The smoke was so thick that I couldn’t breathe. Pieces of metal were everywhere. The room was covered in red liquid. I looked at my hands and screamed with terror. My whole body was aching. I had never experienced anything like this.
I will never make toast with ketchup again.
Sara wrote this story.
Editor’s Note: I really wanted to title this “Catoastrophe”, but that would have spoiled the reveal!
“Lightning never strikes twice.”
Mom chanted those words anytime something bad happened. She kept the family on track, always smiling.
When the cancer came back, the smile momentarily left her face.
“So much for the laws of lightning,” she said, before she started cooking, filling the freezer with our favorites.
Sarah Scott lives in some part of Canada where she is currently searching for an algorithm to automatically generate witty, one-sentence bios. You can check out some of her writing at oneforonethousand.com.
“We have no choice,” the captain sighed as he initiated the release of the toxin. “He was getting too curious.”
The biologist’s eyes widened slightly as he died. The organic craft he had always identified as his appendix detached from his intestines and followed the flow as he voided.
“Cloak!”
Irish writer Perry McDaid lives in Derry close to the Donegal hills. His diverse writing disciplines and genres appear in international multimedia, recently with entropy2, Amsterdam Quarterly, Flash Fiction Chronicles, Plotters Ink, Alfie Dog, and 50wordstories. He has one imaginary cat, Stinky, who is mostly nailed to a board above a ruined allegorical flower bed.
Ben loved his wife as much as he loved to travel. He spent two months in Bali and another month in Fiji.
When he came back, his keys didn’t work but he was at the right house. Through the right window he saw the right woman with the wrong man.
Samantha Lucchetta is an aspiring writer who’s hoping to achieve something biography-worthy one day.
He always played tough guy roles, flawed but sympathetic, and he was my idol when I was a teenager. So I’m out one day, wearing a dark turtleneck and tweed sports jacket just like Garfield’s.
This kid approaches, looks me up and down, and snarls, “Murderer!”
He made my day.
Alex Markovich has a good memory. He’s 80.
The key gleamed in his calloused hand. Behind him, a childhood of broken promises and long struggles echoed the hallway.
Marcus held his breath and faced the door. Years of backbreaking construction for Uncle, and turning cheek to easy money, led to this defining moment: a place of his own.
Before embracing her affinity for writing, Shermie Rayne had an indelible love of words. She likes to use written words to ponder, push back against, or relish in the journey of life. Currently, Rayne is editing the first draft of her first completed manuscript, SKY, an upper middle-grade, epistolary-journal novel that follows a tender-hearted soul, a seventh-grade girl, Sky Jeffers, as she contemplates the challenging burden of living.
At 1:37 PM, Bigfoot was spotted in the dairy aisle of a supermarket holding a tub of organic yogurt as he weighed its pros and cons. After careful examination of his coupons, he decided to go with the factory brand instead.
Finally, the world can lay that enigma to rest.
L. Soviero lives and works in Melbourne where she writes about weird things. She awaits the day when Bigfoot becomes more than a blurry photo.
He was sixteen that summer; she was younger.
He noticed her doing perfect cartwheels on the lawn. Arms stretched high, she circled in effortless arcs across the grass, orange sundress like a spinning sun pressed against her moving legs.
Now growing old, they remembered that bright morning they first met.
Catherine Mathews is a State Department retiree who has the desire to write flash fiction.
To the lonely alarm-squawk of seagulls, Brendan stretched himself into alertness in the clear air of a July dawn.
In this locale he was known as a timid, quiet, and unadventurous bookworm, yet he pointed the prow of the small sailboat he had stolen towards the hazy coast of France.
Charles Smyth lives and works in Belfast, Northern Ireland. He maintains a keen interest in Europe, technology and commerce. He likes cats, but doesn’t own one.
The killer would be wearing red. That was all the information he’d been given.
He took his seat at the table and scanned the room, hoping to find the killer before they could act.
A woman sat next to him and smiled. “I really like your red shirt,” she said.
Christopher Patrick is not an award winning writer (although he knows some) and currently lives in Scotland. He graduated in 2013 from the University of Glasgow as a Masters of the Arts, pursuing a career as a writer. Chris is one of the Scottish Youth Theatre’s Young Writers, writing The Constant Soldier under the tutelage of BAFTA-Winning Writer David Cosgrove, which went on to enjoy a successful two-week run at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in 2014, described as “a taut piece of new writing” by Broadway Baby. As of 2015, he is one of 8 young artists from across Scotland participating in Youth Theatre Scotland’s inaugural Young Arts Leaders Programme.