Category Archives: Stories

YASH SEYEDBAGHERI: New Roots

Artistic, Submissions, , , ,

My sister says revolution has broken out back home.

Automobile horns honk, as if in congratulations.

I think of Cossacks’ whips. Tatiana shielding me. Pleading with factory owners for kopecks and mercy.

Time to plant new seeds. Smash tundra.

We embrace. Imagine our growth, roots rising into a new sky.

Yash Seyedbagheri is a graduate of Colorado State University’s MFA fiction program. His stories, “Soon,” “How To Be A Good Episcopalian,” “Tales From A Communion Line,” and “Community Time,” have been nominated for Pushcart Prizes. His work has been published in SmokeLong Quarterly, The Journal of Compressed Creative Arts, and Ariel Chart, among others.

PAUL D’ARCY: Got the Time?

Artistic, Submissions, , ,

Most guys find religion in prison. Not me. I brought it with me.

Four years of Latin, prison chaplaincy volunteer. I communed with monks, priests.

Now I sit in concrete cell, Bible in hand, wondering if God sees the irony in me preaching to men with cleaner souls than mine.

Paul D’Arcy tells stories, all real and most brief. You can read more at pauldrc.com.

JENNY MATTERN: The Chanterelle Hunters

Artistic, Submissions, Top Stories, Touching, , , , ,

We were quite a pair on that final adventure. Me, seven months pregnant with your grandchild. You, nineteen months pregnant with cancer.

Afterwards, you sauteed our meager bounty in butter and garlic and served all of them to me. And one last time, because you insisted, I cleaned my plate.

Jenny Mattern is a poet, a crafter of stories, and a cake-for-breakfast enthusiast who lives in Montana with her husband and children. She has had poems published in The Poetry Pea Anthology, Cold Moon Journal, The Dirigible Balloon, and The Solitary Daisy. She also writes middle-grade novels and is represented by Nicole Eisenbraun at Ginger Clark Literary Agency.

TOM BUSILLO: The Story I Tell My Mother

Artistic, Submissions, , , , , ,

Decades ago, your mother left a city burning behind her and walked until her shoes fell apart. The ones she loved did not follow.

She whispered their names into the sea, but the tide did not answer, and the gray horizon stretched empty before her, endless, indifferent.

Then you came.

Tom Busillo (he/his) is a writer living in Philadelphia, PA, with his wife Carol (who’s a much better writer) and his son Nick.

WILLIAM MITCHELL: Is This Why We’ve Always Felt So Alone?

Adventure, Submissions, , ,

For decades we’ve travelled between stars, searching, yearning for contact.

Our findings? Just dead planets, ruined civilisations.

Yet all predictions concur; at least one civilisation should survive, to colonise the galaxy. So where are they?

I look back, at the settlements and outposts we’ve established along the way.

It’s us.

William Mitchell lives in East Sussex in the South of England. He is an award-winning author, having had early success with various Horror and Science Fiction publications before winning the Writers of the Future contest in 2012. His latest book, The Still and Silent Stars, offers an in-depth investigation into the likelihood of alien life and alien intelligence existing elsewhere in our galaxy.

TIM BOITEAU: …if you do …if you don’t

Artistic, Submissions, , ,

He stayed, despite constant fighting—there was the baby to consider. Still, he couldn’t shake the feeling he’d have been happier had he left.

He left, baby or no—ragged from constant fighting. Still, miles down the road he couldn’t shake the feeling he’d have been happier had he stayed.

Tim Boiteau is a Writers of the Future winner and Editor at Every Day fiction. He is the author of the novel The Nilwere (Grendel Press, 2024).

GABE BONNEY: Images of You

Amusing, Submissions, Top Stories, Touching, , , , , , ,

Every morning when I peer around the door frame, your slumbering teen body is a new shape.
A toppled Roman statue, all broken limbs and alabaster skin.
A wild dog in the desert, curled hard against the midnight elements.
A man emerging; Michelangelo’s Davide.
My love for you is incandescent.

Gabe has been writing and editing for 30 years, from her home base in Sydney. She doesn’t plan on being replaced by AI any time soon.

JON FAIN: Hitching a Ride

Amusing, Odd, Submissions, , , , ,

Infants in car seats reach up, playing with invisible beings. Baby radiation causes the attraction, but it’s temporary. When babies wail, it’s when the entities leave. They kick and holler, wave to attract another batch.

Parents—driving, talking on the phone, listening to music, sipping hot coffee—have no clue.

Besides 50-Word Stories, Jon Fain’s micro fiction has appeared in Six Sentences, The Dribble Drabble Review, The Daily Drunk, Blink-Ink, ScribesMICRO, Molecule, The Woolf, and elsewhere. See more at chillsubs.com/profile/jonfain.

SHERRI BALE: Charging the Batteries

Artistic, Submissions, , , ,

I went to the ocean to clear my head and get some writing done.
Darn! Forgot my laptop charger. Now what?
Took a walk on the beach: cool water, crashing waves, sweet warmth of the sun.
Laptop battery dead, but I am recharged.
Found pencil and paper in a drawer.

Sherri Bale is a retired geneticist, part-time personal trainer, Jack Russell Terrier mom, and writer of fiction as short as 50 words and as long as 90,000. Whatever it takes to tell the story.

JOANNA NORLAND: A Letter to Yarden Bibas

Artistic, Submissions, , , , , ,

Yarden, I think of you, in that gunshot moment when you learned that the body in the coffin was not your wife’s.

Did you allow a bright bullet of hope to pierce your darkness, even though you knew that it was aimed, with ruthless precision, at your thrice shattered heart?

Joanna Norland dedicates this story to the Bibas family — Yarden, Shiri, Ariel (age 4) and Kfir (9 months), all abducted from the Nir Oz Kibbutz on October 7, 2023, and held in Gaza. Only Yarden returned to Israel alive, February 1, 2025. Hamas claimed to return the bodies of Yarden’s wife, Shiri, and children on February 20, 2024, but DNA testing revealed that the woman’s body was not Shiri’s. Her fate remained unknown until her body was returned by Hamas on the evening of February 21, 2025, and identified by Israeli officials.