One afternoon together, after 412 days apart. If only we could stretch these hours to days, weeks even, maybe then we’d relax enough to find the right words to talk about my war at home, his war away.
Instead we part, saying a stilted goodbye, before he boards the train.
Laura Besley writes short fiction in the precious moments that her children are asleep. Her debut flash fiction collection, The Almost Mothers, will be published in 2020 by Dahlia Books. She tweets at @laurabesley.
She watched him as he slept, how the moonlight spilled across his
body, sliced by venetian blind shadows. She eased her hand into his
half-clenched fist.
He didn’t stir.
She pried open his hand. Pulled the ring over the hump of dry knuckle.
It slid off easily.
He didn’t stir.
Tim Boiteau lives near Detroit with wife and son. He’s a recent
Writers of the Future Contest winner.
Paper crinkles as she walks over a mosaic of manila and white envelopes in her hallway – bills, warnings and notices.
Outside, on the way to the bar, she is ambushed by moonlight and reflects that banks, bosses and former lovers will all be obliterated before Neil Armstrong’s bootprints. She smiles.
Andy Hedgecock lives and works in rural Nottinghamshire, UK, close to an Iron Age earthwork, the remains of a Roman fort, a decommissioned coalmine and a disused railway line. It’s a place of scars, erasures and stories.
The touch of your lips
An intoxicating kiss
Cool as water
Calms my simmering heart
“When I was your age, those lyrics would have been about fire. Love was always on fire.”
“That’s morbid, mom,” she says. She’s at that age.
But that’s how it was before the world burned.
Prague, 1941.
The boy finished reading his favourite book. It was a western novel with a sheriff and bandits, and he loved everything about it.
He looked at his coat with a yellow star on it. “Now I’m the sheriff!” he thought proudly. “Tomorrow, I’ll show it to my classmates.”
Adam is a 19 year old student. He’s living near Prague in the Czech republic.
The child’s hopes are dashed as the balloon rises higher and further out of reach.
The question remains: is this what the balloon is seeking?
At the higher altitude, the rarer air and the heating sun cause the balloon to expand until it bursts.
Be careful what you wish for.
Ed N. White has recent stories accepted by The Scarlet Leaf Review and Wordgatherings (Dec. issue).
Her self awareness came with a price. The more she mused over her existence, and what it means to exist, the less sense everything made.
What was I before? And what’s to become of me after?
Fear and sorrow immediately followed the realization that any moment could be her last.
Pontius Paiva often ponders the meaning of life. Until he finds the answer he can be found at pontiuspaiva.com.
I was born in a place called Hopelessville, which is a particular state of mind, not an actual geographical location. It’s sort of a spiritual town, or, to be emotionally precise, a dispirited wasteland where deeply disheartened and severely disturbed residents exhaust their loveless lives.
I abandoned it long ago.
Bob Thurber is the author of “Paperboy: A Dysfunctional Novel” and four collections of short fiction. Regarded as a master of Flash and Micro Fiction, his work has appeared in Esquire and other magazines, been anthologized 60 times, received a long list of of awards, and been utilized in schools and colleges throughout the world. He resides in Massachusetts. Visit his website at BobThurber.net.
For sixty-five years, the writer conversed back and forth with her typewriter, its keys creating a bridge to her imagination.
When arthritis stiffened her fingers and her mind began to wander, the typewriter kept right on telling those stories, willing itself to become the voice for the two of them.
Ran Walker is an award-winning writer who teaches at Hampton University in Virginia. He is at work on a collection of 50-word stories.
First winter after Mother leaves, sister Nancy and I shovel snow, hands weighed down. Flakes fly, whirling seductresses. We clear faster. Flakes cover clearness. Nature takes. Gives people wanderlust, reveals darkness beneath starched smiles. We try to make everything perfect. Keep clearing. We trip. Keep trying. Keep tripping. Don’t surrender.
Yash Seyedbagheri is a graduate of Colorado State University’s MFA program in fiction. His work is forthcoming or has been published in journals such as 50 Word Stories, Silent Auctions, City. River. Tree., and Ariel Chart.