Cat O’ Nine Tales Ann Howells __________ Cats domesticated themselves 9000 years ago. My neighbor’s cats are Powderpuff,Queen of Sheeba, & Sugar Dumpling.Their eyes glow like vitreous amber.They loudly order dinner, stayperpetually stoned on canned salmon. My cat, silent & soot-colored, explores unknown spaces, answers to no one. Green…
Read MoreRuthAnnI Tricia Knoll __________ Men in Louisiana grabbed me from the hoarder’s house with the two dead dogs. They called me Ruth Ann. In their shelter they cut open my belly and made fleas go away. Told me I was pretty, but time ran out, they’d have to kill me.…
Read MoreShapeshifter Patience Mackarness __________ Minette turns squirrel and streaks up the trunk of a young oak tree, pausing on a branch twelve feet from the ground. Her long fur is splotched like sunlight, her ears tawnily tufted, her golden eyes rimmed mascara-black. There are Siberian tree-cats in her ancestry, and…
Read MorePre-Obituary for a Rabbit Francis Walsh __________ pre-obituary for a rabbit he was, he was, he was asleep on the carpet and stretched like a strand of dough his paws tucked beneath his chin perhaps dreaming of hay fields and bananas and all the other morsels that occupy the wide-eyed…
Read MoreDread Randall Brown __________ Attie shone the iPhone’s flashlight in her sister Isabel’s face and, with her left hand, knocked her awake. It had been only six hours since their dog Lucky returned after a week, mad, foaming, stumbling through the gates and into their seven acres on the Philadelphia’s…
Read MoreLet the Bodies Hit the Floor: A Cycle Alexa Doran __________ If you attended the funeral for my Trapper Keeper’s iron-on patch, Frank the Frog, in my fifth grade homebase, or watched me lug a dog dish over to my golden retriever Lisa Frank folder, you are likely unconvinced by…
Read MorePrayer Grant Faulkner __________ If you’ve ever tried to find a lost dog and failed, you know the meaning of life. __________ Grant Faulkner is the co-founder of 100 Word Story, the co-host of the Write-minded podcast, and an Executive Producer on the upcoming TV show, America’s Next Great Author. He recently published The Art…
Read MoreMoo Speaks Robert Hamblin __________ There used to be three of us, but one left and didn’t come back. Now there are just we two. I miss her, I know he does. I can tell when he sits quietly on the couch where they often sat together. He just sits…
Read MoreThe Bigger the Cage the Larger the Lizard Will Get Tiff Holland __________ 1. She comes home to find the cop running his new jean jacket through the gravel and oil in the driveway. He is trying to make it look weathered. He has already sewn Harley Davidson patches on…
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