The story of the week for July 28 to August 1 is…
The Offering by Nina Basu
and
Omiage by Meredith McLean
All posts by Tim
ELLEN VAN HORN: Wedded
Light bends in the road-hot summer air.
The highway shimmers like a liquid dream.
East winds toss and roll spiny tumbleweeds
while shadows cast by coral-nippled peaks
stretch violet shapes across the desert.
The young husband’s wedding ring
reflects the golden setting sun
as he gingerly unfolds the brittle map.
Ellen calls the PNW home, where she loves camping, kayaking, her garden and hanging out with Maisy the cat, as well as David the husband. Her writing is informed mostly by her experiences from childhood to adultness in San Francisco and the Peninsula.
NINA BASU: The Offering
At dusk, villagers watched the crimson sun bleed into the mountains, where smoke curled from hidden caves. “They’ll wake soon,” whispered the elder. No one moved. One child left a carved offering at the cliff’s edge. Moments later, clouds churned. Wings split the sky. The dragons had remembered her name.
Nina is 11 years old, and lives in England, United Kingdom. She is an avid reader. Nina loves both the classics (Tom Sawyer, Pride and Prejudice, A Christmas Carol) and contemporary literature. She particularly loves fantasy and stories of dragons. She placed third in the W.J. Kite writing tournament in 2022, and was published in the W.J. Kite anthology.
PHIL W BAYLES: This Time Machine Kills Fascists
That woman’s strangely dressed for 1889, the time traveller thinks.
She pulls out a glass rectangle and wordlessly hands it over. He stares, horrified, at an unfamiliar future.
Once he’s returned to whenever he came from, she sits and waits for the next assassin.
Somewhere nearby, a baby boy wails.
Phil W. Bayles has lived in Paris and London, where he’s written everything from movie reviews to mattress adverts. These days he lives in Derbyshire with his wife, his daughter and his cat. He writes very silly stories about very serious ideas, with the occasional poem to mix things up.
ANGELA CARLTON: In the Evenings
We usually meet at dusk waiting for the moonlight to illuminate the Chattahoochee River. We don’t always speak; heavy thoughts transcend as the earth spins-spins-spins. Still, we drift inside a magical realm, until the cemetery groundskeeper looks up to hear the swift stirring in the tall-tall pines, our souls whispering.
Angela Carlton’s fiction has been published in Every Writer, Everyday Fiction, 6S, 50 Word Stories, Spillwords Press, The Dribble Drabble Review, and Friday Flash Fiction. In 2022, “A Jigsaw Life,” a collection of stories was released. In 2023, her story “Swallowed,” was nominated for the Pushcart Prize. See more on Facebook.
MEG POKRASS: Frog Music
There were nights of learning to dance, practicing with the dog. At fifteen, too old for scraps, I was the star of my own disaster movie, climbing out a window to meet a man by the creek, kissing to frog music while my mother slept, dreaming of her lost loves.
Meg Pokrass is the Series Co-Editor of Best Microfiction. Her new collection, The First Law of Holes: New and Selected will be published by Dzanc Books.
JEREMY DAY: The End of the World
There were no horsemen. No atoms were split. No invading armies or asteroid impacts. Nothing that would etch our last moments in pyroclastic ash. It came slowly. With indifference and poisoned tongues. Fatigue, and no remembrance of things past. It came begging, hold on, through tight lips and closed eyes.
Jeremy Day lives in Ottawa with his wife and two children.
CHERYL WEYANT: Sand Rituals
When Memaw coughed, her tooth came out. It landed in the icing, next to the candle.
I didn’t know a tooth could make a whole cake taste like sand. That’s a kind of magic.
Forks and grit and smiles; we pretend dying tastes like cake. Performing ritual. Hoping for magic.
Cheryl is a writer, scientist, and mom hiding out in the American Midwest.
MIRIAM N KOTZIN: Optimist or Pessimist
Auntie Lou’s a singer-songwriter. If a tune doesn’t wander too far from middle C, she can keep up with it. She wrote “Unconditional” in one afternoon, but the surprise-hit B side, “Hopeless,” was her life’s work.
Marriage taught me she got it backwards. The flipside of unconditional is enduring hope.
Miriam N. Kotzin writes fiction and poetry. She is the author of five collections of poetry, two collections of short fiction, and two novels—most recently the novel Right This Way (Spuyten Duyvil). Her 50-word stories have been published in 50-Word Stories, 50 Give or Take, and Blink Ink. She teaches literature and creative writing at Drexel University.
VERA PODELL: The Labyrinth
A red thread is on the ground. You’re surrounded by the walls. Somewhere in this labyrinth there’s a monster hiding.
Suddenly there’s a sound – a step.
It’s just behind the angle.
You come out first.
That’s a young man with a shield in his hand.
He sees you – he screams.
Vera Podell is a Russian-born writer and photo artist. She writes in three languages which are English, Russian and German. Vera tends to experiment a lot with her writing style, primarily focusing on the themes of memory and how to forms our identity.