The story of the week for March 23 to 27 is…
Where I Would’ve Held Her by Tad K.
TIM SEVENHUYSEN: Used To Be
There used to be a place you could go, a place with infinite possibilities. I think you got there underwater; might’ve been just under that riverbank. Someone I used to know has been there. He was younger then. Doesn’t remember much.
Can’t go there anymore, of course. River’s too low.
Tim Sevenhuysen is the creator of FiftyWordStories.com.
JOE PEARSON: Curse of the Were-Father
I was bitten by a feral dad. Now once a month a daughter appears, shimmering in the full moon. Each time she’s older, less pleased to see me. Excuses turn to howls in my throat. By sunrise she fades, and I’m left alone shivering, feeling like I’m missing a limb.
Joe Pearson is a British fiction writer living in Paris. (Except for one night a month, when he hunts childless men.) You can find more of his writing at joepearsonwriter.com.
CHELAN KINGFISHER: The Variable Costs of Intimacy
Every time Paul thought about asking Annie to marry him, he remembered the time when he was seventeen and that blonde girl on the beach had offered him a lick of her ice cream cone.
Annie had never once offered him as much as a peek at her checkbook balance.
Chelan Kingfisher lives on beautiful Orcas Island in the Pacific Northwest. She both fuels and exhausts her days navigating the uncertainties of seeking happiness in the tiny things of life.
DAVE BRADLEY: Charmed
The charmer plays his melody, rolling and reedy. The crowd sways along, seduced by the man’s earnestness and the golden warmth of sunset. Their heads bob in time with his, their eyes fixed on the carpet and the basket. They all see what they came for. There is no snake.
Dave Bradley’s words have appeared in publications such as Best Of British Science Fiction and Dorling Kindersley’s The Screen Traveller’s Guide, as well as various pop culture magazines and websites.
ANGELICA JIMENEZ: Thinking It Through
Pigeons are just a type of bird. Like a peacock. Like the beautiful swan at the lake.
“Look, daddy! So pretty!” a five-year-old coos.
From a distance, an old woman watches the lively duo as she tosses bread to a pigeon.
“Who says we ugly ducklings are better off changing?”
Angelica Jimenez is a teenage writer who currently serves as an editor for her high school’s literary magazine, Sin Fronteras. She has also been published in Friday Flash Fiction and has served as a community ambassador at Write the World, a global platform for teenage writers.
JOHN SZAMOSI: No Going Back
I try to press the day into a wafer, pretending nothing happened, and we can waltz back into the old village we knew.
Reality stands in the way. Only bad choices remain, heavy as March snow, refusing to melt or drift away, no matter how long we keep chanting mantras.
John Szamosi is a wordsmith and peace activist. He’s been publishing short stories, satires and poems since his freshman year in college.
SARAH FLICK: In the center of her universe there is a ball…
My labrador, Dosh, waits. I throw. Released, she grabs it mid-air, showing off, then returns. I throw again; she’d retrieve forever.
If I could, just once, experience the joyous muscle-music I witness when Dosh clamps her jaws around a soggy tennis ball, I could face anything in this challenging world.
Sarah Flick wrote this story.
DON NIGRONI: Nothing but Time
Before he passed away, my uncle, a physicist, explained to me that when the universe collapses to a singularity in the far distant future, matter and energy and even space will disappear, leaving only empty time. And then and only then will desire and its resultant suffering finally cease forevermore.
Don Nigroni is a retired labor economist.
STEVEN HOLDING: Wash My Hands of You
Once pristine washbasin becomes farmhouse kitchen clean, witnessing many things being rinsed; plates, potty mouths, placenta off bawling newborns.
Decades later, repurposed porcelain sits upon bricks by a desolate gate, gathering cattle slaking shared thirsts.
The running man in dirty stripes stops, dispersing the herd.
Dunks his head, drinking deeply.
Steven Holding lives in the United Kingdom. His story TURNING A TRICK appears in the collection BLOODLUST from Black Hare Press. You can follow his work at stevenholding.co.uk.