The body had washed ashore holding a note: “Bury me near a piano.”
I carried the body to the landfill where the grand piano stood half submerged in garbage. I placed the body on the keys and listened to the music it made as trash blew wildly in the wind.
Christina Murphy’s stories appears in a range of journals and anthologies, including, most recently, Page & Spine and Samizdat Literary Journal.
Born two months early, unable to breathe on her own. She lived only one day.
Everywhere, I see women toting new babies or proudly displaying pregnant bellies. That should be me.
I want to shout, “I have a baby too!”
But I just smile over the screaming in my head.
Emily Merrell is a mother and a writer. She is currently working with an illustrator on her first children’s book.
Fifty words: the Swiss Cheese of storytelling.
Strategically placed holes actually hold it together. A dozen words to start a scene, fifteen to introduce a character or two. Then conflict and a hint of resolution with an open ending.
What happens next? What’s left out is what makes it work.
During the day, Gary Zenker creates marketing plans and ad copy. By night, he turns his attention to writing things people might actually WANT to read.
Nothing processed, no matter how many conversations we had at the hospital. Confusion made for a long ride home. I don’t remember walking through the front door.
I only remember when Lindsey saw the unopened gifts from the shower scattered on the nursery floor. That’s when she began to cry.
Chad Benjamin Smith never met a word that didn’t deserve writing. Perhaps that cheapened his work. He is a watcher. When that’s not enough, he’s a doer. He was born in a hospital and lives in a house. He goes to work and doesn’t write about it (except for just now). In addition to writing 50-word stories, he writes amazing third person bios.
Quiet ceased as the storm began. The rainfall drowned out the sounds of his footfalls as he rushed forward to his foe, knife in hand.
He slashed and tore. Wires dangled and lines leaked their fluids.
His job was done. This mechanical monster would not fell another tree.
For now.
Brandon Magruder wrote this story.
John awoke one day to find that all of his bones had been stolen.
Incensed, he painstakingly flopped his way to the house of his friend Jamal, suspecting he had something to do with it.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” said Jamal, a bloody chainsaw in his hand.
Steven B. is a human being who lives on the planet Earth.
Order up yells the cook. Spattered shoes pinching toes scurry from table to table, pouring coffee, delivering fake smiles painted with morning lipstick.
She scrapes seventy-five cents in quarters, nickels and pennies into her apron. An eight-fifty breakfast should have been a dollar-twenty-five tip. She majored in math in college.
Jeff Switt is a retired advertising agency guy who loves writing flash fiction, some days to curb his angst, other days to fuel it. His words have been featured at Dogzplot, Boston Literary Review, Flash Fiction World, Nailpolish Stories, 50-Word Stories, 100 Word Story, A Story in 100 Words, 101 Word Stories, and Shotgun Honey, and have appeared at lots of places that take whatever you send in.
Melting; last of snow.
My flowerbeds spring into blossoms of ivory, rose, lemony yellow. When they fade, the blues of forget-me-nots. Stems I planted. From a bouquet you gave me.
See them rise under the warming sun, early rains of spring. I long to see you.
You have forgotten me.
Krystyna writes poetry, flash fiction, and short stories, and has been published both online and in print. She lives in Edmonton, Canada. Krystyna loves to travel the world and share her experiences through writing.
Voices in my head and lies in my mind, my body cannot move. Soon the pills stop working, like they always do, and the voices celebrate. I tell the people who say they aren’t real, but they tell me I am crazy.
And the white rabbit is simply discarded again.
Lottie Nancarrow is a horrible Rubik’s-cube-solver and an almost 15 yrs old hermit. She wants you to come to the dark side. You bring the tea, she’ll bring the bacon.
Where cars once drove there is now wilderness, overrun with animals who never used to call this place their home.
The buildings now serve as monuments for a great society forgotten in time.
He stares across the city and listens to it speak, with the realization he is truly alone.
Adam Randall has previously been featured on 50-word stories, and hopes to one day complete some great masterpiece. He just needs to figure out just what that might be.