Gunfire rang out. Cedric swore he could hear the scream of the butterflies. A fellow soldier took a bullet in the thigh. Coins tinkled from his pocket. They took cover, fighting off the attack and spending the night in the bush. The sun shone through thick haze the next morning.

Keith Hood is a former janitor and window cleaner. He retired from a job as a field technician for a Michigan electric utility after 32 years avoiding electrocution. Keith Hood’s writing has appeared in Blue Mesa Review, Your Impossible Voice, one sentence poems, Five Minutes One Hundred Words, and The Forge Literary Magazine.