Amplitudes of emotion
coursed his veins, his young flesh
wed to eyes in constant motion.
On her perch he envisioned heavenly
auras enhanced by multitudes of color
from his imagination.
With a tongue numbed by inaction,
he sensed little to risk and quipped,
“Don’t I know you from church camp?”
Fred Miller is a California writer. Over forty of his stories have appeared in various publications around the world. Some of these stories appear in his current blog.
The soft glow of dawn
covers my room in rainbows.
Young eyes try to capture them.
My mother’s figure appears in the doorway,
presence subtle.
I ask her to join me,
catch her own rainbows.
She simply shakes her head, eyes glassy.
Maybe another day, I think,
Or maybe not.
Lauren loves creative writing and can usually be found in her room writing a poem or short story or on the beach reading. She struggled to stay within the 50-word limit since she loves to talk!
“The boogeyman isn’t real,” was the last thing my dad said before I shoved him into the closet and slammed the door. I plugged my ears and sang “la la la” until he stopped screaming. Of course, I felt bad later, but nobody talks about my best friend like that.
Larry Hinkle is an advertising copywriter living with his wife, two dogs, and a cat in the suburbs of Omaha, Nebraska. When he’s not writing stories that scare people into peeing their pants, he writes ads that scare people into buying adult diapers lest they get caught peeing their pants.
The story of the week for May 8 to 12 is…
The fortune-teller’s daughter, pt. 1 by Guy Preston
Part 1, indeed.
I couldn’t have anticipated such a boisterous reception, just for winning a preliminary heat at a swimming gala.
The crowd went wild the moment I left the pool! People fist-pumping! Woop-woops echoing everywhere!
Overcome, I took a bow.
Then I realised.
Those were my red trunks bobbing on the water.
Neil writes what he likes. Sadly, nobody likes what he writes.
Sometime rainfall
Sometime wet it is
Sometime snowfall
Sometime be cold
Sometime the day be long
Sometime day too short
Sometime you laugh away
Sometime the pain just stays
Sometime young
Sometime be old
Sometime be alive
Sometime be dead you
Sometime God is far away
Sometime in my head
Rob Vass is a concrete guy who got old. Got stuck in the office much like a troll under the bridge growling at office staff and telling war stories of the craft. But he lives on a coffee farm and makes good salsa, growing peppers with his good lady. Who like a good story.
She watched the woman named Stella adjusting her wedding veil in the mirror. Moving beside her, their eyes met in reflection.
“Please don’t marry him or you’ll be unhappy the rest of your life.”
Stella turned to her. “Are you a distant cousin?”
“I’m your granddaughter,” she said and disappeared.
Susan Cornford is a retired public servant, living in Perth, Western Australia. To date, she has (co)won only one competition but has been short-listed or made finalist for numerous others. She has pieces published or forthcoming in Antipodean Science Fiction, Ghost Parachute, Switchblade, The Fable Online, The Gambler and The Vignette Review. She now considers herself an emerging flash writer.
Death’s hand, which I shook reluctantly, was a plumped pillow.
“You’re safe,” he said. “For now.”
“I pictured you as a, you know—”
“Skeleton? You should’ve seen me before the Western diet.” Laughter rippled his corpulence. “Doctor’s telling me to eat better, but she thinks I’m lying about my work.”
Iain Young hasn’t forgotten the childhood nightmare in which he was chased by angry vegetables. That might explain a lot.
The day before my sixth birthday I sat on mother’s knee and stared into her crystal ball. She’d flinched at shadows that screamed and slammed doors, clutched my arm so hard her nails broke the skin. Among whirling smoke she saw broken skies, suffering, the End…
I only saw you.
Guy was once declared dead by a fortune-telling fish he found in a Christmas cracker. This is his eighteenth 50-word story.
One afternoon, a priest, a lawyer, and a dentist walked into a bar.
The priest ordered himself a martini, promptly choked on the olive, and died. The lawyer jumped up, crying, “This isn’t funny!” and bolted from the joke.
The dentist, never one for punchlines, quietly called for another round.