“If he hopes to hold on to his title, our newly-appointed chief of police really needs to get his priorities straight.”
“Why? What did he do?”
“His first day on the job, he found a housefly in his office. Rather than handle it himself, he called for a S.W.A.T. team.”
John H. Dromey’s short fiction’s been published in Mystery Weekly Magazine and over 150 other venues.
The convert secured the offering. “Shouldn’t we be doing this during a lunar eclipse instead?”
The priest pulled a dagger from his robe. “We worship shadows caused by the moon, not the moon itself.”
“I’m not sure that’ll stop people from calling you ‘lunatics,'” muttered the woman on the altar.
Pontius Paiva is a minister of microfiction in service of the short story. Seekers can find him at pontiuspaiva.com.
It started with surreptitious phone calls. Overheard whispers about holding her… “she’s the one.” How could he?!
Jenna’s heart raced as his car pulled up. Ready to confront, she threw open the door to find him cradling Millie, their new Labrador puppy.
Moral: distrust can be ruff, but fur-giveness heals.
Lisa Chambers is a Texas girl who enjoys writing and appreciates the amazing writers of Fifty-Word Stories.
It has been theorized that the universe materialized out of nothingness, the past and future exist simultaneously in the present, and mere observation affects and alters reality.
It could be said that what we see as ‘now here’ was made possible by a space created in the middle of ‘nowhere’.
Pontius Paiva’s stories are as intangible as the consciousness they spawn from. Abstract proof of his existence can be found at pontiuspaiva.com
Once upon a time, there was a girl who was a jigsaw puzzle. Everyone loved her because she could arrange herself to be whatever anyone wanted. Then, one morning, she looked in the mirror and realized she did not remember who she was anymore.
Then she fell all to pieces.
J.C. Pillard lives in Colorado where she works as an editor and data analyst. She has previously published stories with Broadswords and Blasters and Fall Into Fantasy 2019. She spends her time gardening, reading, and, of course, writing.
On the radio recently, a doctor said, “COVID-19 is a wimp; it can’t live long in the air.”
But radio waves do; they pass right through like it’s not even there
and propagate like ocean waves,
heavy and salty with memories of sunlight
or wishes for things long since gone.
Matthew Eichenlaub spends his quarantine days contemplating a lake in Maine from his kitchen table, yet despite his good fortune, he longs for the good ole days. When he could linger in the long juice and soda aisle of Hannaford Supermarket, and read the many different cranberry juice labels.
“The Governor said our next election will be an all-mail election,” the wife said.
“But that would be illegal,” her husband replied.
“Why?”
“Because of the 19th Amendment.”
“What was the 19th Amendment?”
“It granted females the right to vote, so actually you can’t have an all-male election ever again.”
Don Nigroni studied economics at Saint Joseph’s University and philosophy at Notre Dame but now cuts invasive vines at the Heinz National Wildlife Refuge.
Introduced by a mixologist, Stan was a zoologist, Evie a geologist. They lived in a metropolis, were happily monogamous, their lives never monotonous. Then Evie saw a gynecologist, who sent her to a virologist.
Stan wasn’t a monogamist.
Evie thought him the rottenest. He’s at the ER with a proctologist.
Originally from Toronto, Janet Koops now calls Bend, Oregon home. When she is not sitting at her computer, she is exploring the high desert with her husky.
The evidence was already heavily against me. The ring—that item meant to solve my problems—found in my possession. Tire tracks in the mud. The dirty shovel in my car.
But what really convinced the jury in the grave robbing case was DNA proof. My nail in the coffin.
Michael Augustine Dondero is a Brooklyn-based writer. Read more on his website, augustinedondero.com. He’s also the co-creator of the horror/sci-fi podcast “Lost Signal Society.” Tune in at lostsignalsociety.com.
“How’d you find your runaway goat?”
“We simply followed his spoor.”
“How’d you know it was his?”
“Before he left, Billy ate a magazine with one of your stories in it.”
“How’d that help?”
“Billy found some of your prose was indigestible. You could say he left a toilet-paper trail.”
John H. Dromey has some hundred-word stories (four new, one reprint) in WORLDS: A Science Fiction Microfiction Anthology (Dark Drabbles Book 1) (Black Hare Press, 2019).