“9-1-1, what is your emergency?”
“I’d like to report a missing person.”
“How long has this person been missing, ma’am?”
Huh. That required some mental calculation. “About eight years?”
“Eight years? Why are you reporting this now?”
Time to tell the truth. “Because I don’t want to be lost anymore.”
Robert Carlberg has occasional sleepless nights when he eats too much salad. On those nights he sometimes writes stories. Blame the bleu cheese.
That afternoon we’d been rowing around the pond, tuna sandwiches packed in the red cooler. Mostly love keeping us afloat. Later, I spotted a small green frog parked on the lip, looking up at me like I was some kind of princess.
Now, long after the divorce, I sometimes wonder…
Mary Moreno lives in New York City and writes poetry, fiction and creative nonfiction. She also composes and produces music.
We sit across the table making a grocery list.
I add oranges, even though you hate them. You fake frown at me and add tuna in response.
We glare at each other until we burst out laughing.
I love you. And I know you love me too.
All is well.
Karalyn Wayne enjoys long games of chess and playing villains on stage. When she isn’t procrastinating, she writes. This is her third 50-word story.
goth is an artist, writer, and all around sleepy guy. goth works full time as a public defender, hence the pen name. this isn’t legal advice. See more at @g0thlawyer on bluesky and instagram and at g0thlawyer.com.
Editor: This format and method of presentation (as an image) is a first, and I love it! It required some new methods of word-counting to verify that it met the 50-word requirement, which is fun. :) We are counting each emoji as one word, as well as counting the standalone punctuation as words (the @ and the ??).
There were nights of learning to dance, practicing with the dog. At fifteen, too old for scraps, I was the star of my own disaster movie, climbing out a window to meet a man by the creek, kissing to frog music while my mother slept, dreaming of her lost loves.
Meg Pokrass is the Series Co-Editor of Best Microfiction. Her new collection, The First Law of Holes: New and Selected will be published by Dzanc Books.
There were no horsemen. No atoms were split. No invading armies or asteroid impacts. Nothing that would etch our last moments in pyroclastic ash. It came slowly. With indifference and poisoned tongues. Fatigue, and no remembrance of things past. It came begging, hold on, through tight lips and closed eyes.
Jeremy Day lives in Ottawa with his wife and two children.
When Memaw coughed, her tooth came out. It landed in the icing, next to the candle.
I didn’t know a tooth could make a whole cake taste like sand. That’s a kind of magic.
Forks and grit and smiles; we pretend dying tastes like cake. Performing ritual. Hoping for magic.
Cheryl is a writer, scientist, and mom hiding out in the American Midwest.
Auntie Lou’s a singer-songwriter. If a tune doesn’t wander too far from middle C, she can keep up with it. She wrote “Unconditional” in one afternoon, but the surprise-hit B side, “Hopeless,” was her life’s work.
Marriage taught me she got it backwards. The flipside of unconditional is enduring hope.
Miriam N. Kotzin writes fiction and poetry. She is the author of five collections of poetry, two collections of short fiction, and two novels—most recently the novel Right This Way (Spuyten Duyvil). Her 50-word stories have been published in 50-Word Stories, 50 Give or Take, and Blink Ink. She teaches literature and creative writing at Drexel University.
A client bought me omiage. It means travel memento. It was a sweet cake from an earthquake-devastated town. When I bit into it, the papery crust crackled, suddenly soft inside. He showed me photos of swollen roads and fallen homes. So sad, I said, and pushed more in my mouth.
Meredith McLean is an Australian writer now living in Japan. She has been published in magazines such as Aniko Press, Sojournal and Denizen’s Digest. You can visit her Linktree.
I found a bottle on a sandy beach. It was full of time. I had so many unfulfilled dreams and always told myself that was because I always had too little time. But I had to finally admit the truth when I tossed that bottle back into the endless sea.
Don Nigroni is a retired labor economist with a master’s degree in philosophy from Notre Dame.