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.
The story of the week for July 31 to August 4 is…
Monday Morning by Brian Maycock
I cut another peach as he babbles about his weekend in Boston. Business trips we both know too well. The pretend game we’ve been playing for years.
Staring at his moving lips, I let out a sigh and relish the softness of the flesh as my paring knife slices through.
Wai Mei Wong was a former early childhood educator. She believes horror is the memoir of darkness.
My eldest daughter deigns to lounge near her family.
My nine-year-old begs me to help build a sandcastle.
We mold and pack, smooth and trim, carve and adorn, laugh and pretend while eyes roll from a nearby throne.
I treasure the time before tides eventually erode the castle we built.
Dave Myers (he/him) lives and teaches in Bend, Oregon.
During an energetic practice session in preparation for a lumberjack contest, Angus Macgregor accidently ripped his favorite shirt.
The distraught logger sought the help of a seamstress.
“I need you to mend my lucky shirt, Maisy.”
“Sorry, Angus. I can’t help you.”
“Why not?”
“I don’t have any plaid thread.”
John H. Dromey has recently had speculative poems (scifaiku) published in Star*Line and Eye to the Telescope.
Todd asked Delphine to marry him and move to Southern California.
Oh, how she wanted to live in the Hollywood Hills and visit places like Grauman’s Chinese Theater.
But Delphine could never leave the tiny Greek Island, for if she did, her legs would morph into a scaly mermaid’s tail.
Giulietta Nardone writes and paints all things whimsical from her vintage home in Massachusetts. She enjoys writing about mermaids, unicorns and talking horses.
It came down in shimmering waves, the dog days sun. Cousins, we lay in shaded grass by a languid pond, reverie spiriting us to faraway realms. And when dusk eased the fever, we laughed as the juice of ripe watermelon ran cool and sweet from our lips through sticky fingers.
Nick Young is a retired award-winning CBS News Correspondent. In addition to 50-Word Stories, his writing has appeared in more than two dozen publications including the Pennsylvania Literary Journal, The Garland Lake Review, The Remington Review, The San Antonio Review, The Best of CaféLit 11 and Vols. I and II of the Writer Shed Stories anthologies. He lives outside Chicago.