by Bethany Veith Exhausted, she arranged her hands upon the pink flannel blanket wrapped around her silent bundle dressed in grandmother’s ancient white lace Christening dress. Her misty wide eyes flashed and contemplated the absolute miracle and beauty of life and the cruelness of nature. Cradling her angelic daughter one…
by Neerja Raman The eighty-five ghats that form a crescent-shaped riverfront project a majesty that gives perspective to the vicissitudes and vanities of death unfolding in its lap. Janvi has read in a tourist guide that the city of Varanasi derives its name from two rivers: Varuna, which flows from…
by Aurora DePuy Gossip started brewing the day he arrived. It was to be expected in a town with just under a thousand people. He’d bought a shop and was cleaning the window the first time I passed. Our eyes met and his hand stilled on the glass. Sister Pfeiffer…
by Nancy Gerber It was a perfect day for the beach, the sky a cloudless powder blue, sand like blanched almonds, sea the color of smooth, green silk. Rows of white lounge chairs stood side by side, shaded by large, turquoise umbrellas. In the distance a gull dipped toward the…
by Brianna Kittrell She greets you at birth, and you cry in her presence, still she becomes a part of your essence. She sways with the trees and rustles the leaves, and her beauty deserves more praise than it receives. Though she is giving and kind, she is often taken…
by Chelsea Eccleston The smoke stung my eyes, making them water uncontrollably. It burned my lungs, making me cough and unable to breathe. I crawled along the floor unable to tell where the door was. Was it in front of me? Behind? I was running out of time. I choked…
by Ryan D. Moore People tell me I have a God complex. It’s not complex. I am God. I, in this form, was born in 1982. However, I have always existed, in one form or another. For awhile I was Haley’s Comet. Zooming across the solar system, a non stop…
by Stephanie K. Cohen The Atlantic magazine, September 2016, describes the forthcoming head transplant operation which will take place shortly. The only problem I have is choices. So many, and so little time to decide. I thought about getting a placeholder, so to speak. Any healthy body in exchange for…
by Mary E. Kendig Mothers aren’t perfect — not by far. Some can be stern and uncaring — even “unpresent,” while some are so loving they smother you until you can’t breathe, Or praise you until you start to believe you’re completely and utterly perfect in every way, like she…
As Good as Gone is the first-place winner in SNHU’s 2016 Fall Fiction Short Story Competition. by Joe Skonie It was said that Saturn ruled civility. When Saturn fell from the sky, it was as if the world came softly out of focus. The trees outside my window lost their…