Peter came crashing through the cottage door, his shirt speckled with blood, multiple punctures on his neck, ears like cauliflowers, his left eye practically swelled shut.
“Forty-two to twenty-six!” he exclaimed triumphantly.
“Looks like a painful run,” his wife replied. “Is that a record for deer fly kills and bites?”
Norman is a writer from Ottawa who has encountered too many deer flies. He has been published in Saturday Night Reader and 101 Words.
The doctor entered the room with a run-of-the-mill smile on his face. You could tell he’d done it hundreds of times before. He sat down next to us, thumbed through a folder, and began.
“Unfortunately,” he started.
My heart sank.
“There’s no heartbeat,” he finished.
And mine was gone forever.
Carly Boyer is a drop-out English major with a head for emotionally provocative writing. She spends her days racing 500HP vehicles and thumbing through medieval literature books in her home in Northeast Pennsylvania with her dog and seemingly temporary boyfriend.
Where was she? Did she take a wrong turn? What mountain road was this? No cell service here.
She grabbed “emergency” boots, coat, hat, and gloves from the truck, then pushed the door open and jumped.
She fell backwards into the snow like an angel and remembered her childhood sky.
Deanna is an enthusiastic reader who has no aspirations, ambitions, or talent to be a writer. She has spent years with her nose in books, taking the words from them. She likes to think that writing 50-word stories is a way of giving them back, 50 at a time.
and then they quit their jobs and burned their McMansion to the ground.
Holding hands, their smiles disappeared as she mentioned they had no toothbrushes.
He got a job first. They purchased the essentials. Then cars, iPhones, designer clothes.
After another stressful work day, they exchanged glances, and then they
Kenneth Hamner works in Atlanta, Georgia.
The man watched in the darkness as the officers arrested his “friend” and led him away.
He had alerted the government. Was he a traitor?
Some said the captive was a crackpot, while others loved him.
Once again, he counted out his reward money and sighed.
Thirty pieces of silver.
Joe Thomas wrote this story.
Lana dreamed about her face. The bunched curtain eyelids. The crooked witch’s nose. The wrinkles that multiplied like hydra heads.
Lana woke up and saw her new face. It was smooth, symmetrical, sleek.
She wondered how long it would be before she started seeing this face in her dreams, instead.
Ashley Naftule is a writer and performer from Phoenix, AZ. He enjoys Marx Brothers movies, drawing with colored chalk, karaoke, and the occult. To see more of his work, go to ashleynaftule.com.
Allen bowed low to the beautiful girl. Straightening, he took her hand and called over the music, “May I have the next dance?”
She burst out laughing.
Dejected, Allen returned to his group. His friends patted him consolingly on the back. “Allen, Pride and Prejudice is not an instruction manual.”
Mark Farley was raised in Zimbabwe where he survived two dog maulings, a swarm of killer bees, and being run over by a horse. You can find a video of his 23-word twitter story here.
His wife left us alone.
“I’ve never met anyone as good at getting people to love them as you.” Love in the like-like way. For the last four years.
They drove me home; his wife hugged me.
Four months after they’d officiated our wedding, my husband and I left church.
m.nicole.r.wildhood is a Colorado transplant living in Seattle where she is a fair-weather cyclist. She’s been a scuba diver and saxophonist for over half her life and currently writes for Seattle’s street paper Real Change.
The story of the week for August 31 to September 4 is…
One Job From Retirement by Guy Preston
The “reveal” in this story is so subtle and yet hits so hard.
The world below is screened by cloud. Above, the sun is glowing.
He faces emptiness, then overcomes his fright,
And like a stone is falling.
He counts… A jolt! The canopy’s unfolded! He’s soaring… And smiling broadly as he touches land.
He jumped a boy and landed as a man.
Victor is native Russian, and English is his second language. He lives in St.Petersburg, Russia, and by now he has had two pieces published on FiftyWordStories.com.