I thought they’d never find me below this soaring cliff, broken rope coiling over my orange climbing shoes. I shouted, but the wilderness swallowed my voice and nobody heard – until the dog, whose barking brought rescuers at last.
My bones were gathered, zipped away. Now I can finally move on.
Deborah writes at an old desk surrounded by five hundred pet bugs.
Remember that beach at night, phosphorescent waves murmuring, us seated on the cool damp sand, arms around each other, my head resting on your shoulder? The sea spray in our hair, on our sunburned skin, too tired, too content to return to the hotel?
Gulls called overhead.
Do you remember?
Verity Duncan (she/her) works in quality control, gets distracted by stories, and drinks flat whites.
Our department is full of doors and people knock on them when they need something. It’s how the score gets decided. The more people need your things, the more you get points. I take pills so I don’t know I’m losing. When I take them, the score looks more even.
Robert Hoekman Jr is an anti-writer of inexplicable texts.
She queues to jump in the swimming hole, swing out on a rope and let go.
She climbs the ladder, preparing to release the miracle in herself for the judgment of her peers.
She’s hormone bravado, lightning in a jar.
Jumping is the heart of everything. Splash is the applause.
Mike’s work has appeared in Mud Season Review, The London Reader, Amsterdam Quarterly, and other magazines, and in Mike’s book, Arranging Deck Chairs on the Titanic, (Rabbit House Press, 2020), political poetry for a post-truth world.
Seven words drop us into the action. Sprinkle exposition with the next six. Narrow in on a few details; figurative language reigns. Hyphenating and wordsmithing neologisms condenses ideas matter-of-factly.
“Dialogue can help,” she advised.
Leave space for inferring.
The last seven words resolve the story.
If any idea doesn’t fit,
Dave Myers (he/him) lives and teaches in Bend, Oregon.
He wrote like he spoke; he spoke like he wrote. Broken poetry, page after page, day after day. See him standing now at the window, reading the clouds for signs of the homeless gods who taught him how to speak, how to write, how to house them between the lines.
KHOP Möricke wrote this story.
Coaxed into the city for coffee with friends, I had not expected grief today. Dapper in a pink silk shirt, grey linen suit and flawless shoes, I inhale a familiar scent. Summer skin. Flirtatious blue eyes smile at my notice, and I shrink from a face that is not yours.
Melinda first discovered the craft of micro-stories as a way to hone long-form writing skills. She now believes words have the power to uplift, inspire and transform us – irrespective of word count.
Alone on this damp lawn, my face numb with memory, I nibble my tongue till it aches. Crickets chirp, and a flock of birds spreads its wings. The chill of dusk looms, but these pink horizons keep me warm now that I embrace them back. This is, I hope, enough.
An editor residing in Pennsylvania, Andrew enjoys writing and reading fiction of all lengths, and his works have been published in The Mercury, in the Pennsylvania Emerging Writers series, and previously by 50-Word Stories.
The story of the week for April 24 to 28 is…
Body by Jonathan Odell
A scar on the knee from falling off a bike at 10. The slight stoop from twenty years at the computer. The ill-advised tattoo. Crinkled skin from summer suns. The artificial hip from a fall on ice. In the end, what we are left with is a body of evidence.
Jonathan Odell has published three novels and his essays and short stories have appeared in various national publications. He lives in Minneapolis with his husband. His website is JonathanOdell.com.