No coordinated movement, beyond my eyeballs   My eyeballs are suspect sometimes My mind is always sharp and focused, agile yet My body is slow and unsteady, untrustworthy I lean heavily on my walker, as my feet shuffle   I stopped driving, last year My legs too slow and uncoordinated for the quickness it takes to drive safely   If ever I get a ride now, it takes me a half hour to go across a mall parking lot, and I barely get over the curb How can I walk across a room - swiftly, dashingly - at a party to sweep a beautiful young morsel off her feet? If ever I do find myself at a get together I mostly sit in one place   Watching people, craning my neck, cranking up my ears   Waiting for someone to sit down next to me for a talk   Talking, and listening, and learning Beautiful conversing All the wonderful thoughts I have, as lovely and amazing as my mind is My body is not So, these days, I tend to talk, only...

  23rd Annual Dead of Winter short fiction contest Posted on  October 1, 2023   by  TC Editors Stories submitted to the the  23rd Annual Dead of Winter contest  (December 2023) will use the theme  DEATH FINDS A WAY . For the first time in 20+ years, we were late in announcing our theme. Why? Life. So if life can find a way, couldn’t death do the same? How does death, in any form you choose to think of it, find a way into our bodies, psyches, or environments? Is death personified in your story? Is it an entity that creeps under doors or passes through solid objects, from stone to flesh? Is death a place? A state of being among many? For characters who believe they can outwit or outlast death, how does the great leveler finally win… or does it? EVERY YEAR: Stories MUST be based on the theme provided. Stories MUST be set in winter. Stories MUST fall in the horror genre. HOW TO ENTER: The contest opens October 1, 2023 and the deadline for submission is 11:...