Description: #Audio. #FlashFic Billy has always known that there’s something different about Jessie. Excerpt: Like, when you played Tea Party at her house, the tea in her doll’s cup would disappear a little at a time, even though you never saw her lift it to steal a sip. And when you were playing Freeze […]

Description: #Audio. #FlashFic A young woman agonizes over a serious decision. Excerpt: She walks through the rain, holding the pink umbrella she’s has since childhood, imagining switches everywhere. On car doors, on mail boxes, on the sides of buildings. Finally, her soggy feet carry her inside the tall building, to the private room at the […]

Description: #Audio. #FlashFic An old man criticizes paving choices in his village. Excerpt: But old Fritz knew better. Sure they looked pretty in the first glow of morning light, all soft amber and rosy pink, but that same glow reflected into every window, of a morning, and usually at least an hour before decent folk […]

Description: #Audio. The bathtub mermaid babbles about her recent ACL surgery. Excerpt: On July 11th, I had the ACL and ALL replaced in my left knee, and my meniscus trimmed. In the time since then, I’ve had to deal with painkillers, immobility, staples, bathroom hacks, and being dependent on my husband. Links and References Dog […]

Description: #Audio. A monologue about truth and art written for the 2018 28 Plays Later challenge. Excerpt: I mean, let’s be honest, I’m not in my twenties anymore. Hell, it’s been a while since I’ve seen thirty. Or forty. I’ve had a child – nursed her – I’ve never completely gotten over my love affair […]

Description: #Audio. #FlashFic An old man helps a young family on a one-way trip. Excerpt: The woman holding the envelope of cash in both trembling hands can’t be more than sixteen. Maybe seventeen. But she has two little ones clinging to her cotton skirt and her eyes are ages old, and hold too much knowledge […]

Description: #Audio. #FlashFic A safari to see hippogriffs goes horribly wrong. Excerpt: Later, as the hippogriffs circle closer to their open-sided buses, the kind you used to see laughing tourists riding on their oh-so-expensive photo-safaris, they find comfort in the fact that she is armed. After all, those leonine paws have claws sharp enough to […]

Description: #Audio. #FlashFic Art and magic were more than his vocation. They were his life. Excerpt: An art appreciation seminar gave him his heroes. He fell in love with Escher’s skewed reality – Möbius stairs and the like – mixed math and art, while O’Keefe made cow skulls beautiful and flowers sexual. Links and References […]

Description: #Audio. #FlashFic Her partner has been dead for three years, and yet, he’s never quite left her. Excerpt: At night, when I lie shivering in what was once our bed, but is now solely mine, is it your hands that pull the covers up, protecting me in a cocoon of cotton sheets and quilts […]

Description: #Audio. The Dog Days are Coming! Excerpt: I’m participating in The Dog Days of Podcasting again this year. Links and References Dog Days of Podcasting website Credits: The Bathtub Mermaid: Tales from the Tub is written and produced by Melissa A. Bartell, and is recorded and produced using the BossJock iPad app and Audacity. […]