It was a kind funeral. Black cloth and sweet rolls.
They sang your song and recycled old stories anew.
They spoke well-wishes, treated me as if I was still whole.
They saw your empty body laid to rest then scattered like crows.
We buried two that day, you and I.
Bryson Mooso is still searching for that perfect sentence. He’s resigned to writing millions of them to find it.
She spilt nail varnish remover over the piano when she was fifteen. Hit notes D and F, two octaves up. Acetone eroded the keys, leaving coarse indents that time chiselled into little craters for her fingertips to fall into.
Now, every time she plays, her mistakes have their own melody.
Christian Duffy is a flash fiction enthusiast based in Northern England. She holds a degree in Literature and not too many items in her hands at once for fear of dropping them.
My sister’s on the phone with Mom.
Nancy paces, eyebrows dancing.
“It’s been two weeks.”
Husky, familiar words rise.
“Tell him yourself.” Nan slams down the phone. Pulls me into a hug.
“Maybe next week.” Her words crack. “Let’s go see The Big Lebowski again.”
I laugh. “Maybe next millennium.”
Yash Seyedbagheri is a graduate of Colorado State University’s MFA fiction program. His stories, “Soon,” “How To Be A Good Episcopalian,” “Tales From A Communion Line,” and “Community Time,” have been nominated for Pushcart Prizes. His work has been published in SmokeLong Quarterly, The Journal of Compressed Creative Arts, and Ariel Chart, among others.
Investigation time. What a situation! Murder, rainbow suspects.
Professor: elegant alibi.
Colonel obfuscating clues? Key insight: never trust him.
Enter ballroom. Innocent looking lady in all red: deception?
Recent observation of maid was inconclusive: tail her.
The honourable emerald clergyman: assassin?
No damn leads! Except suspiciously typed initials – cryptic key?
Joe Pearson is a British fiction writer living in Paris. He plays board games, solves murders and hides clues in his stories. You can find more of his writing at joepearsonwriter.com.
Editor: Have you figured it out yet? It took me a minute!
Both fond and traumatic memories coexist in my static eight-year self. I spend decades collecting markers of your existence. All things September, the month of your birth. Mid-century décor, each piece a thrift store find. Coins – relics from your year of expiration. I am the curator of an abbreviated life.
Originally from Atlanta, Georgia, Susan R. Barclay makes persistent attempts at witticism and stories; sometimes she is successful. Her works have appeared/are forthcoming, in the The Blue Nib, Vine Street Press, Defuncted Journal, Write Time, Paragraph Planet, Workers Write, and the 42 Stories Anthology.
Across his shoulder pole hung rice, eggs, condiments, and a stove. He’d stop beneath our student windows to sauté some garlic, to let its scent slip inside the rooms. We cursed his tricks, swore to resist; yet every time his wok hissed, we went down in shame, cash in hand.
Titi Kusumandari is a writer based in Brussels, Belgium. Their work has appeared or is forthcoming in Pr&ta Journal, Lost Balloon, Anodyne, Chestnut Review, among others.
I ignore your endless texts; prioritize friends, hiking, the gym.
You’re needy and overbearing; a people pleaser with no life of your own.
“I can be whatever you want me to be!” you wail.
“That’s the problem,” I sigh.
And putting you back in the box, I wait for UPS.
Michelle Wilson graduated from Bennington College with a degree in literature and creative writing. Her words have appeared or are forthcoming in Wigleaf, Gooseberry Pie Lit, The Daily Drunk, Bending Genres, A Thin Slice of Anxiety, Rejection Letters, Maudlin House, Litro Magazine, 50-Word Stories, Flash Fiction Magazine, Potato Soup Journal’s Best of 2021 Anthology, Mr. Beller’s Neighborhood, and elsewhere. Her story ‘Fish Brain’ was nominated for Best of the Net 2022. She lives with her partner in Washington, DC.
The story of the week for October 6 to 10 is…
Shared Loss by John Singh
and
Waiting by Nick Di Carlo
The door was unexpectedly locked.
He found an open window
and climbed in.
She was lying there
on the bathroom floor
dead
beyond revival.
“I’m sorry for your loss,” they said
but the greatest loss was hers,
the one who was
dead.
He knew then that irony
was still alive.
Lynn White lives in north Wales. Her work is influenced by issues of social justice and events, places and people she has known or imagined. She is especially interested in exploring the boundaries of dream, fantasy and reality. She has been nominated for Pushcarts, Best of the Net and a Rhysling Award. See more at lynnwhitepoetry.blogspot.com and www.facebook.com/Lynn-White-Poetry-1603675983213077/.
For fishing trips, she would tie her own flies, taking the due care which her grandfather had taught. Like him, her feathers of choice were rooster, mallard flank, and pheasant tail.
Come evenings, she would dress for dinner, meticulously attentive to the detail. And, as with the flies, lethally attractive.
Thomas Malloch began writing in retirement. Short stories, mostly. Sometimes very short. Once or twice a year he gets published which raises his sprits, perhaps more than it should.