I went to the ocean to clear my head and get some writing done.
Darn! Forgot my laptop charger. Now what?
Took a walk on the beach: cool water, crashing waves, sweet warmth of the sun.
Laptop battery dead, but I am recharged.
Found pencil and paper in a drawer.
Sherri Bale is a retired geneticist, part-time personal trainer, Jack Russell Terrier mom, and writer of fiction as short as 50 words and as long as 90,000. Whatever it takes to tell the story.
Yarden, I think of you, in that gunshot moment when you learned that the body in the coffin was not your wife’s.
Did you allow a bright bullet of hope to pierce your darkness, even though you knew that it was aimed, with ruthless precision, at your thrice shattered heart?
Joanna Norland dedicates this story to the Bibas family — Yarden, Shiri, Ariel (age 4) and Kfir (9 months), all abducted from the Nir Oz Kibbutz on October 7, 2023, and held in Gaza. Only Yarden returned to Israel alive, February 1, 2025. Hamas claimed to return the bodies of Yarden’s wife, Shiri, and children on February 20, 2024, but DNA testing revealed that the woman’s body was not Shiri’s. Her fate remained unknown until her body was returned by Hamas on the evening of February 21, 2025, and identified by Israeli officials.
The story of the week for March 3 to 7 is…
The Little Hours by Alexandra Keister
Beginning in April 2025, there will no longer be a $10 Canadian prize for the story of the month.
I pay out the prizes via PayPal, and the flat rate fees per transaction have been increasing over time. At this point, it costs me almost $15 each month to send the $10 prize. It is not a question of whether I can “afford” to pay out those prizes; it’s more that I can’t justify paying a 50% fee to a big corporation in order to get that prize into the authors’ hands. As a result, I have made the decision to remove that prizing.
I will still provide the Story of the Year with the same $50 Canadian prize.
My apologies to future monthly winners. I know how special it is for a writer to receive payment for their work.
Under the Milky Way
she intensifies the pace
while humming a few notes
as she negotiates the bike trail curves
Once the trail ends
she pedals upward to the sky
into a hidden realm
one new to her senses
Her story expands
as it continues
through starlight
Is she flying?
Roberta Beach Jacobson is the fleakeeper at Five Fleas Itchy Poetry.
Jean liked washing the dishes. It gave her time to think. With her hands soaking in suds, she considered her relationship with Brian, looking for a sign about how to proceed. Then, when she pulled the plug and watched the grubby water gurgle down the drain, she found her answer.
Bill lives in Aberdeen, Scotland. His mind soars across all of space and time, breaching dimensions and quantum realms in its search for truth and beauty. His body likes to sit on the sofa.
“I’m practically freezing. Why do they crank the air-conditioner up so high at these events for seniors?”
“I don’t know. My best guess is the organizers suspect some of us attendees have gone past our freshness date. They keep the place as cold as a refrigerator so we won’t spoil.”
John H. Dromey has contributed to a wide variety of online and print publications.
The Story of the Month is chosen from the Story of the Week winners announced from the past month.
The finalists for February were:
The Smile by Clive Oseman
The Human Legacy by Millie Sun
Still Life by Paul D’Arcy
How to Move Your Mother To Assisted Living by Jennifer L. Freed
The winner of the February 2025 Story of the Month, and the $10 prize, is…
Still Life
I’m up with the bakers, rolling soft sugared dough.
I’m up with the farmers, pulling warm milk into tin buckets.
I’m up with the monks, whispering intercessions in sacred solitude.
Your little rolls are sweeter, though, and between the sleepy gulps, your hushed nonsensical words are holier than any prayer.
Alexandra is a new mom who has grown to enjoy her 3 AM tete-a-tete.
When the crows cry, I feed them. The AI running our habitat only powers up if it hears them. Nobody knew why. It’s just me now: the navigator, no programmer.
When the oxygen goes, we will too. I’m down to six ration bars, their favorite: they like the foil wrappers.
Joanne Merriam lives in Nova Scotia. Her writing has appeared in dozens of periodicals including Baltimore Review, Haikuniverse, and Pictura. She owns Upper Rubber Boot Books, known for the first English-language anthology of solarpunk, Sunvault. You can find her at joannemerriam.com.