The story of the week for July 14 to 18 is…
Paithani Shadows by Shivam Pailwan
All posts by Tim
MARIA MILLER: Summer Evenings
At dusk the fireflies light their tail torches announcing the Moth, a nightly collage of distinctive creatures gathering to soulcialize.
Standing on a toadstool, Ms. Frog reads her fifty-word story from a leaf(let).
Grasshopper saws his back-legged fiddle, offering up a jig as an ode to these gilded summer evenings.
Maria Miller gave up obsessive Solitaire for a much more satisfying 50-wording habit.
ERICK LIMA: Conditions of Honesty
In my household, you could not get away with saying things like “I cried at your story,” unless you are drunk, and it’s snowing, on Christmas morning, the one on which you are leaving for basic training, and the person you are talking to is your mother. Apologizing. Half-laughing, half-sobbing.
Erick Lima is a wanderer and a writer.
DEBORAH SALE-BUTLER: Questions for a Tethered Soul
What happens to a soul that can’t leave—tethered to a body that’s forgotten how to die? Does it secretly visit people and places it once loved? Is that why the body speaks out of time? Which hurts more—seeing things you cannot touch or touching things you can’t remember?
Deborah Sale-Butler is a Portland, Oregon based writer. Her stories have appeared, or are forthcoming in dozens of publications including “101 Words,” “Twisting, Turning Timeshifts” and “Three X the Fun” anthologies, “Sci Fi Shorts,” “Flash Fiction Magazine,” and “Amazing Stories.” Read more at https://deborah-sale-butler.com.
LILA WEBB: Memoirs of a Late-Stage Capitalist
I blow on a dandelion and one thousand wishes are born. One wish guides a lost soldier home. One wish cures cancer. One reunites lovers across the grave.
I carefully pluck all of the wishes from the sky and tuck them into my pocket.
They are my wishes, after all.
Lila is an aspiring writer living in the wild Canadian foothills. She is writing this while getting a laptop-shaped sunburn on her leg.
SHIVAM PAILWAN: Paithani Shadows
She was seen once, donning a Paithani, balancing a rusted bicycle, riding past the tamarind tree whose fruits now smell of burned silk.
The cloth’s draped around an empty frame in her father’s house.
“Girls don’t vanish,” her aunt insists. “They’re just hard to find where men forget to look.”
Shivam Pailwan is a writer based in Mumbai working at the intersection of literature, media, and the rural-urban divide. He’s usually found at the cinemas.
THOMAS MALLOCH: Permanently Marked
We were comparing tattoos, grandad and me. His was a dot in the palm of his hand, charcoal grey.
“Two lessons,” he said. “One: never catch a falling pencil, especially when it’s just been sharpened.”
He paused, eyes distant.
“And number two?”
A grimace. “Not all mistakes can be erased.’”
Thomas Malloch began writing in retirement. Short stories and Flash fiction mostly. Sometimes, he even gets published.
ERNESTO SANCHEZ: Drowned Whispers
She tugs on my sleeve eagerly: “Play with me daddy, please?”
I glance down at her and smile, my beautiful daughter… So hopeful.
I turn back to my computer screens, the telescope’s hum drowning her whispers, the plight of an astronomer searching for intelligent life, somewhere in the infinite void.
Ernesto Sanchez is a Mexican-American speculative fiction writer specializing in hard science fiction that explores the intersection of technology, humanity, and the future. With a graduate background in information technology and project management, he brings technical depth and real-world insight to his imaginative storytelling. Originally from Los Angeles, Ernesto now lives with his wife and daughter in Washington State.
JOE PEARSON: Seahorse Dad
After you were born, I carried you for nine months in the sling. “You owe me,” said your mother.
You’d sleep on my chest, skin to skin, and I’d imagine you sinking into me. I can’t grow a skeleton, or nourish you with my body. Our bond needs open water.
Joe Pearson is a British fiction writer living in Paris with an interest in human responses to crises — whether personal, social, or environmental. His work often deals with themes of climate change, mental health, masculinity and fatherhood.
BEATRICE RAO: The Changing World
He loves to fix things.
Jigsaws are his favourite.
I see him trying to put the world together.
The puzzle constantly moves.
States of uncertainty.
Boundaries change before his eyes.
Countries disappear.
I offer to help.
Tell him to fix the corners first.
Hopefully the pieces will stay in place.
Beatrice Rao was inspired by her grandchild.