Chicken thief. You gut our white hen, eat choice pieces, leave her belly up for the owls and maggots. Emboldened, you sneak back a second night, climb the fence, find the coop locked. So you steal cat food, scavenge compost, sleep in the barn. Oblivious to the box trap, waiting.
Shirlee Jellum is a retired English teacher who publishes fiction, nonfiction and poetry, most recently in Persimmon Tree, Quarter(ly) Journal, WordPeace and several anthologies.
Talk of witchcraft made the townspeople go quiet. It’s only a matter of time before the hunt begins. Teachers will carry pitchforks instead of pencils, and children will carry torches instead of toys.
Alice hides her purple, spell-stained hands behind her back.
In this lifetime, who will her betrayer be?
Gracie Lirette is a young writer seeking to gain as much experience as she can before the daunting world of adulthood takes over. Earlier this year she earned two regional Gold Keys for a short story and flash fiction in the Alliance for Young Artists and Writers, and now she is diving into microfiction.
White SUVs, gray minivans, silver sedans. Self-driving, late 2040s makes. Kasparov tapped his ID card to the window, but the door didn’t unlock. A notification flashed across his field of vision. “Credit score too low; access denied.” Kasparov sighed, put on his gloves, and picked up a concrete block off the street.
Matthew Klinestiver is an American English teacher residing in Bangkok, Thailand. In his spare time, he enjoys studying Mandarin, composing catchy pop songs on the piano, and watching old Godard films.
What if I hadn’t moved to this city and rented the apartment, right next to hers?
What if our paths hadn’t crossed at the bus stop, the coffee shop, the market?
What if she had let me love her and she had loved me back?
Would she still be alive?
Rita Riebel Mitchell writes in the Pinelands of South Jersey where she lives amongst the trees with her husband. Her work appears in HAD, Flash Fiction Magazine, Versification, and more. Find her at ritariebelmitchell.com/friday-micro/.
There weren’t fairies at the bottom of our garden. There were monsters, small, scabrous and very hungry, who ate any pests: insect, animal, human. Then they watched us.
There were monsters at the bottom of our garden… until the fairies came and ate them.
And now the fairies watch us.
Lorraine Manton is currently studying creative writing and literature at Deakin University, Australia and has a great fondness for books, coffee and small slices of imaginary lives.
Thoughts of his mother flooded his mind: two years gone, today. It seemed so much longer. Outside, no jacket, he never minded freezing air that stung his face. Turning southwest, away from the full moon, Jerry looked skyward. He imagined he could see her ship, hurtling toward a distant world.
John Singh is a long-time publicity and communications executive in the entertainment industry, working for such companies as Disney, DreamWorks and Lucasfilm Ltd. He has lately turned his attention to writing fiction, primarily for his husband, Jeff, and their dog, Walter.
Lila served Gerald the same iced latte in 1892, 2025, and 3041. He never remembered. She always did. “Happenstance,” he said, smiling at the déjà vu. She stirred in grief, knowing he’d forget again before the foam settled. Time bent for him; for her, it only bruised, and always lingered.
AJ Joseph is trying to tame her overgrown garden so that her cats don’t get lost in the weeds.
The author made up a word for something, say a six-legged spider with two arms, or whatever. Just gibberish. Eventually the story was translated into Italian, and thanks to a typo, it only needed to be pronounced in the European style aloud to unbind the universe. The universe is waiting.
After decades of nattering on about moving abroad, Ed Walker finally retired and is currently living in Catalunya, Spain. His work can be found in fiftywordstories, The Arcanist, Blink-Ink and elsewhere.
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.
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.