VERITY PARK: Alone

Adventure, Amusing, Submissions, Top Stories, , , , ,

Alone. Silence imprisoning her.
The button beckons.

Suffocating silence. No chatter or cheerful commotion.

Eyes fixed on the button. Abruptly, she crosses the room.
Presses the button. Waits.
Three.
Two.
One.

Stampeding feet. Sudden clamorous noise. Wonderful chaos!
She smiles.

Three voices yell in unison:
“Mum! The Internet’s gone off!”

Verity Park has been persuaded by her boss to take up the 50-word challenge. It’s not as easy as it looks! Verity is writing under a pseudonym but her boss will guess who she is.

SARMED MIRZA: For Better or For Worse

Adventure, Amusing, Submissions, Touching, , ,

I escaped the overturned bus, passengers trapped, convulsing into zombies, bite by bite.

Stumbled into the flat.

There they were. Jane my ex, and little Tammy.
Those estranged eyes. That snarl.

That’s when I noticed the guests.

And for the first time in years, we ate together, as a family.

Sarmed is a Glasgow-based writer who has written for film, TV, and theatre. His articles and poems have been published in newspapers and magazines in English, Urdu, and Hindi. His aim is to invade the online writing universe 50 words at a time.

HARRY DEMAREST: Roger’s Memoirs

Amusing, Submissions, , ,

Usually somebody lives his life and then writes his memoirs. That wasn’t possible for Roger, the inventor of time travel. He had to start at the end and finish in the middle.

It might have made a better story if he’d started at the beginning, but that hadn’t happened yet.

Since Harry Demarest retired, He has had stories published on 50-Word Stories, Festival Writer, Gold Man Review, and Compassion and Choices.

MATTHEW GREGORY: Communicating

Amusing, Artistic, Submissions, , ,

My lady and I are out of touch. We dine, surrounded by modern couples, each individual cradling a phone. Screens illuminate their faces while our candlelight wavers. Words flutter aimlessly, failing to land.

I ask, are we connected to the clouded world? She says, our connection is cloudy at best.

Matthew Gregory is a writer and filmmaker living in South Florida. He is currently working on his long-neglected Twitter account. For more visit Matthew-Gregory.com.

LL MADRID: Good Boy

Submissions, Touching, , ,

Camping! The family hadn’t done this since Arrow was a pup.

His tail wagged wildly as he sniffed every tree.

He was digging—something smelled exciting—when he saw his family was gone.

They’d be back. He was a good boy.

Tail still, Arrow waited by the road, forever loyal.

L.L. Madrid has an overactive imagination and a short attention span. Naturally, she writes flash and microfiction.

LEE OTTO: The Beard

Amusing, Submissions, , ,

She cried secretly the day he shaved off his beard. Wives always know when there’s another woman.

He started growing it on their wedding day. His beard was their life together; 30 years, 2 children, a house, retirement plans.

But everything would change now Edward had decided to become Emily.

Lee Otto lives in Australia with her husband, 2 children and plethora of cats. At 60, after life as a technical writer, she became intrigued by flash fiction. This is her second attempt at having anything fictional published.

SUKANYA GHOSH: Love – a mockery

Artistic, Submissions, , , ,

“Hey, we are gonna be forever. Okay?” the text read.

“Forever and a day more” was the reply.

Then they met for the first time. Or rather, their eyes did.

No sign of recognition, let alone love.

Relationships, they agreed, should best be left to the confines of virtual reality.

Sukanya Ghosh writes stories, stories about pain, because she has felt her portion of it and she intends to bleed it out through the tip of her pen.

BOB THURBER: Three Boys and a Widow

Submissions, Touching, ,

They showed up at dusk on Mother’s Day with cake and ice cream. Three greasy-haired boys. The handsome one said, “Our own mothers are dead. We hope you don’t mind.”

Mind, she thought. What was there to mind? Death, cake, inconsolable boys?

“We want to celebrate your life in reverence.”

Over the years Bob Thurber’s work has received a long list of awards and prizes. His most recent book is a collection of brief stories titled “Nothing But Trouble”. His first novel “Paperboy: A Dysfunctional Novel” will be rereleased in May 2016. Visit BobThurber.net.