Caleb Hunter lives in the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains and has been writing off-and-on since he was 12. Although he has allowed the struggles of adulthood to keep him from the keyboard more often than he should’ve, nothing soothes his soul more than taking a blank screen and filling it with characters. A disciple of Ray Bradbury, Neil Gaiman and Stephen King (just to name a few), you will usually find him reading/writing speculative sci-fi, fantasy or horror. Recently, while sitting in the summer sun, Caleb typed out this piece of flash fiction.

I See It

Barefoot, I step out onto the warm porch and look up.

The sky is a deep, unending blue.

Green trees wave and sway as I sit, still gazing upward.

I’ve never seen a sky this clear. Especially not in the middle of August.

The humidity usually masks the atmosphere in a pale hue. Sometimes, I can’t even tell where the clouds begin or end.

But not today.

Today the clouds are stark white. Like puffy icebergs floating in the south pacific.

The weather app on my phone says its 85, but it feels more like the low 70s.

As if the sun’s rays are cooling as they pass through the deep-sea blue.

I breath in and am reminded of hiking in Colorado many years ago.

It was summer then as well, yet the Rocky Mountain air was cool and clean. So clean that it hurt to breath.

Like my lungs were working overtime, desperate for something to purify.

My lungs feel that way now. Confused, they heave so hard that I have to focus on slow inhales. Steady exhales.

After a few seconds they calm down, and I begin to relax.

Bringing my eyes down, I see our outside cat casually twisting on his back. Letting the grass and dirt take care of a stubborn itch. 

He suddenly spins over onto all fours and freezes. Staring intently at something across the street.

Neighbors begin to appear on the street. Scrambling out of yards and houses towards something at the end of the cul-de-sac.

All of them murmuring and pointing up.

I stand to see what’s going on, but my view is blocked by the swaying trees that border our lot.

So, I jog down the driveway. My feet slapping against the pavement.

And then, rounding the mailbox…I see it.

Way up in the massive oak towering from Lorena Milford’s backyard, stands Lorena herself.

Her bare feet somehow gripping the small branches jutting from the treetop.

She looks like one of the stark white clouds as she stands against the vivid blue sky.

Her nightgown stirring in the breeze.

No one calls up to her.

Murmuring and gaping, they all just stand there. Mesmerized by this impossible balancing act.

Any second now, she’ll lose her grip and come splattering down on the hot asphalt.

This realization turns my stomach, so I sprint through the small crowd to the base of the tree.

“Lori…now don’t move, ok? I’m coming up”

“Do you see it?” she asks, in a dreamy tone that floats down like a feather.

“See what Lori?”

She weaves back and forth as the wind kicks up.

“Shit.” I whisper hoarsely.

Rolling up my jeans, I back up and take a running leap to the lowest branch.

Bark shifts and crumbles as I tighten my grip and pull myself up into the green leaves.

“Do you see it?” She asks again, still in that dreamy tone.

“I see the ground leaving is what I see.” I pant out the words. My chest tightening with fear.

I reach up to the next limb, then the next. 

My feet tingle as I try not to look down. I never liked climbing trees.

Not as a boy, and certainly not as a 30-year-old man.

Strangely enough, the higher I go, the easier the climb seems to be.

As if I were getting lighter.

I feel the tree trunk narrowing and bending slightly as I finally reach her feet.

“Alright now…nice and easy.”

“Do you see it?”

“Lori, that limb is barely thick enough for a squirrel, let alone two grown-ass people. Come on…take my hand.”

Without looking down, she grabs my trembling arm and pulls me up onto the dangerously small limb. As if I weighed nothing at all.

The limb bounces only for a moment, then steadies as if held up by some strange force.

Holding my hand, she raises it and points ahead. 

“Do you see it?” She asks. Her voice now distant and faint.

I squint into the darkening blue void.

“My God Lori…I see it.”

I recently read about Vantablack.

Scientists made it in a lab and claim that it absorbs 99.96% of light.

They claim it’s the deepest black known to humankind.

They claim it’s the closest human eyes will ever get to gazing into a black hole.

They were wrong.

God help us…they were wrong.

