Deadline is only some hours away.
His writer’s mind is obsessed with other thoughts.
He unsuccessfully tries to focus on the given assignment.
Eventually he gives up.
Sleep still eludes him.
Time ticks.
Notification beeps.
It reads, “You are my first thought each morning.”
He doesn’t respond.
He simply smiles.
Vijai Pant is a language teacher in a school in India. He is also a freelance writer.
He flies above ruinous landscapes,
pondering patchworks of castles baked in mud.
Like Alexander, Genghis, and the Russians,
he yearns to find and best his enemy here.
What does it mean that these monuments of dust remain,
that the fortress of the steppe warrior endures?
As if awaiting a deluge.
A.M. Bigler is a pilot who reads and writes. Today, he lives in Wisconsin with his wife and two sons.
Philip sought a good book to live in.
He’d tilted at windmills with Quixote, rafted rivers with Huck, and fished with the old man in the sea.
Finally he decided to make a permanent home. With eyes closed, he chose the first book he touched and entered.
“In the beginning…”
Alison just loves a good book, or a short story for that matter.
I sent you home with leftovers,
delicious homemade soup
spooned into a nice glass bowl
with a BPA-free lid.
I didn’t expect to never see you or it again.
I should have used a take-out container
from a less memorable meal.
You are quite forgettable.
It’s the bowl I miss.
Robin Lubatkin sings with the very young, the very old, and everyone in between.
She waits, in ambush…
Her DNA matches an amber-enveloped relative, one who drew blood from the Tyrannosaurus Rex.
She is of the Clan Culicidae, razor proboscis, a highlander’s blade.
Sweating, hiding undercover, I fall asleep, exposing an ankle. She launches, a creature from a Bram Stoker novel.
Bloodlust… Ectoparasite prevails.
Paul Hock is an author, illustrator, and storyteller. See more of his writing at paulhock.com.
He killed fifty people in cold blood. Shock. Outrage. Mourning. Tears. Calls for gun control legislation. Seven days of commentary. Change the subject.
He killed twenty-six people in cold blood. Outrage. Analysis. Gun control! Three days of commentary. Change the subject.
He killed nine people. Not again! Change the channel.
Israela Margalit wrote this story. See more at israelamargalit.com.
The story of the week for July 2 to 6 is…
Too Late by Kiran Kaur Saini
Stare all you want, I think. It’s not happening.
I walk past without looking. I am young, beautiful, entering the ceramics shop. He is invisible.
Leaving, I am struck
by the sound of a vase smashing, by blood at my temple.
My bag!
“I need a description,” says the officer.
Natasha de Carvalho, a British writer, is a newbie to flash fiction, a genre discovered at the Iowa Summer Writing Festival. This is her first published piece, but hopefully not her last.
Married to her prince at last, Cinderella was presented with a glass crown, in honour of her famous slipper. A week later, after the courtiers had laughed merrily at gifts of a glass throne, a glass dining table, and a matching set of glass cutlery, Cinders bought herself a sledgehammer.
Mark Farley writes novels, flash fiction and the occasional poem. See more at mumbletoes.blogspot.com.
The Ferris wheel’s gigantic blue neon star looms. Waiting in line I feign delight, but I shudder when the bar clicks shut, locking us in our swaying rickety seats.
He hugs me. “I’d better tell you now,” he says, “heights make me queasy…”
Before I can answer, we swing skyward.
Miriam N. Kotzin teaches creative writing and literature at Drexel University. Her collection of short fiction, Country Music (Spuyten Duyvil Press 2017), joins a novel, The Real Deal (Brick House Press 2012), and a collection of flash fiction, Just Desserts (Star Cloud Press 2010). She is the author of five collections of poetry, most recently, Debris Field (David Robert Books 2017).