When the quake killed thousands of his subjects, the king took it as a declaration of war by the Earth itself. Swearing vengeance on an ungrateful ally, he ordered cannon aimed at the soil. Soldiers stabbed their bayonets at the oaks, and sappers crumbled the mountains. There was no surrender.
Dave Bradley’s words have appeared in publications such as Best Of British Science Fiction and Dorling Kindersley’s The Screen Traveller’s Guide, as well as various pop culture magazines and websites.
Saturday, he packed up all his books in boxes and loaded them in his car, and that’s when she knew he was serious. Previously, he’d grab his notebook, cigarettes, a satchel of socks and underwear. Then he’d drive around for a while. But he always came home to his books.
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.
Sunglasses-clad, the goat gnawed a bright red sari like candy. Shopkeepers bickered over whose festival idol it offended. Tourists snapped selfies; children clapped and whooped. I offered steaming chai. It licked my hand, blinked once, then trotted off, pausing only to nibble my neighbour’s winning lottery ticket. Chaos officially certified.
Susmita Mukherjee is an Indian author and former teacher at Army Public School, based in Kolkata. Her work explores human tenderness and oddities in everyday life. She writes with precision and empathy, finding humour and strangeness in ordinary moments.
This time, I was travelling alone. Would see, know and relish alone. We had anticipated another sunny moment. I noticed her glow and blossoming after our last vacation, but then she opened another door—a door to the celestial, a door to spiritual solitude. It was another strange discovered path.
Thompson Emate is trying his hand at every genre of fiction. He has a deep love for nature and the arts. He lives in Lagos, Nigeria.
I have my father’s charisma. It wasn’t a gift—I stole it while he slept. Now I dominate the room, my voice crushing the endless chatter of the guests, forcing all eyes to mine.
And in the back, hunched against a wall, my father glares wordlessly, wishing he were me.
Marc Young lives in Seattle and writes speculative fiction, sometimes using more than 50 words.
Green as the sea. Green as envy. Green as the eye of the dragon who raided Ms. Hobblefinch’s garden. She grew monstrously big greens. And would invite her friends to drink red wine and smoke. They used to laugh and tell tall tales, of what they had fed the garden.
Erick Lima is a wanderer and writer.
The story of the week for March 30 to April 3 is…
A Prescription by Jinjia Grace Hu
Sixty grams of blighted wheat. Twenty grams of licorice. Ten dried dates. One longan. Four rose buds, and a few Goji berries.
A note I found tucked in the very back of Ma’s bottom drawer two weeks after her death, three years after Pa’s. A Chinese herbal prescription for heartbreak.
Jinjia Grace Hu was born in Nanjing, China, and lives in New York with her cat, Almond. She is an MFA candidate in creative writing at Columbia University. Her stories appear or are forthcoming in The First Line, The Bloomin’ Onion, Bright Flash Literary Review, and elsewhere.
I frisbee the flattest rock into the water. The ocean roars, but you are silent, arms folded, looking away from me. Sullen because you hate the beach. I hold my breath and wait to see if the rock will skip. If it does, I stay. If it doesn’t, I leave.
Candace Webb (she/her) writes from Belmont, MA on the traditional territory of the Pawtucket people and the Massachusetts tribal nation, where she lives with her partner, two children, and two cats. Her human companions are tame; her cats are not. You can find her work in Five on the Fifth, Emerge Literary Journal, and Defenestration. Her work was nominated for the Best of the Net and Pushcart Prize anthologies in 2022, and she was a finalist in Room Magazine’s 2022 Short Forms Contest. She is a reader for Flash Fiction Magazine.
Thoughts and actions begin, and go nowhere.
Birds are different. A wing shifts, a body turns, and it passes through the whole flock. They take off as one, landing somewhere far.
If birds are capable of holding a conviction, it’s that evolution is not all it’s cracked up to be.
J.S. O’Keefe’s work spans short stories, essays, and poems. They have been featured in a variety of publications, including AntipodeanSF, Roi Faineant, 101 Words, Everyday Fiction, Spillwords, Lothlorien Poetry Journal, 50 Word Stories, ScribesMicro, Dissident Voice, 50GT, etc.