My Grandma Nora tended to react quite strongly
when cheated, swindled or treated wrongly
by a fast-talking larcenous door-to-door fellow
“Spalpeen, you’ll spend every last penny on medicine,” she’d bellow,
invoking an ancient curse she’d learned in County Clare,
which, unfortunately, is not quite as potent now, because of Medicare.
Gene Newman is a retired old guy (90 yrs) and former New Jersey journalist and columnist. Read more at GeneNewmanImagineThat.com.
My eyes are open, yet my body won’t move. I see people moving yellow tape around me.
I want to say I’m awake, but the words run deeper into my stomach.
An officer squats down, staring right at me.
He gives a smirk as he closes my eyelids.
It’s dark.
Shanya Gordon is an aspiring filmmaker and writer currently attending Bowie State University. Once she graduates, she hopes to continue her journey and use her writing skills to create stories to share on paper and interpret in future films.
As a mind reader, he belonged to a top secret elite. His mix of freak natural ability and carefully honed skill was something he took pride in, until, a year after he’d married, he returned home from an arduous mission to learn the hidden truths of the wife he adored.
Joanne lives in North West England, loves flash fiction and aspires to write it.
Run my hand through my hair
Run the plan through my mind
Run from the building eyes blind
Run through stop lights with no care
Run from the sirens and calls
Run through busy market stalls
Run through the tasers and clubs
I run from this life of no love
David Curtis is a former cinema projectionist now working in TV post production in Bristol, England.
He made a smart toy. One that talked to him; played chess with him; cooked, cleaned, and did his taxes for him.
One that built a 3D-printed cabin with a secure room to keep its own special toy: a not-as-smart-as-he-thought human who played Solitaire and did his own stupid taxes.
Michelle Wilson’s words have appeared in Potato Soup Journal’s Best of 2021 Anthology, Rejection Letters, Maudlin House, Litro Magazine, The Drabble, 50-Word Stories, Literally Stories, Flash Fiction Magazine, and Mr. Beller’s Neighborhood, among others. Her story ‘Fish Brain’ has been nominated for a Best of the Net 2022 Award. She lives in Miami Beach, Florida, with her partner, two feral cats, and a thousand tiny reptiles.
My name was engraved on a nine millimetre bullet and fixed to a gold chain. I wore it around my neck at all times. “Somewhere, there’s a bullet with your name on it,” my father had said.
In my line of business, better I have that bullet than my enemies.
James Hancock is a writer/screenwriter of comedy, thriller, horror, sci-fi and twisted fairy tales. A few of his short screenplays have been made into films, and he has been published in print magazines, online, and in anthology books. He lives in England, with his wife and two daughters (and a bunch of pets he insisted his girls could NOT have).
The story of the week for October 31 to November 4 is…
A Halloween Tale by Fiona H. Evans
You mustn’t open it.
We’ll be doomed.
Forever.
The box wasn’t pretty, but…
He wouldn’t let her work.
Or do much of anything, really.
The locking mechanism intrigued her.
Cured her boredom.
She released his doom. Not hers.
The wells of her power filled.
She wished she’d done it sooner.
Anthea lives in sunny Queensland, Australia. In her day job she works with teenagers and her writing inevitably features quirky characters getting up to mischief. When she’s not writing fiction or screenplays, Anthea can be found deep in the yard, carrying out complicated gardening battle manoeuvres against her family’s four sneaky chickens. Her writing has been recognised by Furious Fiction (Australian Writers’ Centre) and NYC Midnight. Find her online at @WriterAnthea.
“So tell me about your line of work. What kind of pests do you get called for most?”
“Oh, you name it. Catcallers, thigh-touchers, bra strap snappers. We got it all. I even had a pest tell me I should smile more.”
“And did you?”
“…Yes. After he was exterminated.”
Hana S. Elysia is a graduate student of the Master of Arts in Liberal Arts & Sciences program at San Diego State University. Her short fiction has appeared in pacificREVIEW’s Atlantis and Other Lost Places, as well as The Horror Tree’s Trembling With Fear. She aspires to write a fantastical series someday that she can pair alongside her own artwork and create an immersive space where readers can find a second home.
Prayers clung to her throat, a hot lump of hope and hopelessness. She’d prayed before, years ago, but she’d given up on gods and goddesses and grand plans for the universe.
She swallowed hard, forcing the prayer into her center where somebody’s–anybody’s–deity might take it seriously.
“Please, just let him live.”
A one-time teen mother and high school dropout, Larina Warnock holds a doctorate degree and is an educator in rural Oregon where she lives with her husband, three dogs, and a turtle older than she is.