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.
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.
We form a club, pondering the mysteries of life. Every Tuesday night at 7 PM.
We read books, attend conferences, question friends.
The bottom line is, we simply cannot concur on what we’re doing here.
We are, however, in agreement on one thing.
There must be pizza at every meeting.
Susan Gale Wickes is a writer from Indiana. She enjoys pizza and pondering the mysteries of life.
Another day starts. You wake weary and late. Whip on a dress suit, hairspray, lippy, and name tag. No time for brushing your teeth. No matter. You never smile at the office anyway.
Clutching a tepid coffee, you’re out the door and running, racing towards the end of your life.
GB Burgess works from home now and smiles every day.
They had one thing to do, no words to waste,
time flew, they labored, days fell away,
fragments landed at the edges of dreams where factory workers in hooded cloaks weaved memories into light,
wearing masks made from shadows, peeping through slits, breathing in, sighting targets, stringing bows,
aiming steadily.
Bob Thurber is the author of “Paperboy: A Dysfunctional Novel” and two collections of stories. A celebrated master of Flash and Micro Fiction, his work has appeared in 60 anthologies, received dozens of awards, and been used in schools and colleges throughout the world. He resides in Massachusetts where, though legally blind, he continues to write every day. Visit his website at BobThurber.net.
Dedicated to the “50 Word Stories” group.
She felt safe in asking only a few trusted friends.
Do you question your motivations?
Most said no, they just did stuff.
She asked a spiritual teacher if it was important.
Don’t waste your time, said the teacher.
Now, when it bubbles up, she gets real quiet,
like a tree.
Matthew lives in Maine.
While smoking my second-to-last cigarette under a street lamp in the desert, I decided that life operated on bad metaphors and absurdist poetry.
As I was crushing the last embers, two jack rabbits ran pitter patter away to have their children and die among the sand dunes and salt flats.
Peter Vickland is a college student living and working in Sacramento, California. His hobbies, aside from writing, include reading and collecting books and not cutting his hair as often as he needs to, as he is frequently reminded by his loving girlfriend. See more at petervicklandwriting.com.
The dead got up from the battlefield. Some played with their wounds. Others witnessed the horror of what they had become. As they walked away a young private looked back and saw their bodies where they’d fallen and sighed, “If all this is for that, why did we bother coming?”
Connell writes a bit and no more.
She’d never liked fog; it always seemed smothering and inescapable. Like Life. Like Motherhood.
Today, the cool grey mist wrapped around her felt open and somehow freeing.
Her eyes fell to the stone at her feet and she wondered what she could do now that she’d buried her last child.
Melissa is a writer, teacher, and dog lover in the Middle of Nowhere, Michigan.