I am lonely. Colleagues were my friends. No meetings, no journeys. I am only a doctor when stopped by the police for speeding.
When my husband died, years ago, writing softened my loss. The notebook is still by my bed.
I pick up a pen and start to write again.
Ruth is a retired doctor who has written extensively for the profession. Since retiring she has published a memoir and three novels. She finds flash fiction very rewarding for the elderly brain.
Bobbing – I think of apples. Ups and downs.
Behaviour – Mine, yours – neither commendable.
Bitter – Adjective. I am ___. You made me ___.
Brazen – Wasn’t she?
Bayonet – Wounding instrument. Cold steel engulfing flesh.
Baby – Would you have left if it had happened? (See Barren)
Boomerang – I won’t go back.
Bruised – Imperfect, fragile, healing.
Jo Withers writes short fiction from her home in South Australia. Recent work appears in Ellipsis Zine, Milk Candy Review and Reflex Fiction. Jo’s work was also recently chosen for inclusion in Best Microfiction 2020.
Your heart gave out. Still can’t fully explain it, but my heart stopped working, too. Yours no longer beats; mine can love no other. One of us breathing; one of us not… And yet somehow, the results are the same: two hearts died that day. I remain single, yet taken.
Alyce Clark was so awed and inspired by the stories of others, she decided to write them for herself.
He admired her longingly from across the room. Just the two of them. Summoning his nerve, heart pounding, he approached.
His beloved wife… Hair freshly styled, makeup applied just so, hands neatly folded. Those blue eyes that once saw only him, now surveying Heaven’s expanse.
“You’re home, Angel. Rest well.”
Lisa Chambers is a Texas girl who enjoys writing.
In the years after Luke left, Daisy’s recollections of their relationship fragmented. Like dandelion seeds caught in the breeze, superfluous memories were whisked away, leaving her just a lone stem to examine. His essence. Had he been the person she thought she knew?
She wondered how she’d been so blind.
David Lowis is a fledgling writer from Surrey, England.
It had been two years since Olivia’s world fell apart.
Two years since she mailed Adam the letter.
Two years of waiting for a reply.
Then, one day, the letter simply reappeared in her mailbox…
“INSUFFICIENT POSTAGE”
Sadly, she placed it on the desk, right next to Adam’s wedding invitation.
Susan Gale Wickes is from Indiana. She enjoys writing short stories and cartoon captions, but she rarely writes a letter.
At first I was numb.
I began to notice them two weeks later:
The hole across the morning breakfast table;
The hole in the recliner facing the television;
The hole on the left side of our bed at night.
I wanted to fall in.
Years later, they sometimes still appear.
Alison hates holes.
The ends of the umbrella flap irregularly in the wind like an injured bird. Stones jab my ribs and spine as the Atlantic splashes between my thighs. Mom’s been gone two years, yet I am here, on her favorite beach, surrounded by people who will never mean anything to me.
Alyssa Minaker lives in North Africa with her husband.
“I’m afraid I’m leaving you,” you said at dinner.
Slightly drunk on wine, I smiled. Later, I kissed you goodnight. My dreams were troubled.
In the morning you were gone. Sunlight failed to warm or wake you, so I rose and walked to the kitchen. A stranger in our house.
Jeremy lives in Ontario, Canada, with his wife and two young children. He loves to write, but seldom does. He has amassed a significant pile of books as “must reads” by his bedside that get picked at page by page, but have not been finished. Jeremy loves his children, and looks forward to finishing those books, whenever Paw Patrol is not a thing anymore.
The fish were late this year. Stanley sat with the collected fishermen and ate the egg sandwich he’d made at home.
Home was dusty. It was never dusty before Evelyn’s death. So he came to the river and waited.
The other men drifted away. “It’s over,” they said.
He waited.
Over a lifetime, Ursula Hoult has done many things – a little bit of a lot of things, to put it another way. As you read, you may wonder “did she make that bit up”? And the answer is quite likely: “Yes, because it suited the story.” She is currently focused on flashfiction writing. See more at ursulahoult.com.