Come with me and I will show you a name on a brick. A brick, fading red, in a crumbling wall. Three rows up, twelve bricks along.
Written there long ago in the smallest, neatest hand. Before the sun set and the clock chimed. And the girl’s name changed.
Forever.
Rachel Canwell wrote this story.
I write me down—me in a perfume, a take-my-card—paraphrases and filters, puzzled pieces petrified on Twitter bios and resumes, an endless search for your cup of tea without knowing if you even like tea. Me tomorrow, me today, me recycled and gargled and compressed. Speed dating. Skin shedding. Trial. Error.
Adamson Wood is…
My skin is late summer:
all golden sunsets
stained with raspberry,
stretched over pale tendrils of green.
My eyes are early autumn:
storm grey from a distance,
golden-green-blue up close.
And my hair is the last colors
before winter,
brown glimmering with fierce but faded
red and ochre and chime.
Maria is enormously fond of all the seasons. She’s enchanted by scurrying cloudscapes, and wildflowers that thrive in improbable places.
Married too soon, she lost herself. She became we; we became they. Over the years, there was no room for her.
Daughter. Sister. Wife. Mother. Grandmother.
Walking the line between solitude and loneliness, she hopes to come to terms with which was preferable. Waiting for answers, she begins to write.
Ruth Mannino is a retired math teacher, tutor, and business analyst, who has always loved to write. Meditation and mindfulness being a part of her everyday life, in 2020, she published Thursday Mornings: Breathe, Stretch, Listen, Love, a series of interviews she conducted with senior members of her chair yoga class. She has just discovered flash fiction and finds it motivating.
A, B, C, D. Test subjects.
Under dark we whispered the names of our parents, our sisters, our brothers. We vowed not to forget them. Not to forget ourselves.
The Experimenters did weird things to us. We behaved. To them, we were toys.
To ourselves: Autumn, Briar, Calla, Dawn. Girls.
Ginny Feng lives in Tennessee, where she writes short stories and reads fantasy and learns lots.
Invisible, I wander. Browsing the aisles, makeup disappearing into my Parka. The large pockets slowly becoming misshapen. They think the shape is me. It isn’t.
I pay for my can of beans at the self-checkout, then try to make eye contact with the security guard as I leave.
Still invisible.
Jane Langan writes fiction and poetry and is currently working on her debut novel. Her anthology of poems, Blood Kisses, is available now. Jane has been shortlisted for a number of writing competitions and been published in several magazines. Besides writing, she enjoys photography and tap dancing. She has just completed an MA in Creative Writing. You can see more of her work on her blog, http://howilikemycoffee.blogspot.com.
Slurping. Groaning. Mud in your eyes and mouth. Teeth aching.
Clambering onto the riverbank, you cough up a whole fish then a beetle.
Your reptile skin slithers off, glinting iridescent in the sunshine.
You shove and jostle into your human frame and shuffle on trembling legs towards the silver city.
Dettra Rose writes flash fiction and tiny poems.
Her pieces have won and been shortlisted/longlisted in a number of esteemed competitions, including: Bath Flash Fiction Award, Reflex Fiction, Retreat West, the Australian Writers’ Centre and TSS Publishing. Dettra is working on her first novel. A born-and-bred Londoner she now lives in Australia and calls both places home. Find her at Dettrarose.com.
“Why do you bleat like a goat?” I ask. “Do those sounds comfort you?”
“Yes, I believe they do,” he responds.
A month later, once again, “Why?”
“They help me to focus and think.”
Three more months, and he barely understands the question.
“They remind me that I’m still alive.”
Mary Hickey is an internationally known backgammon champion, teacher, coach and author. Her literary fiction has appeared in The Griffin, Happy, Kalliope, and other publications. She takes a break from writing if sushi, mattar paneer, or really good coffee are on offer.
She cut herself falling off her bike. Instead of blood, wires spilled out.
She wondered if her childhood was a lie, fake memories coded into her psyche. If her parents were androids too.
The last one was easy to test.
She taped a metal detector to the doorway and waited.
C.M.F. Wright (@cmf_wright) is an avid fantasy reader and sentence wrangler. Her short stories have appeared in Fifty Word Stories, Syntax & Salt Magazine and the VSS365 Anthology.
After Rapunzel donated her braid to Locks of Love, her head felt too light, like it might float away.
They called her selfless, saintly. They praised her for her sacrifice.
She couldn’t tell anyone the real truth—that she needed to learn who she was, without her hair defining her.
C.M.F. Wright writes sentences that occasionally turn into stories. Her short stories have appeared in Syntax & Salt Magazine and in the VSS365 Anthology.