He changed the locks in October, the month he got married. But the landlord used the same hardware.
She figured it out in under a minute.
She doesn’t take anything. She doesn’t leave anything.
Just stands in his kitchen, flipping through the calendar on his refrigerator.
Counting backward from nine.
Paul D’Arcy tells stories. All real. Most brief. You can read more at pauldrc.com.
A fly bookmarked pages six and seven. The last reader, inattentive or overawed, flattened it into a full stop. Maybe, having cut a life short, they couldn’t read again. Or perhaps the fly crawled in for warmth and got crushed by the weight of the words. Hemingway is heavy stuff.
Tom Maher is a writer from London who was shortlisted for the 2025 Bridport Prize.
The story of the week for June 29 to July 3 is…
The Færie Feast by Ellen Taylor
When I was a child, I stepped into Færie. My life fit like hand-me-down clothes, so I wanted to find another.
The færies served a feast of skewered hearts. The flesh was soft; it spread warmth through my chest.
When I came home, it was all I wanted to taste.
Ellen Taylor is an academic in Nottingham, England. She writes short fiction to procrastinate from editing her novel.
Home is in a one-use cooler that costs as much as a used Honda Civic. Right now, it’s on a chartered helicopter and, honestly, there’s no way I can ground that figure for you—unless you’re the kinda scumbag who cuts in line for a heart transplant in the first place.
Nicholas De Marino’s Lamprocapnos spectabilis has retreated into the shade.
It was just out of reach. Just millimetres from the tips of my fingers, but in these gloves that just was too much. No act of will could change that; but that didn’t stop me struggling. I needed a helping hand from someone the other side. But they weren’t coming.
Oscar Clark is a video games veteran who wrote the game design/business books Games as a Service and Playing with Balance, published by CRC Press. He also runs a sci-fi improv dilemma actual play Anything Could Happen Show, which is part of the Fable & Folly Network.
A man walks along a seafront in February. Ice coats the rocks. The waves strike the concrete walkway and break into cold spray. He pulls his coat tighter. The houses look unoccupied. A woman approaches. She pulls her woolly scarf tighter. They pass. She doesn’t turn to look at him.
Ralph Goldswain lives in London. He writes fiction, non fiction, history, and has been widely published in the UK, America and South Africa. He’s now settled on writing microfiction, his greatest writing challenge.
Henry won’t stay in the vault, no matter what Arthur does. He tries to bribe Henry with poems of praise, flowers, a candlelight vigil on his marble mantle. But Henry wants more.
“I’ll keep you warm,” Henry vows, and so Arthur nestles alongside him in the vault.
Sleep comes easy.
Jillian Bost has had several short speculative stories published online and in anthologies. She is an affiliate member of the Horror Writers Association.
His ashes sit in a box atop the shelf. They are nestled between my favorite books and a bud vase holding a wooden tulip. Sometimes I take the box down. I wish, yet again, that I had instructions. But I don’t, and so the box goes back on the shelf.
Carolyn is based in Seattle, WA. She writes stories both on and off the clock.
After the sermon, the preacher slipped into a back pew and filled his Bible’s margins with notes from another man’s message.
Down the hall, a student raised his hand.
The teacher never looked up.
One left church with fuller pages.
The other left with empty margins.