The world shrinks as I watch three ants wander the pots on my balcony.
Patient travellers, carefully mapping their world to the top of each plant. Tiny questing spirits searching the furthest edges of their universe.
These brave little souls shouldn’t go unrecognised.
Nina, Pinta, Santa Maria, I christen them.
Michael has only a fair to middling green thumb, and always tries to look out for the little critters in his garden.
She pulled the door closed, trying to ignore the dirty hallway and broken railing. She closed her eyes, straining to hear her daughter, somehow a woman, settling into her first apartment. She walked gingerly down the stairs, her legs and arms aching from carrying. Her heart aching from letting go.
Melanie Winklosky is a fiction writer trapped in a grant writer’s body. Her work can be found in McSweeney’s, and was named a finalist in the 2023 Boston in 100 Words contest and a 2023 finalist in NYC Midnight’s Flash Fiction Challenge. She lives in Swampscott, Massachusetts.
Staring at a picture of his family for a final time, he wistfully set the frame in a box labeled “Do Not Open.” He placed the box on a shelf in his empty storage unit, padlocking the door. On the drive home, he tossed the key out of the window.
HNK has been featured on fifty word stories a couple of times before. His debut novel will be released in November. You can purchase a copy here.
The oranges are bitter.
The hummus though, is sweet. Flat breads, falafels, and olives. The fruits of the irrigated deserts.
In the bunker we tell the children of our heroes. How they dug in, built walls and barbed wire fences.
How our neighbours grew into enemies.
Stephen Doherty wrote this story.
I looked up because an invisible spark went off in my head. With my two tired eyes, with the open book still in my hands, I watched a beautiful blue bird fly straight into my sliding glass door. I got up to check on it and found it frozen stone.
Sean is a 39-year-old writer who learned to write when he was diagnosed with schizophrenia when he was 20. He is a slow learner and wrote at least 12,000,000 words before he got the hang on this writing thing. It provides a solid foundation for a meaningful life.
Swetha gathered Raghu’s hands in hers, and joined the crowd dancing, chanting “We did it. We did it.” Raghu swayed with her, humming the same.
A man behind him tapped his shoulder, asked What?
No clue. Raghu whispered.
Okay. The man nodded, and joined the crowd dancing, chanting in trance.
Devayani Anvekar is an illustrator and cartoonist of social and domestic issues. She lives in Goa, India.
The trick is so simple – real musket, real gunpowder, real handcuffs, and my Sylvie, chained to that wheel, spinning like a dervish.
Every night I hit the lock dead centre, every night the crowd loves me.
Except today I found her letters.
Deceit changes things. Blood and screaming change everything.
William Mitchell lives in East Sussex in the South of England. He is an award-winning author, having had early success with various Horror and Science Fiction publications before winning the Writers of the Future contest in 2012. His first novel, CREATIONS, came out in 2014 with John Hunt Publishing.
The piano is upright, so it takes less space. You have to look inside to see the maker and year. A wire has snapped, yet the hammers hit true. There is magic here; Beethoven, Bach, Rachmaninoff. But our kids play chopsticks and mash away. And for me, this is everything.
Jeremy lives in Ottawa with his wife and two children.
The story of the week for October 14 to 18 is…
Crunchy Sensation in Every Bite by Leonie Gregory
I remember running behind the Foggyman’s truck, billowing DDT out the back. We covered our noses and mouths with wet handkerchiefs as we chased through the fog, out of breath from running and excitedly shrieking to find each other. Or is this actually a foreboding dream that keeps haunting me?
Stephen Tilden keeps a photo of that truck to remind him that it is just a memory.