Give a tie to a man, show him an office, tell him from his boyhood that money will be the only thing to save his life, and teach him shame.
He will serve you forever and never see his children.
But that’s ok, because you will give them a tie.
Nat is still trying to understand why 8 hour workdays are a thing. You can find her on her blog itspastmybedtimebut.wordpress.com.
“Get out more,” his therapist said, so he goes to the local museum, takes snapshots of every piece of artwork. Oil on canvas. Click. Lithograph. Click. Woodcut. Click.
At home, he transfers them onto his hard drive, names the file: Museum Visit, November 2021.
Never looks at the pictures again.
Laura Besley is the author of micro fiction collection, (Un)Natural Elements (Beir Bua Press, 2021), 100neHundred (Arachne Press, 2021), and flash fiction collection, The Almost Mothers (Dahlia Books, 2020). Having lived in the Netherlands, Germany, and Hong Kong, she now lives in land-locked central England and misses the sea. She tweets at @laurabesley.
Where shall I go when the wind turns sour? What shall I take for the road ahead?
Oh, the journey will be long. Keep safe, keep low, keep your own counsel.
Take green beads and a white stone, warm socks and a banjo. Take pockets for keeping dreams and teeth.
Jordana Connor is a long-time scribbler and fledgling submitter of short stories and flash fiction. She enjoys excruciatingly bad puns, delicious swear words, and the Oxford comma. She lives in Brisbane.
My favorite science teacher explained tectonic plates shift at the same speed as fingernails grow. We couldn’t keep our eyes off our hands that day. My nails had pink polish.
Fast-forward a few decades. Now living in California, I admire my tectonic red nails and wait for the big one.
Roberta Beach Jacobson is the editor of Cold Moon Journal.
Your clothes are shredded and sitting in flimsy charity bags.
Letters, turned to ash, like the empty promises they contained.
My phone, scrubbed clean of photographs.
Yet I still see you, haunting every crevice of my day.
And at night, you innocently stroll around my dreams, oblivious of my nightmare.
John Holmes is a flash writer who loves to cycle. This year, he has pieces in Fractured Lit, Paragraph Planet, Ellipsis Zine, Fragmented Voices and 101 Words. Winner of The Times (U.K.) short crime story.
He wanted to sleep.
But credit card bills demanded. Inbox hummed. Deadlines crept up.
Time got away.
When he made it to bed, he tossed, turned, dreamed of speeding down hills.
He consumed Diet Coke. But he still imagined soft surrender, slumber.
Nightmares lingered, meandered.
He flicked on every light.
Yash Seyedbagheri is a graduate of Colorado State University’s MFA fiction program. His stories, “Soon,” “How To Be A Good Episcopalian,” and “Tales From A Communion Line,” were nominated for Pushcarts. Yash’s work has been published in SmokeLong Quarterly, The Journal of Compressed Creative Arts, and Ariel Chart, among others.
I was impolitely ordered to leave the supermarket today
and I still don’t know the reason.
Being a good Samaritan, I was helping an elderly lady
who couldn’t reach a top shelf item.
Suddenly a manager was shouting angrily at me.
So I put down the old lady and left.
Gene Newman wrote this story.
From the sky a heavy rain of quarters, dimes, nickels, and pennies fall to the earth. Some risk collecting the money from their driveway and gutters. Many are killed by the coins falling on their heads. The phenomena last for weeks then abruptly stops.
We were warned about climate change.
Denny E, Marshall had had art, poetry, and fiction published. One recent credit is fiction in Potato Soup Salad. See more at dennymarshall.com.
Sitting in the dark, watching the clock. My stomach is in knots. The words the lawyers want me to say, I go over in my head. “He’s not like that,” I’d defend. But he was. I knew that side of him.
I turn off the alarm clock and the phone.
Melissa Kelly is a poet and Short Story writer from Long Island, NY. You can see some of her work in WestWard Quarterly Magazine, Plum Tree Tavern, Soft Cartel, Amethyst Review, Hedge Apple, One Art: a journal of poetry, and Trouvaille Review. See more at melissaannettekelly2020.blogspot.com
The story of the week for November 8 to 12 is…
Only a Minor Miracle by Sam Hall