Numbness spread through him as the years passed, undoing the wishes they made throwing pennies into Fontaine des Mers while strolling the Place de la Concorde. Now, a lifetime later and too old for dreams, he tossed pocket change in a jam jar next to their bed before falling asleep.
C. Jean Downer is a writer of creative words; these are just a few. She lives in Surrey, British Columbia. You can find her at cjeandowner.com and on Twitter at @cjeandowner.
She sits on the couch immersed in a book. Across the room, he watches TV from his recliner. Headphones on, to avoid disturbing her. A perfect picture of empty-nesters, apparently.
Kids, the bridge connecting the two islands, gone. An ocean tosses between them. Of silence. Words would raise a tsunami.
Preeti is notorious for shirking duties when engrossed in reading literary fiction, writing short stories and designing graphics. A former journalist, she now works as a marketing professional in Southern California. She digs her annual gig as a publicist for a film festival.
The room was so small, he couldn’t fathom how he had ever enjoyed living here. He had a feeling he was no longer welcome anyway, and now the landlord was practically begging him to leave. He was glad to oblige, until his tiny body met the frigid delivery room air.
Julianna is a tax attorney, but asks that you please not hold it against her. She is new to flash fiction and loves the challenge of the format.
One room, drowsy as honeysuckle, has The Best of Nancy Drew. The other has a tattered copy of Frankenstein. August presses against leaded glass. Behind each latched door a shush of turning pages. Where to go, how to disappear. Can a room survive without its walls? Neither tells the other.
Jackie Craven is the author of Secret Formulas & Techniques of the Masters (Brick Road Poetry Press, 2018) and a chapbook, Our Lives Became Unmanageable (Omnidawn, 2016), winner of the Omnidawn Fabulist Fiction Award. She has recent poems in AGNI, The Massachusetts Review, Ploughshares, and other journals. A longer version of this story appeared in Pleiades. See more at JackieCraven.com.
Are you listening, Father? The difference is dosage.
Milligrams, it’s medicine. Grams, it’s snake venom. If your memory were better, you’d remember how much you’ve had today.
No, I’m not going to tell you. That’s my little secret.
A pill lies before you. Is it your first or your twentieth?
Graham Robert Scott’s stories have appeared or are forthcoming in Hobart, Pulp Literature, Barrelhouse, X-R-A-Y, and others.
He pushes his darkly scarred fingers into his ears. He spends most of the day like this.
He walks through the world inside his head.
He listens intently, to what or to whom we long to know,
but the fly on the wall of his mind will be trapped forever.
Deirdre Smith has dabbled in writing for as long as she can remember. She has recently started back to work as a teacher and Guidance Counsellor after a decade of being a stay-at-home mom to her three young children. She resides in St. John’s, Newfoundland.
That you asked the same question already four times today.
That your weakened heart may stop beating at any moment.
That you go to sleep each evening expecting not to wake.
That I know about Jennifer from the office.
That I stopped loving you twelve years and three days ago.
Alison is intrigued by how much goes unsaid in relationships.
I folded their socks, washed, and paired them. I collected them from the floors of their bedrooms, rolled, inside out, crumpled.
As they grew, I found them tucked down the sides of beds, inside duvet covers. A game of hide and sock.
Now they are gone.
I miss their socks.
Jane Langan writes fiction and poetry and is currently working on her debut novel. Her anthology of poems, Blood Kisses, is available now. Jane has been shortlisted for a number of writing competitions and has been published in several magazines. Besides writing, she enjoys photography and tap dancing. She has just completed an MA in Creative Writing.
Your postcards still arrive in my mailbox, even though they’re addressed to a woman who no longer exists. “I’m sorry. I miss you. Forgive me.” Words stripped to the bone like a rabbit caught between the fox’s tight jaws, the remains buried deep until they are hardened, turned to stone.
Kristin Tenor finds inspiration in life’s quiet details and believes in their power to illuminate the extraordinary. Her work has appeared in various literary journals including 50-Word Stories, Bending Genres, Emerge Literary Journal, Milk Candy Review, X-R-A-Y Literary Magazine, among others. In addition, her flash fiction has been longlisted for the Wigleaf Top 50 and has been nominated for Best Small Fictions, Best of the Net, and a Pushcart Prize. She serves as an editorial consultant and the flash fiction editor at CRAFT. Learn more at kristintenor.com or follow her on Twitter at @KristinTenor.
The story of the week for July 5 to 9 is…
Where It All Became by Rachel Canwell