This wasn’t what Sibyl expected when she signed up for digital detox.
The man with the pronounced brow regarded her quizzically. She needed a translation app, location finder, ride service; the phone was no longer in her pocket.
“I think I’m from the future,” she said.
He raised his club.
Tanya Zilinskas is a writer living in Northern California. She is only mildly afraid of the dark. See more of her work at tanyazilinskas.com.
In the jungle, a Jaguar spotted a frog.
He was ready to pounce when the frog said “I’m a poisonous frog. Eat me and we both die!”
Then a bulldozer crashed through the undergrowth, killing them both.
The moral? In the twenty-first century, fables ain’t what they used to be!
Bill Lives in Aberdeen, Scotland. His New Year’s resolution was to go vegan, but he found that it didn’t fit in with his cannibal lifestyle.
“He died in Tanganyika,” she said, pouring herself another chotapeg. “Mauled to death by a lioness. That’s what he called it. Never Tanzania. Native nonsense, he used to say. He’d insulted his bearer, you see. He frequently insulted people. The shotgun the bearer handed him hadn’t been loaded.”
Nicolas Ridley lives in London and Bath (UK) where he writes fiction, non-fiction, scripts, and stage plays. A prize-winner and Pushcart Prize nominee, his short stories have been widely published in the UK, Ireland, Canada and the USA. See more at nicolasridley.co.uk.
Shortly after Greg woke to discover his vertebrae had permanently fused with his wife’s while they’d slept, he became curious if she had been complaining to her friends about him behind his back.
When she awoke screaming, desperate to pull away from him, he smiled, realizing it didn’t matter anymore.
Ran Walker is burrowing himself beneath a growing pile of words–and enjoying every minute of it.
When I was 62,
I ordered a pizza to go.
“Ready in fifteen minutes,” the teenaged server mumbled.
Returning to pay, I remembered I forgot
To request the reduced price for elders.
“Is it too late to ask for the senior discount?”
“I already gave it to you,” he said.
Miriam Stein is a social worker, writer, and the author of Make Your Voice Matter With Lawmakers: No Experience Necessary. See more at makeyourvoicematter.com.
After the fall of The Great and Powerful Oz, the Munchkins covered the yellow brick road with asphalt.
The witches opened a café. Don’t ask for water.
Dorothy traded ruby slippers for work boots and founded a recuse farm for abandoned flying monkeys.
Even Toto couldn’t remember the way home.
Candace Kubinec posts her stories at storydribbles.wordpress.com and her poetry at rhymeswithbug.com.
Gus believes the strangest tales, including one that terrifies him—indeed, it’s his motive for never reading—about a pale, shroud-like thing that creeps behind you as you’re distracted, nose in a book, and which, being a courteous psychopath, waits for you to finish your sentence before it kills you.
Graham Robert Scott teaches writing at a university in north Texas. His stories have appeared in Barrelhouse Online, Nature, and 50-Word Stories. See more at hemicyon.wordpress.com.
Instead of returning home like a normal person the old witch blew the door off the hinges,
cackling as she swung her cloak, wafting the cape while twisting about.
But on this night the boy was ready, and the girl was ready,
their tripwire taut, the oven door wide open.
Bob Thurber is the author of “Paperboy: A Dysfunctional Novel” and two collections of stories. A celebrated master of Flash and Micro Fiction, his work has appeared in 60 anthologies, received dozens of awards, and been used in schools and colleges throughout the world. He resides in Massachusetts where, though legally blind, he continues to write every day. Visit his website at BobThurber.net.
My skin isn’t pleasant to look at. Ignoring the looks I get has never been easy. Living with it isn’t easy either. It itches constantly. Even without the gawkers when I leave the house, my skin gives me trouble.
Thank goodness I can take it off when I get home.
George Aitch is a writer from Blackheath whose short stories have previously been published in Massacre, Horla, and elsewhere.
“Pop psychologists promote ganging up on friends to help them straighten out their lives. Are you in?”
“I’m busy, but good luck.”
A few days later.
“How’d the intervention go?”
“So-so. We managed to address the elephant in the room, but we didn’t have enough postage to send it anywhere.”
John H. Dromey has a short-short story online in The Magazine of History & Fiction (Volume 1, Issue 2).