“Come here, little sugar pillow,” my husband used to say, enfolding me in his arms on our sleep-in Saturday mornings. He died before I mastered his native Icelandic and learned he’d been using the literal translation of “marshmallow.” I still glance at my love handles, wondering just what he’d meant.
Râna had a beautiful decade of living in the northwest of Iceland interrupted by the pandemic, and she’s now preparing for the zombie apocalypse in her hometown of Montreal.
Ti’ci is bullied, so she feeds the monster in the mirror and it gurgles excitedly, learning, repeating:
“You’re so ugly”
“Toothpick”
“That skin though”
When Ti’ci disappears, the monster escapes the mirror, lumps of flesh convulsing. It grows limbs, a glare, and a snarl, and replaces her.
The cycle persists.
Stephanie is just a girl who enjoys reading manhwas and writing about things she observes. She has short fiction in a few places including 101 words, but otherwise she’s just a young’un.
Before his hopeful outing with a visiting former love, the old man buys a new baseball cap. He shapes the bill with care. Looking in the mirror from under the just-so curve, he sees for a clear moment back to the first time he ever felt he looked truly cool.
Lynn Kozlowski’s writing has appeared in such places as 50-Word Stories, The Quarterly, The Malahat Review, Poetry Breakfast, and failbetter.com. He has a volume of short pieces, Historical Markers.
Stretching truth… an old photo, a love of hiking and exotic travel, a passion for good food and wine plus an irresistible sense of humour. Both were guilty. He scanned the cafe looking for his “Hopeful Goddess”, she for her “Saviour Knight”. Empty chairs and lonely hearts, sipping Diet Coke.
Cari Main is retired and a big fan of the 50-word challenge.
Sugar is the enemy. Fat is poison. Mantras like these run on a loop inside my foggy mind.
Staring down the overflowing plate, my heart thunders against my ribcage at the thought of eating blacklisted snacks.
Grimacing, I take a bite of the Hershey bar. Recovery is a slow process.
Lauren is an undergraduate student studying Creative Writing at Emerson College.
Sue Ella Brennen stood in front of her mother’s bathroom mirror. Green, glittery dust coated the counter. Globs of mascara below her eye.
Her mother walked into the bathroom. “Susie, what are you doing with my makeup?”
Sue Ella looked at herself in the mirror. “Mama, help me be pretty.”
Gretchen Gales wrote this story.
Lana dreamed about her face. The bunched curtain eyelids. The crooked witch’s nose. The wrinkles that multiplied like hydra heads.
Lana woke up and saw her new face. It was smooth, symmetrical, sleek.
She wondered how long it would be before she started seeing this face in her dreams, instead.
Ashley Naftule is a writer and performer from Phoenix, AZ. He enjoys Marx Brothers movies, drawing with colored chalk, karaoke, and the occult. To see more of his work, go to ashleynaftule.com.