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.
There’s an android at my desk when I arrive at work. Doing my job.
I ask it to move. It won’t.
I look around for help, see the charging point has been changed to one that’s not compatible for me.
And I realise:
I’ve been replaced by a newer model.
Brian Maycock’s short fiction has appeared in 101 words, Paragraph Planet and The Drabble. He lives in Scotland.
I avoid Father’s Day.
People ask me what I’m getting him. I laugh. I’ll figure something out.
Maybe I should. Maybe I’d be the bigger man.
But that word, father, slams in my ears, a fragile door.
Giving him anything’s pointless.
He’d just say it’s cheap, flimsy, another door slammed.
Yash Seyedbagheri is a graduate of Colorado State University’s MFA fiction program. His stories, “Soon,” “How To Be A Good Episcopalian,” “Tales From A Communion Line,” and “Community Time,” have been nominated for Pushcarts. Yash’s work has been published in SmokeLong Quarterly, The Journal of Compressed Creative Arts, Write City Magazine, and Ariel Chart, among others.
Along the fog-shrouded road, trees appeared as islands lining a coast. I trudged on, responsibilities heavy, wet shoes leaving no wake.
The road ended at a stream. A brightly-colored skiff glowed through the fog. The elf beckoned, musical voice enticing. “Come sail with me.”
Hand in theirs, I stepped aboard.
Verity Duncan (she/her) works in quality assurance, gets distracted by stories, drinks flat whites.
He was born with plain sight. Beige, khakis, white tees, muted colors; a grandiose assortment of the mundane was his blessing. Most would call it a curse—an endless tedium—but he was a glass half full kinda guy. He would gratefully bottle every bland rainbow caught in plain sight.
Helen’s lived in a lot of places, but the worlds created when writing are some of her favorites.
Memories of a maternity ward should be happy.
Crying babies.
Proud fathers.
The counting of fingers and toes.
Exhausted, but exuberant, mothers.
Except for one.
There, in the corner.
The one facing the wall.
The one without a baby.
That was me.
Memories of a maternity ward should be happy.
Susan Gale Wickes is a writer from Indiana.
The story of the week for July 24 to 28 is…
I Wish You Hadn’t by Hannah Bub