As a creative director, James wrote TV commercials, ads and radio spots for all kinds of familiar brands and products. He firmly believes in the adage that says, “You get only one exclamation point to use in your lifetime. Choose wisely.”

Singing the DMV Blues

No one ever looks forward to a visit to the Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) office. This unwanted excursion is on the same list as “Go to root canal appointment” and “Time to take colonoscopy prep liquid.” But there are times that a visit cannot be avoided.

Since I knew the local office closed at 5 PM and all I needed was a form, I waited until 4:50 to make my appearance. As I strode in, I thought, “Wonderful. There’s no one here. I’ll be out in seconds.”

I zipped past the annoying little machine that dispenses a ticket with a number on it, moved past a roomful of empty chairs and sauntered up to the counter. The one and only person behind it was occupied with something on his computer and took no recognition of my presence.

After coughing a few times, issuing a loud yawn and possibly making cat meow sounds, I caused him to stir. The civil servant slowly turned his head to acknowledge me and at snail speed, managed to utter, “Number?”

I said, “Number? I’m the only one here.”

He said, “You need a number.”

Looking around at the cavernous, empty room, I was about to ask “Why?” when I realized this was not a great idea. This imbecilic little man could make my life miserable by suddenly requiring me to show my birth certificate, the serial number of my dishwasher and demanding that I name three countries in Africa.

So I turned around, trod back to the entrance so the annoying little machine could spit out my number: 132. By the time I got back to the counter, the creep behind it was nowhere to be seen. So I sat in one of the uncomfortable, government provided plastic chairs until he appeared. Looking at the counter on the wall, he said, ”132.”

Playing it out, I paused and looked around to see if any of the imaginary people in the room might have this number. Seeing none, I approached the counter. His processor must have been running slowly, because I named the form I needed and he wordlessly stared at me. I give good stare, as well, so our stare-athon continued for what seemed like an hour.

Trust me, I’ve stared for even less time at the baboons at the zoo, but they at least entertain you with leaps, grimaces and scratching. This guy did none of that. Instead, he reached under the counter and glacially came up with my form.

I resisted the temptation to ask him if he was always this unpleasant or if it’s a job requirement but realized he had the power to put my name on a DMV watch list and have me ticketed for parking in my own driveway.

On the way out, I really didn’t mean to trip over the table holding the number machine, sending it crashing to the floor.

Gloria R. Buckley has been published by Defiant Scribe, Academy of Heart and Mind, Chaleur Magazine, Prometheus Dreaming, Red Hyacinth Journal, Sensations Magazine, Alcoholism Magazine, Chimera Magazine, Journal of English Language and Literature, Hermann Hesse Page Journal, Virginia Woolf Blog, Focus Magazine, Chimera Magazine and many other journals of poetry and prose. A self- published collection of seventy five poems is available on Amazon.com. She has a short story which will be published in October 2019 with Me First Magazine.

She is a practicing attorney for over thirty years. She holds a BA in English with honors and JD from Seton Hall. She has a Masters with Distinction in English Literature from Mercy College. She is enrolled in MA in writing program at Johns Hopkins University.

Electrified Feet

I felt the rumbling of emotions electrified down to my toes, igniting anger, fear and confusion as I stood planted on my father’s grave.  The trees, now forty years, had grown and leaned with age, as if maple leaves were weeping down above me.  His brother lay dying just doors down the road.  While a stranger occupied, nullified my childhood in my grandmother’s home.  My feet trembled as I marched along his grave to drive and gawk at the open window as my uncle laid almost to rest-alone with strangers.  Such is the Irish Catholic pride persecuting my mother because of divorce and remarriage to no less-a Jew.  Educated bigots banning me from what remained my father’s mother’s house-my grandmother.  What should have been a blood lineage to my brother and I-the only offspring and what truly was left of my father’s short-lived life.  Yet, no one cared-ever about us.

Vagabonds to a sixty’s revolution of mad men and women consumed in nicotine, scotch, little cash and too much time on a Saturday night.  Fights fueled by liquor and Librium.  Suicidal gases flowing from the kitchen oven where my father’s head laid to rest on the open door.  My mother’s frantic screams-a shroud of safety in all her insecurities beckoned me to unlock the handle.  It all seemed like a slow-motion sequence of clips.  Reel to slow reel as they lifted him up and out.  Why couldn’t he be strong, be a father, someone with a sense and fluidity of language?  Instead of the silent corpse his remains always a scalpel of silence slashed against my heart.

