Daily, the elderly woman strolls by, occasionally stooping down as she walks. One day, I befriend her, walking with her to the corner. “This is my solution,” she says, as she bends down to pick up the crumpled wrapper, adding it to the small trash bag in her other hand.
Trevor’s fiction and non-fiction have appeared in print and digital publications since the 1970s. He’s a mononymous, multiple award-winning, full-time entertainer who likes hyphens.
I tell child services I’m happy, loved.
“Say different and your nose will grow,” my guardians threaten.
I feared and believed it once; now it’s just fear.
The inspectors gone, truth returns: no real boy, I’m a puppet, cloned organs for some billionaire’s sick son.
Tomorrow, my strings get cut.
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 first novel, CREATIONS, came out in 2014 with John Hunt Publishing.
You can feel the walls closing in around you. Clear the drawers, grab your gun, pack one bag, leave under the cover of nightfall. Tell no one you are leaving. Come morning you will be halfway to Boston. Don’t write. Don’t give into nostalgia. Forget that life and start anew.
HNK is working on his debut novel, The Musings of Two Men. Check out his writing on prayaboutus.net
While he was doing the dishes or cooking dinner.
While he was baking brownies, cleaning the oven, folding laundry, cleaning the toilet, or vacuuming the rugs.
No woman ever shot a man while he washed the floor, made the bed, or hung curtains.
Unless he’s doing it for another woman.
Rita Riebel Mitchell writes in the Pinelands of South Jersey. Her work appears in Flash Fiction Magazine, Versification, Black Hare Press, 101 Words, and others. Visit her at FridayMicro.com.
The weepy mother sits on the bed, closes her eyes, and plays pretend.
Dust no longer chokes the room. Sunlight softly trickles in.
Fate hasn’t supervened her promises to him of future magical milestones.
With a heavy sigh, she begrudgingly opens her watering eyes. The suffocating emptiness settles once more.
Kelly McSherry is a young author who currently resides in Washington, D.C.
The story of the week for June 17 to 21 is…
Bracing for impact by Lesley Warren
It was a foolish thing to do. Not the crime, but the full confession I wrote in my diary. Its gilt-edged pristine pages tempted the truth out of me.
Then I lost my diary.
My heart pounds. How did it end up on eBay? And who has just outbid me?
Suzan Lindsay Randle writes flash fiction, short stories and pocket novels. She lives in the UK.
After a rush to exfoliate and color away years of children and scour closets for outfits inappropriate for soccer practice, they crash into a Vegas hotel room, where, in a flash of giddy consensus, they dump their over-stuffed bags and non-sensible shoes, order room service, draw blackout curtains, and sleep.
Robin LaVoie is presently sweating in the suburbs of Phoenix, Arizona. She writes personal essay and creative nonfiction on her Substack publication, It’s Like This, and her work has appeared in print and online, including Monday Coffee and Other Stories of Mothering Children with Special Needs (Inwords Press, 2013), Pentimento Magazine, BarBar, and NonBinary Review.
One look at her face and his insides shriveled.
No smile, no inquiries about the day. No coffee either, as other things were brewing.
Loaded with conjectures, he waited for the explosion.
The cockroach behind the bedroom door that was slammed shut, saved the day.
Sweetly, she sought his help.
V Vaidehi is an aspiring writer based in India who writes travel memoirs and short/micro-stories at vvaidehi.wordpress.com and whose work has been published by Brilliant Flash Fiction and The Centifictionist.
There are two ways to make an audience cry: an all-male group of seniors singing “Unchained Melody,” and six-year-olds performing “Amazing Grace.” Innocence and anguish, love and loss. The beauty of childhood and age. The old will speak of love and the very young atone for sins not yet committed.
Carol Berger is a Canadian anthropologist and writer. Her work has appeared in the London Review of Books, The Guardian, The Economist, and The New Yorker. She is the author of The Child Soldiers of Africa’s Red Army (London: Routledge 2022). She lives in Cairo, Egypt.