Machine is the second-place winner in SNHU’s 2016 Fall Fiction Short Story Competition. by Taylor Lea Hicks In a cave in the mountains, there is a machine. A machine with no buttons, switches, slots, or screens. Only a lever. It’s said that this machine can give you a new life; a…
by Robert Dinsmoor When I was four, my mother took me to see “Bambi,” a movie in which the title character’s mother is brutally killed near the beginning. I cried inconsolably. “What happens if you die?” I asked my mother. “What would become of me?” Her answer was as simple…
by Bobbi Sinha-Morey I was about to see her again, worry a fist pressing at the back of my neck when I drew up to her front door, in my heart still that flicker of home. Inside the only aunt I had left, a dear soul so close to my…
by Maria Segure He was still now. I stared at him for a long moment. As much of a moment as I could bare. He was still. I could feel my anger rising. My irrational, unexplainable anger. And I felt helpless too. Because I did not want to be here….
by Kayla Miller “What’s the matter, baby?” He taunts, slowly prowling the living room. He’s a jungle panther with metal claws ready to slice open my jugular, and he’ll try anything to wrench out my heart since I’ll never give it to him. My brown, yellow sun-face peeks over the…
by Mark Conkling Jeremy leaned forward on his handicapped walker. “Mother, that’s insane. There’s absolutely no reason to burn the house down.” Naomi crossed her arms. “Do what I say. Burn it down the day after my funeral.” “But why?” “I don’t ever want anyone else cooking in my kitchen,…
by Carla McGill The First Memory—The Last Day of Fourth Grade It was the year that President Kennedy was shot. We were at different schools, but they were just a few blocks apart. When my teacher found out what had happened, she sobbed, her head on the desk, while Barbara…
by Isabel Brome Gaddis I haven’t lived in this little room for long but it’s already filled with my stuff the way an hourglass fills with sand. I wonder which things will still be with me when I die, and who will be left to decide what is a keepsake…
by Michael McLean Bullets buzzed through the air like angry hornets. Those that didn’t hit dirt ricocheted randomly from rock outcrops. Mark Grayson hunkered down behind a meager outcrop as the unmistakable barks of a dozen or more Kalashnikov AK-47 rifles were answered sporadically by bursts from his outnumbered escort’s…
by Valter Van D Time is gone My life is spent Darkness sets in And your love fades My body turns numb I start to freeze My hands drop Death has come Why’d this happen Where have I gone Is this heaven Or am I in hell Life without you…