Five Minutes explores five minutes of a life in one hundred words. Five minutes is edited by Susanna Baird, with editorial support from managing editor Maria s. picone, newsletter editor kate meen, and founding reader bobbi lerman, plus our rotating team of guest readers, who you can meet in the latest newsletteR. Five Minutes was founded in October 2020, with the Salem (Mass.)-based writing group Carrot Cake Writers supplying the journal’s first pieces. We’d love to read your five. Submit here

Phantoms

It was well past witching hour. We huddled together, silent, as we tiptoed past tombstones and stumbled over crumbling stone walls, the moon our lone guiding light. When ghosts appeared we bolted back toward base, trying to avoid their ghastly flesh. We drank the sweet summer air in gulps. The man who lived in the nearby trailer threw his front door open, aimed his shotgun in our direction, and yelled wild whiskey curses into the night. By the time he fell silent, we had morphed into phantoms, shadows, creatures of the night – quiet as the dead beneath our quivering feet.

Justin Deming lives and teaches in the Hudson Valley region of New York. His work has appeared in Flash Fiction Magazine, Spelk, and elsewhere. Find Justin at www.jdemingwriting.com or on Twitter @j_deming_.

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