The lonely man washed his dishes in the sink and placed them in the strainer, stopping to reminisce over a chipped red mug. His heart skipped a beat: Her job had been to dry, close to him, warm and laughing. Instead, he dried the memory out of the cup alone.
Brenda Lee Carlson is a writer from Minnesota. She has an MA in English and an MFA in Creative Writing.
Color vanished from the world with his wife’s last breath. Murmured words of sympathy hovered at the edge of sound. Endless gray corridors led to the NICU. Masked and gowned, he stood beside the incubator, dark spines of hair visible among the tubes and wires. In that moment, color returned.
Suzi lives somewhere between truth and interpretation and writes whenever the words must come out and speak to others.
Her children, somehow adults, took hundreds of vacation photos, posting daily. Curating an online life didn’t appeal to her.
Instead, she walked behind them, always, watching their hair, hearing their laughter, tucking the moment safely into her memory, where she could return and return when they left again in September.
Melanie Winklosky is a fiction writer trapped in a grant writer’s body. Her work can be found in McSweeney’s, and was named a finalist in the 2023 Boston in 100 Words contest and a 2023 finalist in NYC Midnight’s Flash Fiction Challenge. She lives in Swampscott, Massachusetts.
Let’s take a break, you suggested, and told me to go see the world.
So I did. But every city, every day is empty without you.
I constantly message, phone, but never hear back.
I’ve studied so many maps but none of them shows me the way back to you.
Being on the road is common for this Australian writer. Fortunately, none of Michael’s own travel experiences are like those described here.
A corner nook with gravelly soil held six sister slips of chokecherry.
They grew sturdy in time, thick waisted in summer sun, through autumn’s vagaries, winter light and rejuvenating spring.
A thicket burgeoned, berried branches interlaced. For fledged sparrows, rosy finches and chickadees, a darkened refuge from the family cat.
Deborah lives and writes in Northwestern Montana. Her stories can be read in The Ekphrastic Review, Thin Air Magazine Online and 50-Word Stories.
The story of the week for September 9 to 13 is…
The Pilgrim by Ed Walker
She loved her favourite music genre, Indie.
He did too. But he loved others equally.
That’s just the way it was.
From grunge to hip-hop, electronica to folk,
the fifties to the nineties and onward…
Even Dua Lipa .
Eventually it became a problem. She just couldn’t accept his polyjamorous lifestyle.
Jon is getting old. He still writes occasionally. Mostly when asked. He should do it more regularly.
The old man’s hand trembled, but the token landed square on the plate.
“A prize for the pretty lady!”
“And on your first try – what luck!” Her eyes crinkled.
“Lucky you said ‘yes,’ my dear.”
The couple shuffled off down the midway, arms linked. Smiling, the carny disconnected the magnet.
K. L. Mill is a voice actor, another profession that revolves around words. Most recently her work has been published by Black Hare Press, Atomic Carnival, and Crepuscular Magazine.
It isn’t fog.
It’s white and inspissated, obscuring old questions with a new truth.
But it isn’t fog.
You went outside and breathed in.
You didn’t come back inside.
You didn’t breathe out.
I watch you from the window as you stand with all the others.
It definitely isn’t fog.
Nissa Harlow lives in British Columbia, Canada where she dreams up strange stories and writes some of them down. She is the author of a number of novels and novellas, all embellished with a touch of the fantastic. You can find her online at nissaharlow.com.
What bothered Friedman most were the bird droppings. Washing them away from around the hotel pool, he gazed at the sea, mesmerized by his urge to take a plunge. However, the roof had been fenced off for safety, which struck him as ironic since the war had begun in earnest.
Nelly Shulman is writing in Berlin.