Marilyn went to sleep next to her husband of sixty-nine years and woke up next to an alien. White eyes. Grayish skin. She pondered the imposter.
Carefully, she laid down and covered them both with the blanket. Perhaps the ship that had taken her husband would come back for her.
Sarah Gane Burton is a freelance writer living in Michigan with her husband, two children, and a dog. Her poetry has been published in “Medical Literary Messenger” and “Third Wednesday.”
October: crimson, burnt-orange and gamboge, a poisonous yellow powder once used in paint.
We are living above a paint store in Chicago, she wrote, come visit! Oh, how I wanted to.
Sometimes, in my writing group, I write about a paint store. They think I’m writing about a paint store.
Matthew is fortunate to sometimes live near a lake in Maine where loons swim and sometimes yodel and hoot late at night. And sometimes on a day like this with few clouds in the sky and mountains in the distance a warm breeze will sweep across the lake and take your breath away.
Weeknights Jack had emptied his pockets into a cracked blue bowl on their bureau. Fridays they’d count the money and splurge: chips, beer, a pay-for-view. They’d wrangled over crumpled dollar bills, over what to choose. Wrangled, Jack thought, over everything. He missed their wrangling. Missed counting. He hated the change.
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.
On the date that my father died, I shopped for Norwegian gifts. I made his favorite foods, creamed corn on mashed potatoes. I pondered his life – and his death. I remembered his smile, his grace, his strength, and his love. On the date that my father died, I missed him.
Lucia Blau lives in Minnesota surrounded by reminders of her Scandinavian culture. She wrote this to honor her Norwegian father and the pride he took in his heritage.
Watching the pair of graceful swans in the pond behind the hospice facility calmed her anxiety in ways the end-of-life therapy regimen had not. During the visit, she said, “See, they’re like us, perfectly matched.”
After her funeral, I returned to the pond.
Now, just a solitary swan swam alone.
Bud is a disabled veteran who writes flash fiction and short stories.
I sit at the same corner table of the same Upper West Side bar every chill autumn Sunday afternoon drinking the same bourbon listening to the same melancholy piano. And every chill autumn Sunday afternoon I realize the same thing—that she’s never going to walk through the door again.
Nick Young is a retired award-winning CBS News Correspondent. In addition to 50-Word Stories, his writing has appeared in dozens of reviews, journals and anthologies. His first novel, “Deadline,” was published in the Fall of 2023. He lives outside Chicago.
When the town-sheriff reported my mother dead, my grandfather disagreed.
Where’s her body, he said. Show me a body.
I drove us downtown. Our visit to the morgue silenced the old man.
That’s not her, he said on the ride home. There’s a resemblance, but I know my own daughter.
Bob Thurber is the author of six books. Regarded as a master of Flash and Micro Fiction, his work has appeared in Esquire and other magazines, been anthologized 60 times, received a long list of awards, and been utilized in schools and colleges throughout the world. He resides in Massachusetts. Visit his website at BobThurber.net.
Staring at a picture of his family for a final time, he wistfully set the frame in a box labeled “Do Not Open.” He placed the box on a shelf in his empty storage unit, padlocking the door. On the drive home, he tossed the key out of the window.
HNK has been featured on fifty word stories a couple of times before. His debut novel will be released in November. You can purchase a copy here.
I looked up because an invisible spark went off in my head. With my two tired eyes, with the open book still in my hands, I watched a beautiful blue bird fly straight into my sliding glass door. I got up to check on it and found it frozen stone.
Sean is a 39-year-old writer who learned to write when he was diagnosed with schizophrenia when he was 20. He is a slow learner and wrote at least 12,000,000 words before he got the hang on this writing thing. It provides a solid foundation for a meaningful life.
He never saw a corpse before. Grandpa lay in the casket, but it didn’t look like him. Was Grandpa still a ‘he’? An ‘it’?
The expression seemed wrong. The real Grandpa would never make that face.
The same nose hairs, though.
“Don’t touch,” an old woman scolded.
But why not?
Ken Zang loves observing the world around him almost as much as living in it. If Ken isn’t learning what makes something, or someone, tick, then he is usually trying to make family, or potential family, laugh.