His ghost looms over my shoulder as a sailor pockets my wedding ring and promises me passage.
The sailor’s cigarette glows orange, embers eating tobacco down to the filter.
A push, and the lake eats him, too.
If I sail far enough, my husband whispers, I will find him waiting.
Jessica Zmuda is an anthropology graduate, museum enthusiast, and aspiring author living in St. Louis. She shares these on Instagram at @jess.reads.too.much.
The dinosaurs stomp across the terrain foraging and eating fish, plants, other dinosaurs. Whatever is in their path and delicious. Communal feasting on a vast array of abundance. That is until asteroids smash into the earth. No more foraging; dinner is done.
Now, eons later, I’m setting my table for one.
Originally from Atlanta, Georgia, Susan R. Barclay makes persistent attempts at witticism and stories; sometimes she is successful. Her works have appeared or are forthcoming, in the The Blue Nib, Vine Street Press, Defuncted Journal, Write Time, Paragraph Planet, Witcraft, Workers Write, 50-Word Stories, and the 42 Stories Anthology.
The color began light pink. Our love was budding. Ecstatic!
Then it turned hot pink. Deep love. Memorable romantic days. I smiled when ever I saw you. Sweetness all over.
Few years later, pale red. You began to avoid me. You tossed our dates.
Now it’s gray.
Sweetheart, what happened?
Chudy Ebiringa is an author who writes across genres. He won the first prize for the Eaton Literary Agency Short Story contest for the year 2020.
Akari Osaka got her first violin at four. Crooked pigtails, bow trembling like a nervous bird. Her father, a Nisei, sat cross‑legged, watching her saw through “Twinkle, Twinkle” like scripture. He didn’t clap. He just nodded once, slow — the same nod he gave remembering patrols in Italy with the 442nd.
L.F. Graubard is a noir‑jazz writer whose work explores illness, trauma, institutional logic, and moral absurdity. His fiction has appeared in ExPat Press, and his flash piece “The Insecticide Parade” is forthcoming in SmokeLong Quarterly (March 2026). He is completing a novel‑length cycle set within the federal prison and medical systems.
They asked me if I’d go to Mars for science. I said I’d go just out of spite. The engineer said that was the best reason he’d heard in all the years he worked here. He handed me a helmet. It didn’t fit, but neither did my life on Earth.
Sarp Sozdinler has been published in Electric Literature, Kenyon Review, Shenandoah, Masters Review, Pithead Chapel, and 100 Word Story, among other journals. Besides writing, he edits the literary journal The Bulb Region: sarpsozdinler.com.
The story of the week for January 19 to 23 is…
A Little Night Music by Jim Parisi
He recorded it a month ago, when he knew it was over. The death rattle of her soft palate strangling her. The soundtrack of their nights, their years together. He doesn’t nudge the phone awake, just lets her song play. Three more hours. Maybe three more decades. If he’s lucky.
Jim Parisi, a freshly unemployed editor, lives in Occupied Washington, D.C., with his long-suffering wife Beth and Dolce, their sweet but rambunctious boxer-pitbull mix. He spends most of his free time coaching Little League softball. His stories have appeared in FlashFlood Journal, The Bluebird Word, and The Good Life Review.
Funeral home photos, assembled by his current girlfriend, display his assertive exuberance in tandem with diplomas, German shepherds, shiny race cars, gallant boats. But ex-wives and grandchildren are no-shows. His six full-grown children do not file in, do not fill the pews, do not take the podium. White lilies droop.
Shoshauna Shy loves how flash fiction cuts to the chase, and is grateful to find stories all over the place.
My astrologer said I’d die by freezing.
You may laugh; I believed it.
So I moved – Jamaica, Barbados, now Bermuda.
Life’s pretty good – beaches, palms, a job in Tony’s Kitchen.
You know, that seafood place with the harbour view?
Where the freezer doors keep jamming…?
Maybe time to move again.
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.
It’s back. A slight ache behind one eye, the left one. It always spasms exactly eight times then settles into a dull pain.
A splinter, nothing more.
I felt it before the drought.
Before the “election.”
Before the occupation.
It’s back again.
What happens next?
It’s never nothing.
Adrian L. Cook is glad to have 2025 in the rearview and is creeping stealthily into 2026 hoping this year leaves him (and his cherished people) well enough alone.