She loved the beach.
Yesterday I found sand in my shoes.
Today, flecks of seaweed clinging to my clothes.
Now the scent of her coconut tanning lotion traces the air.
I haven’t gone to the beach in the year since she drowned.
I wonder what she’s trying to tell me.
Mary lives on the coast in the south-east of Ireland, where the sea has a habit of seeping into her writing.
My heart pounding in my chest, I watched as you lay on the white linen, still and silent. The fan’s breeze fluttered your hair and eyelashes. You looked cool, reposed, as though sleeping. I squeezed your hand and whispered for you to open your eyes, once more.
But you didn’t.
Melanie Cranenburgh lives in Western Australia and rescues wildlife in her spare time.
Tears wanted to flow but nothing came. I wanted to cry but the guilt was too strong. In one fell swoop, my entire world crumbled before me, and I could not have done anything.
In that one moment, I understood what love and friendship meant because I had betrayed both.
Armaan is a bibliophile who listens to punk and alt rock, plays APRGs and likes to get serious sometimes. He started writing because his friends told him his English was better than theirs. His strong belief in friends has made him continue writing short fictional stories after high-school even though he currently pursues a degree in business management. He has recently entered the flash writing scene.
This beach, with its smooth stones and jagged waves, was always your favourite, wasn’t it, Mum?
That’s why I’m standing here with you now, one last time, a small tin in my hand that I can’t bring myself to tip. But I know I’ll have no choice in the end.
Laura Besley squeezes writing into the beginning and end of her day, when her young son is sleeping. She has been published in several anthologies and online. She had recently moved back to the UK after ten years abroad.
She looked through her cataract cloud. Her hair, like the bathroom mirror, had silvered. Her face showed cracks like the tile. Toothbrushes… two?
Nothing looked familiar. Not the photo of children that fluttered from her purse to the cold tile floor. Not the gray-haired man who carried her to bed.
Eileen McIntyre writes to the hum of hummingbird wings and listens to critique from crows in the woods of Northern California.
Dr. Gennit was close to a breakthrough. His devotion to finding a cure for Alzheimer’s was legendary.
He’d been caregiver for his mother, watching her steady decline and eventual death.
We thought he was just overworked until he left the lab today.
“I really can’t stay. Mother has dinner ready.”
Candace Kubinec wrote this story.
Her scars run deep. Invisible.
A stab in the heart here, a slap in the face there.
She plans her escape with precision, as far as her meagre funds will allow. Relief.
She forces herself to stop thinking about her past pain, her ex-husband and, with a pang, her ex-dog.
Jean lives in a village near Bath in the UK. She has an ex-husband and an ex-dog.
I used to collect mermaid scales at the beach with my brother. They were aluminium soda can tabs, but whatever—we knew they were really mythical, wish-granting scales. We used them for snow days until my brother caught pneumonia.
I stacked hundreds on his grave.
Even then, it wasn’t enough.
Like most kids , E.O. just used shooting stars to wish for snow days. During meteor showers, about 90% of the wishes in the region were likely made for snow, with the remaining 10% being divided between money, sports cars, and those hoping that their sadistic bosses would drop dead inexplicably.
The forest struck them dumb with awe: its flowery smell, the endless shades of green; the deafening cacophony of sounds: croaking, hissing, humming. A splash of startling red amidst the leaves.
Unimaginable that such an enchanted place once spanned across the Earth.
Humbled, they stepped out of the rainforest simulator.
Rachael is an English teacher in Scotland.
After they pulled her, pliant, from the water, someone raced to fetch help. Her husband insisted they lay her carefully, flat and straight. This they did, their mouths swallowing the questions they no longer dared ask.
I couldn’t see the point, myself. She was already broken from too much bending.
Linda Grierson-Irish writes flash fiction and the occasional short story, often while trying to sleep.