James Ross Kelly lives in Northern California. Mr. Kelly is a U.S. Army Veteran (1967-1971), Mr. Kelly was in the Army Security Agency and served in Eritrea, East Africa, where he was a teletype intercept operator. He has been a journalist for Gannet, a travel book editor, and had a score of labor jobs — the in-between, jobs you get from being an English major. He retired as a writer-editor for the Forest Service, where he spent the a decade in Oregon and Alaska respectively. He started writing poetry in college on the GI Bill, and after college continued and gave occasional readings in the Pacific Northwest during the 1980s. His poems and stories have appeared in Westwind Review, (Ashland, Oregon), Open Sky (Seattle), Siskiyou Journal (Ashland, Oregon), The Sun (Chapel Hill, NC); Don’t Read This (Ashland, Oregon), Table Rock Sentinel, (Medford, Oregon), Poetry Motel (Duluth, Minnesota), Poems for a Scorpio Moon & Others (Ashland, Oregon), The Red Gate & Other Poems, a handset letterpress chapbook published by Cowan & Tetley (1984, Vancouver, B.C.). In the past three years Silver Birch Press (Los Angeles) so glad is my heart (Duluth, Minnesota), Cargo Literary, (Prince Edward Island, Canada), Fiction Attic, Rock and Sling (Spokane, WA), Edify (Helena, AL) and Flash Fiction have all featured one or more of his stories.

She Owned a Restaurant Up in Bend

“Ever see a hanging Ernie?”  Jack asked.

“Yep, my folks took me to one in Jacksonville,” Ernie said.

“I was about nine or ten. Spent the night, had a picnic.

‘I expect this will teach me a valuable lesson,’ was the feller’s last words.’ Ernie said.

“I don’t remember what he did,” Ernie said.

“Ernie did you ever see a Grizzly bear?”  Jack asked.

“Nope, they was all kilt out by my time.”  Ernie said, “Knew an old’ timer from Jacksonville that had been mauled by a grizzly bear, he said he was out with three fellers and he got attacked. The bear bit on him, and bit on him, and bit on him, then he played dead and the bear went away. He said the other fellers found him and started haulin’ him back to town through the brush, but he just hurt too bad. ‘Fellers,’ he said, ‘jest lay me on top that there gray brush and leave me be—I’m a goner.’

“So, Ernie said, “they left him there for dead. He said he stayed there on top of the gray brush for a long time, then got to feelin’ better and walked back to town.” 

“How many whore houses were in Medford Ernie?”  Jack asked.

“Six! There was six whorehouses in Medford.”  Ernie said.

“Molly’s was my favorite.”  Ernie said. 

“Molly’s was right above the Hubbard Brothers Hardware store. I saw Molly about twenty-five years ago. She owned a restaurant up in Bend, still serving the public.”  Ernie said. 

“Were you born in this house Ernie?”  Jack asked.

“Nope, across the Highway next to the road that goes up the hill to the mine. We had a two-room house there. The mine started to pay, and my parents built this house closer to the barn and the river. This here house was built in 1900. I barely remember the other place. This is mostly where I’ve lived except for the War. Lonely since my wife died, had to stop driving last year. Mrs. Ownby, gets me anywhere I need to go. My daughter comes down once a year from Salem. What? Oh, yeah, I fished a lot in the summertime, limit on trout? Oh, it was a hundred back then. Lots of times I caught one-twenty-five!”

“What did you do in the Great war Ernie?  Jack asked.

“Machine gunner,” Ernie said.

“Mowed ’em down til they stopped comin’,” Ernie said.

“Ever climb Mt. Thielsen Ernie?”  Jack asked.

“Six times,” Ernie wheezed, from an abrupt old man kind of certainty, and then he held up one hand with fingers extended and an upward thumb from the other hand to only waist height, and then let them down in an exhaustion of age.

“Last time was 1975,” Ernie said, looking off the precipice of his front porch, “I was 79.”