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

Vampire

She wore scrubs, touched my arm, told me to make a fist, tied my arm off with a rubber tube, swabbed a place with alcohol, inserted a needle, and filled three vials with blood. She didn’t need fangs, and a cross wouldn’t have kept her away, only an unpaid co-pay. With aid of equipment, the vampire gazed like Tiresias, the blind prophet of Thebes, and made predictions from vitamin deficiency to high cholesterol to a high A1C. Knowing in advance what might come doesn’t change the outcome, and I’ll be back for another bloodletting, and another co-pay, in six months.

Niles Reddick has a novel, two story collections, and a novella, and has been published in over 400 publications including The Saturday Evening Post. Find Niles at nilesreddick.com and on Twitter @niles_reddick.

Los Muertos

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