They asked me if I’d go to Mars for science. I said I’d go just out of spite. The engineer said that was the best reason he’d heard in all the years he worked here. He handed me a helmet. It didn’t fit, but neither did my life on Earth.
Sarp Sozdinler has been published in Electric Literature, Kenyon Review, Shenandoah, Masters Review, Pithead Chapel, and 100 Word Story, among other journals. Besides writing, he edits the literary journal The Bulb Region: sarpsozdinler.com.
The story of the week for January 19 to 23 is…
A Little Night Music by Jim Parisi
He recorded it a month ago, when he knew it was over. The death rattle of her soft palate strangling her. The soundtrack of their nights, their years together. He doesn’t nudge the phone awake, just lets her song play. Three more hours. Maybe three more decades. If he’s lucky.
Jim Parisi, a freshly unemployed editor, lives in Occupied Washington, D.C., with his long-suffering wife Beth and Dolce, their sweet but rambunctious boxer-pitbull mix. He spends most of his free time coaching Little League softball. His stories have appeared in FlashFlood Journal, The Bluebird Word, and The Good Life Review.
Funeral home photos, assembled by his current girlfriend, display his assertive exuberance in tandem with diplomas, German shepherds, shiny race cars, gallant boats. But ex-wives and grandchildren are no-shows. His six full-grown children do not file in, do not fill the pews, do not take the podium. White lilies droop.
Shoshauna Shy loves how flash fiction cuts to the chase, and is grateful to find stories all over the place.
My astrologer said I’d die by freezing.
You may laugh; I believed it.
So I moved – Jamaica, Barbados, now Bermuda.
Life’s pretty good – beaches, palms, a job in Tony’s Kitchen.
You know, that seafood place with the harbour view?
Where the freezer doors keep jamming…?
Maybe time to move again.
William Mitchell lives in East Sussex in the South of England. He is an award-winning author, having had early success with various Horror and Science Fiction publications before winning the Writers of the Future contest in 2012. His first novel, CREATIONS, came out in 2014 with John Hunt Publishing.
It’s back. A slight ache behind one eye, the left one. It always spasms exactly eight times then settles into a dull pain.
A splinter, nothing more.
I felt it before the drought.
Before the “election.”
Before the occupation.
It’s back again.
What happens next?
It’s never nothing.
Adrian L. Cook is glad to have 2025 in the rearview and is creeping stealthily into 2026 hoping this year leaves him (and his cherished people) well enough alone.
Two phone bills. Easy to move into your name with enough appeals. A below market rate from a swallowed regional provider.
Yellowed plastic silent on the table outside the one call each year. The number a dulling muscle memory.
Six rings, persistent illogical hope.
Then, from the oblivion, her voice.
Jack Tunguz is a writer in New York City.
When I was a child, I set only little fires. I built them in tuna cans, coffee cans, metal buckets. I ignited anything that would burn. Paper, twigs, dried grass, oily rags. I liked watching the changing colors of the dancing flames, how they reacted to my huffs and puffs.
Bob Thurber is the author of six books. Regarded as a master of Flash and Micro Fiction, his work has appeared in Esquire and other magazines, been anthologized 60 times, received a long list of awards, and been utilized in schools and colleges throughout the world. He resides in Massachusetts. Visit his website at BobThurber.net.
He steals another sly glance at the hitchhiker, muffled in fleeces and darkness. “Moose aren’t the only things on these roads.” He’s half-joking, savouring and delaying, knife a promise in his pocket. “Sometimes there’re monsters, too…”
He thinks she smiles.
They’ll blame bears or wolves.
Bury him quickly, without questions.
Deborah writes at an old desk surrounded by five hundred pet bugs.
The moon illuminated the sky. The rhythm of the drumbeats punctuated the silence. The seers ascended and descended unveiling the hidden. I watched and listened. My mother held my hand. She looked at me with teary eyes. In that moment, it struck me: we were on the path to redemption.
Thompson Emate spends his leisure time on creative writing, particularly poetry and prose. He has a deep love for nature and the arts. His trying his hand at every genre of fiction. He lives in Lagos, Nigeria.