Twinkling stars, somersaulting in white pyjamas. Soft grass landings, innocent giggles. Treacherous pirates, circumventing the world. Cardboard ships, constellation navigation. Young hearts ablaze under starlit decrees.
Now we sip red wine in the cool air, two miniature stars dancing in our back garden. Time turns, and the romance begins anew.
Kayla Lang is a small town Malaysian displaced in London.
I am weightless. Untethered. The world and my memory of it fades away, and though time no longer exists, I know that I am waiting for someone.
Fractals of brilliant color burst, and she is there, running towards me.
I bury my face in her fur. Good girl, I whisper.
K. L. Mill is a voice actor, another profession that revolves around words. Most recently her work has been published by Black Hare Press, Hungry Shadow Press, and Atomic Carnival.
It was May and she knew her mother was dying. She’d die in August. She was nineteen and very impressionable. Every summer since then, she’d go storm hunting. She’d find love in the twisted reflections in the rain puddles. She knew that when it was over, she’d be whole again.
Kapka Nilan currently lives in England where she writes, takes pictures of out-of-place things, and looks after an old spirit animal.
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.