The story of the week for June 1 to 5 is…
The Big Score by Gordon Brown
and
The Notebook by Paul D’Arcy
COLBY WRASSE: Seventeen Wheels
On the dash he keeps a photo he wishes to forget. The long open road leads the mind to dark alleyways. Places not to be after dark – or before. Deadheading to a room with an empty chair. Pop-top echoes against bare walls. Hotdog in the microwave hisses a familiar song.
Colby Wrasse is still stumbling towards an uncertain future.
GORDON BROWN: The Big Score
I steal a lake when no one’s looking. Stuff it into my pocket and walk.
Bait shops. Docks. Reflection of the mountain on the water. I keep it in a chest under my bed, buried under my graduation robes, grandad’s smile, and my favorite dive bar.
Nobody suspects a thing.
Gordon Brown grew up in the deserts of Syria and now lives in the deserts of Nevada. Since arriving in the New World, his work has appeared in McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, Weird Horror Magazine, Hunger Mountain Review, and elsewhere. His horror haiku chapbook, Skin Crawls, is available from Cuttlefish Books. He spends his time writing feverishly and looking after his cats, of which he has none.
SARAH SORENSEN: Summer Mornings, Between Cartoons
Take the kitchen chair to the counter. Climb up. Open the little cupboard door. Smell the jars of nutmeg, cinnamon. Crab sidle into the sink. Stare out the window. See the pizza place, the neighbors, the cars. Let the sun hit you square in the chest. Sidle back, climb down.
Sarah Sorensen (she/her) MA, MLIS is a queer writer based in the Metro Detroit area. She’s honored to be named a 2025 Best Small Fictions author and runner-up in the 2025 RockPaperPoem Poetry Contest. Sarah’s poetry chapbook, Light Splits Down the Wolf’s Tooth is now available through Bottlecap Press.
ELODIE A ROY: Blue
Grandma would absentmindedly leave the cupboard door open and Grandpa gently shut it after her. When he died, Grandma continually had bruises on her forehead, and it is how she’d remember her great love was gone – staring into the bathroom mirror, dazed, tentatively touching her bruised skin – how it hurt.
Elodie A. Roy is based in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, UK. Her short stories appear in The Stinging Fly, 3:AM Magazine, Flash Frog, New World Writing, Blink-Ink, Bending Genres, and elsewhere. In 2024, she was shortlisted for the Finchale Award for Short Fiction (New Writing North) and won a scholarship from the Faber Academy. She is currently working on her debut novel, East, an excerpt of which was shortlisted as part of the 2026 Huddersfield Literature Festival’s 20/20 Competition.
SCOTT BURAU: 6AM, Somewhere
Deb moves between them with a coffee pot and no need for thanks. The old man takes her side of the booth now, watching the door the way she used to. When the bell rings, everyone looks up. Then looks back down. The red stools hold whoever comes.
Scott Burau is a writer living between Provincetown, Massachusetts, and Key West, Florida. His work has most recently appeared in San Antonio Review and Mouthful of Salt.
JOHANNES SPRINGENSEISS: Muse
You lie awake, staring at the ceiling. The idea brews into a low-grade fever, a quiet heat pulsing long after bedtime.
The malt liquor has lost its teeth, leaving only a dull headache. Your hands twitch with the clamorous weight of words unwritten. The night remains heavy and unfinished.
Johannes Springenseiss is a world citizen and raconteur. He mostly writes speculative fiction and creative essays.
PAUL D’ARCY: The Notebook
Found it under her mattress. Wasn’t looking, just changing sheets.
Pages of song lyrics. Then drawings. Then letters, written like she was already gone.
I put it back. Exactly how I found it.
At dinner, she said, “Why are you being weird?”
“Burn the plans,” I said. “Keep the songs.”
Paul D’Arcy tells stories. All real. Most brief. You can read more at pauldrc.com.
RALPH GOLDSWAIN: Taking it down
The demolition crew didn’t speak; they arrived in their crawler crane, set up, and struck. Space after space—a broken heart, wedding bells, a joyous birth, a thousand banquets, a million dance steps, three seductions, a betrayal, a midnight vigil, a wake. The wrecking ball swung back, then drove away.
Ralph Goldswain writes microfiction for pleasure in his London home. He also likes experiencing all the things London offers.
ALETHEA PAUL: Milk Cups and Milk Caps
Grandma warned us of faerie rings and being banished from home for life.
Yet she always left out cups of milk for pixies. They repaid favors.
Thought they were stories until I saw the milk caps circling her grave. Guess the pixies repaid her. In death, she could return home.
Alethea Paul is primarily a speculative flash fiction writer who dabbles (and drabbles) in literary. Her work has appeared in Factor Four Magazine, ScribesMICRO, Adventitious and Brilliant Flash Fiction.