Her skin droops under the bar’s neon lights, melting away like candle wax. From underneath, a different woman emerges. Disheveled hair. A tattoo sleeve on her arm. Gray eyes that might’ve been green once. With every self she burns through, all that becomes clearer are the screams she hears inside.
Alyson Floyd is a writer, artist, and poet. She hopes to publish a novel someday and then disappear into the woods.
“It’s just a sprain,” her parents shrugged. “Use Tiger Balm.”
“You’ve walked on a shattered fibula for weeks,” the radiologist says. “You need surgery. Doesn’t it hurt?”
If you want impervious, robotic offspring, she thinks, you beat them, belittle, humiliate, minimize.
Body, mind, heart, soul: shattered.
She smiles. “I’m fine.”
Z.J. Lee is a neurodivergent, nonbinary, chronically ill person of color who lives near the Pacific Ocean and writes by the seat of their pants.
Dan scans three packs of paracetamol and the self-service check-out flashes red. He knows he’s over the legal limit, but he needs some sleep.
A uniformed girl whips away a pack, presses buttons, then rushes off.
Dan realises what he actually needs is someone to ask him if he’s okay.
Laura Besley is the author of (Un)Natural Elements, 100neHundred, and The Almost Mothers. She is also an editor for Flash Fiction Magazine. Having lived in the Netherlands, Germany and Hong Kong, she now lives in land-locked central England and misses the sea. She tweets at @laurabesley.
Every night I pick another sad movie that I’ve seen a million times before.
It helps with the loneliness.
Each day I get up and go to work and come home to my cat, Company, who never comes when I call.
It doesn’t count as crying when I watch them.
Raymond Sloan lives in Ireland. He has recently been published in 50-Word Stories, Every Day Fiction, Flash Fiction Magazine, Ariel Chart, 101 Words, The Drabble, Nanoism, Microfiction Monday Magazine, Blink-Ink and The Dribble Drabble Review.
The rules are easy.
Don’t hit people, or shout at them.
If they say you’re too close, you’re too close.
If they say don’t touch, you mustn’t touch.
When I grew up, people didn’t follow the rules.
Didn’t follow them with me.
That’s my excuse.
I know it’s not enough.
Michael Bird is a Romania-based writer and journalist, with stories published by Here Comes Everyone, Lune Journal, Bandit Fiction, Storgy, Grist and Bristol Short Story Prize, among others. As a journalist, his work has appeared in Vice, Politico, Mediapart, EU Observer, and Business Insider, and on the BBC and Deutsche Welle. See more at michaelbirdjournalist.wordpress.com.
I chat to callers about holiday homes, kitchen renovations, solar panels.
Later, I call twenty-four-hour hotlines, but can’t find options I need:
1 for housebound,
2 for lonely,
3 for desperate.
Tomorrow, I’ll break the fridge. Mechanic will be here in an hour, answer in grunts. Highlight of my week.
Jo Withers writes micros, shorts and poetry from her home in South Australia. Recent work can be found in Molotov Cocktail, Spelk and 24 Unread Messages.
The girl was sick of running, then sick of hiding once she’d run.
The only person she trusted was the man in the nearby box. She never asked for a name.
As she lay there, battered, bruised, and fighting for her life, she wished she knew his name after all.
Harriet Dyer is a comedian and writer based in the UK.