Victory! An empty chair by the table of my latest coffeehouse crush this quiet morning–and no wedding band, either!
Unload book bag, coat; stir my latte. Look his way, smile, ask for the sugar canister.
Oh, no… A waft of fabric softener envelops me as he obliges.
Married already.
Shoshauna Shy likes finding stories all over the place.
The clock in the hallway is broken. Its ticking gets louder and louder.
My son examined it. Then the horologist looked at it. No change. The ticking keeps growing louder and louder.
It was never like this before, not before you departed. That was five or ten years ago, now.
Daniel lives and works in Dublin.
It was her favorite: tiny Currier and Ives carolers gathered beneath an amber street lamp, silent mouths open wide amid the swirling snow globe blizzard.
Each Christmas I place it on the mantel, cherishing the memory of a mother’s love and joyous laughter echoing with the sweetness of silver sleighbells.
Nick Young is a retired award-winning CBS News Correspondent. In addition to 50-Word Stories, his writing has appeared in more than thirty publications. His first novel, Deadline, was published in September. He lives outside Chicago.
It’s not true she wished him dead. She never wished him harm.
The real story is she wished him nothing — no pain, no suffering, no joy, no love.
She wished him no part of living, no trace, no participation.
She cursed all memory of him. In herself and everyone else.
Bob Thurber is the author of six books. 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 awards, and been utilized in schools and colleges throughout the world. He resides in Massachusetts. Visit his website at BobThurber.net.
He followed the star across the frozen plains. He followed it into the woods, where it winked at him through the leafless canopy. After the sun rose, he still followed the star, pale, weak though it was–into the city of people following billions of stars, vanishing behind the smog.
Tim Boiteau is a Writers of the Future winner currently based in Michigan. Find more at timboiteau.wordpress.com.
I climb up the fire escape and chase after the criminal on the rooftops. The gap between us widens.
Other detectives would worry. But after all my years working, this city owes me one.
My adversary trips and falls to the alley below.
I smile, thankful for the city’s appreciation.
Matthew Mota (he/him) is a writer from Chicago, Illinois. He went to the University of Illinois for engineering but found writing as his creative outlet. Creating unique short stories and poetry is his way of navigating the universal hardships of life.
Ephemeral mists waft against an azure sky. Lying on the grass, you peer into the heavens, watching frothy peaks float by. In an instant, she emerges, a solitary unicorn prancing toward snowy horizons. As billowing winds begin to whisk her away, she takes flight, vanishing into the firmament. Never forgotten.
Wendy K. Mages, a Mercy University Professor, is a Pushcart Prize nominee and an award-winning poet and author. She earned her doctorate in Human Development and Psychology at the Harvard Graduate School of Education and her master’s in Theatre at Northwestern University. As a complement to her research on the effect of the arts on learning and development, she performs at storytelling events and festivals in the US and abroad. To learn more about her and her work, and to find links to her published stories and poetry, please visit https://www.mercy.edu/directory/wendy-mages.
It was my first day in the juvenile psychiatric ward. The wall inside was painted with a mural – a cheerful daytime scene of a child flying a kite. I could relate. But I wasn’t the child; I was the kite, tethered to the earth by nothing but a single string.
Janelle Seabock is a writer with a love for horror, fantasy, and animals of all kinds. She currently resides in Florida.
The story of the week for November 27 to December 1 is…
Keeping Up Appearances by Lynn Kozlowski
Left-handed people often get left out. Like, when I attended a poetry class at the local university, I saw rows of right-armed desks, but none to accommodate me. Oddly enough, in that particular class, many poets were left-handed, which just goes to show, you can’t be right all the time.
Mary Harwell Sayler wrote this story.