The tower clock counts sonorous hours while I sit on this gravestone, watching the moon wane and recollecting past misdeeds. Tonight’s certainly colder, a bone-pincher spiked with frost. Stars glitter overhead: crueller than any diamonds, but infinitely easier to ignore.
I thought death guaranteed eternal rest.
Seems I was wrong.
Deborah writes at an old desk surrounded by five hundred pet bugs.
We visited you today. I think she’s too young to understand. She asked me if you turned into a stone.
“Kind of,” I said.
“Why a gray stone?” she asked. “Why not blue or orange or purplegreen?”
I shrugged.
She thought you should have at least dressed up a little.
Sam van der Lugt is a writer and anthropologist based in Rotterdam, the Netherlands. He’s working on some short stories and a PhD thesis. Sometimes, he wonders what to do with all of this existence.
Bitter smoke clings to the rafters.
The corrugated shed is but a skeleton, creaking in the breeze.
Embers crackle hungrily in the paddocks, sending ashes dancing like butterflies in spring.
Beneath cracked soil, seeds awake.
Soon new life will sprout and the fire will linger only as a painful memory.
Collette Night is an Australian writer who crafts lyrical prose with bite, often circling themes of healing, memory, and the uncarved future. Her work seeks to take you elsewhere as you read—even if only for a moment. She has appeared in Starry Eyed Press and The Riot Collective, with forthcoming work in Trembling with Fear and Black Hare Press.
Since Dad passed, Mother asks repeatedly, “Am I dying?”
We reassure her.
At the store, I leave Mom sitting by the door for a minute. When the sirens blare, I run to Mom, thinking the worst.
She’s there, flirting with a chiseled EMT.
“She called 911. Said she was dying.”
Maria Miller Silvert is a multimedia creative living in Northwest Spain.
I don’t remember the first hands that held me as I entered this world, vulnerable and mewling. I won’t remember the last hands that cling to me as I leave this life, helpless and silent. This is half my story. In the end, I hope they aren’t the same hands.
Katie lives on a farm in the Pine Barrens of New Jersey. Lately, she and her husband have been embracing the hint of early autumn air and exploring the creative side of writing. In addition to 50-Word Stories, her microfiction was recently featured in Short Beasts Flash Fiction and is forthcoming on 101 Words.
Of course we’re wondering about the dead bus stop crow. Raven? Grackle? A smash of black on cement, witch-guts gross. We see the suited man who’s been hounding us before school, his Jehovah pamphlets flapping: “WHERE are YOU going?”
We bend to the bird, searching for its ears. Whisper: go.
Adele Gallogly’s very short stories have been published in FlashFlood, Writers’ Hour, Six-Sentences, and Paragraph Planet. You can follow her on BlueSky.
When the sun set on your soul, the world went dark. We who loved you are left to stumble in darkness—shattered. Dawn will come again, but never the dawn we knew. May we reach into our hearts, where the beauty of you dwells forever, and find solace.
A prolific writer, Carol Huebsch Reeves embraces the freedom and creativity of Flash Fiction. Most of her stories speak to life’s joys and challenges. Her work is found in Flash Fiction Magazine and 50 Word Stories. Carol’s memoir, “All the Little Miracles,” was published in 2022.
“I don’t like this place,” said my 100-year-old mom. She lives in an ARF. “I’m going to leave soon.”
“You’re lonely,” I responded. “I understand loneliness. Have you tried connecting with God?”
“Oh, don’t give me that mushy God talk.
I want to go home and be with my mother.”
A former journalist, Maria Miller is working on a novel while enjoying life in Spain.
She was dying for so long, I learned to live with it. Then she died—and I forgot
how to feel.
She faded long before she was actually gone. It lasted forever, then ended in a second.
I still don’t know if I’m grieving or simply remembering how to live.
Kristina Warlen is a literary and speculative writer from Warrensburg, Missouri. Her work explores memory, impermanence, and emotional turning points in both flash and full-length fiction.
A woman visits my grave everyday. She spends hours talking and crying. Sometimes she plays cards or tells me about the shape of the clouds. She tells me she is sorry, how she wishes she could apologize. I want to apologize too, because the name on the stone isn’t mine.
Scarlett Alderwood has a degree in Literature and has a passion for creative writing and flash fiction.