There was a huge crash as the shelves tore from the kitchen wall and the stored crockery and crystal smashed.
A twenty first birthday present; a wedding gift; a love token; items from times, places, people long gone.
I cried, not for the broken dishes but for the shattered memories.
This really did happen in Jan’s old-fashioned kitchen.
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.
While waiting for the morning train, Jakob took another look at her photo. The ad said she would make a good wife. She looked healthy. He liked that. He thought about all the chores waiting back at the farm.
Maybe, he thought, they could make it back by feeding time.
Originally from Tennessee, Gail L. Winfree is a writer and author currently living in Germany. He has written and published two novels and a book of poems and short stories.
So you see fireflies and I see fairies. You see the moon and I see a benevolent smile. But when daylight comes we both awaken to the same dingy ceiling where we fell onto the bed – you entranced by my enchanted whimsy and me, grateful to have taken you there.
Linda is a professional who has worked all over Canada, the US, and Australia; a former bookstore owner; and an adventure traveler. Linda is also an avid reader (with no genre loyalty whatsoever) and volunteers many hours supporting community theatre and festivals as well as freelance writing for local newspapers and small businesses. Through all of this, Linda has managed to remain faithful to her passion: creative writing for sheer pleasure.
Perdita ignores traffic on the steps of the National Gallery, lamenting a brain that’s for the birds. She marks time with labored creases, origami swelling at her feet.
Her memories grow thin, likes the spines of paper sparrows, but she will come here daily, until she forgets how to fold.
Susannah earned an MFA in Creative Nonfiction from Queens University of Charlotte. Her flash fiction and poetry have appeared in Apocrypha and Abstractions, The Story Shack, and Eskimo Pie. Her artwork and photography have appeared in Gravel, The Tishman Review, and Oxford Magazine.
The charlatan claimed to be able to read the bumps and dents on my skull.
He massaged and prodded, poked and stroked, then told me I was kind and stubborn, and just a little too sensitive.
What would he tell me if he could read the scars on my heart?
Candace Kubinec wrote this story.
“Taste?” I offered.
One man surveyed the platter I held sheepishly in my hands: my heart in its entirety, chopped to fun-sized pieces. Toothpicks punctuated each morsel.
He popped a red bite into his mouth, then, spitting it into his napkin, daintily placed it on the edge of my tray.
This is Alexandra’s seventh 50-word story.
Some nights, you wonder if he took you to treatment with him.
Some nights, you wonder if he thinks of you. If so, he could pull out pieces he took from you and remember. Maybe he could fashion them into a hand.
That way, he’d never have to let go.
Daniel Garcia is currently a student pursuing a degree in Creative Writing. His work has been featured on or at Write About Now Poetry, Capturing the Corners, the University of North Texas, Mountain View College, Grayson College, and is forthcoming in SUGAR Magazine. Some of his favorite things to do are going to church—and by church he means poetry slams—giving as many hugs as possible, living by the words “You are all that you have,” and falling off the edge of the Earth.
The story of the week for January 2 to 6 is…
2:00 AM by L.S. Engler
L.S. effectively communicated the emotional core of the characters and their relationship without having to describe a series of events, which is a very valuable skill in this format.
We had a big, interesting year in 2016, filled with hundreds of great 50-word stories. It’s almost time to crown the best story published on 50WS in the past 12 months!
Here are the 12 Story of the Month winners for 2016.
JANUARY: Waiting to be a Good Samaritan, by Paul Beckman
FEBRUARY: Unicorn Heaven, by Brenda Anderson
MARCH: Luck, by Viv Burgess
APRIL: The Shrimp Farmer, by Alexandra Keister
MAY: Alien Nature, by Patrick Yu
JUNE: There Be Monsters, by Eva Lucien
JULY: Aunt Peg, by Jennifer L. Freed
AUGUST: Five minutes until ‘I do’, by Mark Farley
SEPTEMBER: Moving On, by Mark Farley
OCTOBER: Audition, by Magda Knight
NOVEMBER: Palindrome, by Pontius Paiva
DECEMBER: My Fortune, by David Rae
The winner, as chosen by editor Tim Sevenhuysen, will be announced on Saturday, January 14!
The prize for the Story of the Year winner will be:
Which finalist was your favourite? If you could nominate a story that didn’t earn Story of the Month, which would you pick?
Throwback: In 2015, Bob Thurber won the Story of the Year award with his piece The Mapmaker’s Calligraphist Daughter. In 2016, Guy Preston took the prize with One Job Away From Retirement.