or woman, but for some reason, which he could not place, they disrupted his mind. She, a slight woman with small dark eyes, and he, not a big man, but larger than his wife, and with a orange rose in his lapel. They stared back at him with a detachment that made him feel like a workhorse in a parade.

The lights dimmed until the entire audience was hidden in shadow, all but the couple in the fourth row, who continued to stare at the Maestro with indifference. He turned to face the orchestra, but they too were unlit, lost in the shadows.

Walter turned back to face the couple in the fourth row, and said, “It seems our lighting is not quite right.” He felt a bead of sweat run down the side of his face, and raised his shoulder to dab it. “Lightman?” But the lighting technician did not respond.

Maestro Walter Gillian is on the verge of becoming the next Stravinsky, the next Mahler, or Bernstein. He has the skill and the talent, and now he’s been granted access to an elite group of musicians, all ready and willing to bring his music to life. This is the moment Walter has been waiting for; he needs but to raise his baton and start the performance to seal his fate as the greatest living composer-conductor in the world. But the Maestro didn’t anticipate indifference. And he certainly didn’t anticipate an incompetent lighting technician. But most of all, he didn’t anticipate his role in the greatest symphony of them all, a magnum opus known as the Twilight Zone.

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The departing vessel looked like a blossom carried by the wind.

Rinko took a breath; it was the first time she’d tasted the “Cotton cocktail,” as it was known back on Earth: oxygen, nitrogen, and an e…

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Diving was a daily baptism; he sank like a divine stone, bubbles rising to the surface of the River Thames, popping and releasing his prayer to some unnamed god looking down on London. It was his thi…

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The metal throne is uncomfortable and damp from morning dew. King Manny shifts first to his left butt cheek, then to the right, but there comes no relief from the cold, hard surface. He surveys his s…

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“Listen closely.”

“The hell you talking about?”

“The wind through the wheat,” said James. “If you really listen—and I mean really stop for a second and focus—you can hear words.” James walked out into …

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On the porch, swaddled in muslin, a baby wailed. Tom Brown and his wife Cara looked at each other in surprise. They’d prayed and prayed—they’d prayed so much that it had become more superstition than…

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The dappled egg we found beneath the walnut tree stuck in my throat. I had to swallow hard. Sammy lost the bet, reluctantly handing over his pearl-handled pocketknife. He almost cried; I wiped my lip. At bedtime, my mother kissed my forehead and asked me how my day went. I told her fine, then coughed up a feather. She laughed. “Did you eat a canary?” 

That night, I dreamt I could fly, and when I awoke, I was in the walnut tree. I cried out for my mother. She came out and banged on a pot with a spoon.

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This story was chosen as the winner of the April Micro Competition through Globe Soup. The prompt was “Egg.” There were over 450 submissions, and a good number of them were probably fantastic, but for whatever reason, my story resonated with the judges enough to get me the nod.

I’m feeling a desire to write an Oscar-esque speech, but I’ll just say this: Iron sharpens iron. We learn and grow and thrive together. And if someone comes at you, I’ve got this new pearl-handled pocketknife.

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