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Mayank Bhatt
Plague
March 1993
She smiled uncertainly; unsure if smiling was the right thing to do when people around us were dying. I was on a bed; she on another, in a hospital ward surrounded by an overpowering smell of disinfectants. …
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Natalya Polyakova
Lady Frisson
Today, Marseille is as unwelcoming as never before. My hometown used to encounter me as an old friend always pleased to see me, ready to listen and help. After my getting off the train, it used to embrace …
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Leigh-Ann Worrell
Rain on a Zinc Roof Fence
In the end, your stories are all you have.
When the body is weak and no one is listening, you sit and think of the days when your back was a little straighter. Walked …
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Barbara Mhangami-Ruwende
Red Roses and Chameleons
Dream I
I am in a garden. It is not like any garden I have ever seen. It is all fleshy succulents and green prickliness. A cactus garden. There are no trees or shrubs …
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Michael Melgaard
Little to Lose
Debbie had dinner at the place across the highway from her apartment. When the bill came she went over to the ATM and punched in sixty dollars. She got an insufficient funds message so she tried forty. …
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Henry Akubuiro
Sambisa Infidels
The sun had dropped behind the trees in the dreaded Sambisa Forest. The dimming sunlight met Ibra and his squad trudging in dusts and despair. His tatty jeans, which had known no wash for weeks, attracted a …
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John Tavares
Shoeless
A freight train conductor, Jacob seriously considered a career change. Lonely, he considered a move from the town to the city, from Sioux Lookout to Toronto. He had been laid off following a decline in oil and coal shipments, …