She pored over the old scroll again. A bead of sweat rolled, like Sisyphus’ boulder in miniature, down the back of her neck. Each fruitless effort raised the temperature of the abandoned library. Only the ancient secrets could save her people now, from the curse the elders called “Small Pox.”
Liam Lawer is a big boxing fan from Cornwall, currently working in the hospitality sector despite natural shyness. Suffers from occasional bouts of inspiration.
The story of the week for March 31 to April 4…
Cincinn by Piper Pugh
At breakfast I am waiting for you to speak, but your nose is in your phone. At lunch you’re in a meeting in your office while I eat a chicken-salad sandwich at the kitchen island. At dinner you flick on the television and fail to hear me say, “I’m leaving.”
Tim Boiteau is a Writers of the Future winner and author of The Nilwere (Grendel Press, 2024).
Why can’t you speak plainly? Why must you speak in riddles, in puzzles to be solved, in codes that I can’t decipher?
I’m always honest with you. I tell you exactly what I’m thinking, so you always know where you stand with me.
I don’t understand why you left me.
Men are from Mars, and women speak Venusian. We end up playing darts with each other, wearing targets on our hearts. Robert Carlberg is better at language than darts.
FOR SALE: One flying saucer, slightly dented from crash in Roswell, NM. Traditional mid-century pie-plate design. Owned by an immigrant from Alpha Centauri who flew over picnics, playgrounds, and outdoor weddings to provide indelible memories. Originally powered by love and nostalgia, now retrofitted to run on fear, suspicion, and hatred.
John Christenson lives in Boulder, Colorado and shares a fondness for penguins with his wife and cat. His publications include short stories in the New Mexico Review, Flash Fiction Magazine, The Whisky Blot, MoonPark Review, and several anthologies.
I’d assumed the midnight sun would be special. All I saw was a low, dull sun; watery light.
A luminous gloom filled the space between the tree-trunks, flattening all colours. I pulled flowers: catch-fly, lady’s mantle.
A cascade of dew spilled from one. Momentarily, I saw a rainbow at midnight.
Christina Nordlander lives outside Manchester, the UK, with her husband. She has published approximately 30 short stories and other pieces, primarily within horror and dark fantasy.
We grow old together, the house and I. We inch towards the end of our useful lives, sustained by temporary repairs and fixes. I lose height; the foundations settle. The front door gleams with fresh paint and I dye my hair: we must present a brave face to the world.
Madeleine McDonald relishes the challenge of flash and micro-fiction, but has also published newspaper columns, short stories and romance novels.
At first they thought it was a complex one but soon it was apparent that, despite slicing it into clauses and grammar, it was going to refuse to be categorised–or pigeon-holed, if you may–and start to rival a paragraph that leaves the reader breathless when it ends; the run-on sentence.
Kanwar lives in Sydney, Australia, and writes flash fiction, poetry, and short stories. He taps a keyboard and pushes a mouse for his “day job”.
My sister believes we were monks once, tending a quiet temple. Another time, soldiers who died on the same battlefield. I ask her why I don’t remember. She just shrugs, peeling an apple. “You never do,” she says. I watch the knife flash. Something about it makes my hands shake.
Rowan Tate wrote this story.
I arrived sweaty and covered in snow.
I’ll show you her, he said, don’t be sad if she doesn’t remember.
She was bones and skin, on a living room cot.
Hi, I said, and her eyes replied, round and begging. I knew what she knew. Wordless, we sat, remembering everything.
Piper Pugh is a writer and educator living in Los Angeles, CA.