Clara listens to their laughter, forces her own. Sips her wine as they swig theirs. She gauges the right moment to make her excuse, feigns a yawn—it’s been a wild week, hasn’t it?
At home, alone, Clara lies in the dark, calms her breathing. Being absolutely fine is exhausting.
Lesley also has short fiction published online at 101 Words, Paragraph Planet, and Wensum Lit, as well as a number of competition anthologies. She grew up in the North East and now lives in Hampshire.
The unicorn occasionally visits Sarah in her garden [under a shining moon]. Whispers: tell me of your dreams. Your fretful moments. Speak truly, so I might soften one burden.
Restore peace to my quarrelling parents? Sarah muses.
Straighten friend Abby’s deformed foot?
Sarah broods, under the stubborn weight of fairness.
Gary Thomson [hesitantly] believes in unicorns.
Stars glimmered in the blackness. She gazed up, worrying her diamond ring. He was leaving her; she could tell.
“Forgive me,” he pleaded, his accent thick. “My people need a leader.”
“How could you?” she cried, heartbroken.
“Here they come now,” he exclaimed, pointing to a shooting star nearing Earth.
Robin Ellen Brooks enjoys constructing compelling stories for the screen, the stage, and the page.
Elbows square in plank position she watches the boy scout the room, then turn to his reflection. Carefully sliding his shirt upward they steal a peek at his obliques, pecs. When they lock eyes in the mirror he grins, flexes a bicep at her. Forgets she’s his high school librarian.
Phyllis Rittner’s flash can be found in Wrong Turn Lit, Burnt Breakfast, Roi Faineant Press, Versification, Friday Flash Fiction, Fairfield Scribes, Six Sentences and others. She is a member of the Charles River Writing Collective and can be reached on Facebook at facebook.com/phyllis.rittner.
My dog took off. Ordinarily, I wouldn’t mind. But this time, he filched my wallet and has been running up a slew of credit card charges in several Las Vegas casinos.
If you see my dog, please call the police. At the rate he’s spending, I’ll be broke by Tuesday.
Mark is a published poet and writer. His poems and short stories can be found online and in several anthologies.
The noble town crier
(and mayor’s paid liar
whom some admire
and also aspire)
extolled the empire
when lighting the fire
(a premature pyre—
the royals’ desire),
posting a flyer
confirming the friar,
for reasons quite dire
had feigned to conspire,
but caught in the mire,
was next to expire.
Ken Gosse usually writes whimsical, rhymed verse. First published in First Literary Review–East in November 2016, later in Pure Slush, Home Planet News, Lothlorien Poetry Journal, Spillwords, and many others. Raised in Chicago suburbs, now retired, he and his wife live in Mesa, AZ, with rescue dogs and cats.
Grandmother dies. Mother says: Better late than never. Don’t open the kitchen window.
That night Mother sleeps in Grandmother’s bed. Daughter sleeps in the kitchen as usual.
When dead limbs skitter in the outer dark, Daughter wakes. She opens the window, climbs through, and stumbles—glancing backward every minute—away.
Finola Davidson lives and writes in Durham, North Carolina.
On a flat patch of land just above the foothills, where snowmelt and rainfall regularly spilled over the rock cliffs to form a waterfall that fed our supply of drinking water, we devoted our lives to one another. Such love, like clean water, is seldom missed until it stops flowing.
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.
It has thoughts, half-formed, scribbled in the margins; I turn the pages, bent and torn, and its imperfections tell me secrets about every person who’s been through here before–everyone who’s walked through the lines of this softened paper. I’d never trade my old, worn copy for a clean page.
Zeke Shomler is pursuing a combined MA/MFA in Fairbanks, Alaska. He usually writes poetry, but has a big thing for microfiction. You can find him at @zekeshomler on social media.
I’m at the ranch to check on my four thoroughbred horses.
Kit, six, is skipping next to me as we climb the rutted hill to the mesa
where they’re grazing.
We own all this land, right mom?
No Kit, I say,
the only land we own is in a cemetery.
Leslie Karzen is a 40-year advertising veteran with an award-winning passion for words and storytelling. Her flash/memoire book “Loosely Based Stories on a Life Loosely Lived” was published in 2021.