The widower, Mr. Rochester, didn’t pick up his rose bouquet today. He says roses remind him of his beautiful wife.
His neighbor, Mr. John, walked in the next day. He asked, “Do you have Yellow Pansy?”
I answered, “No. Why?”
“Pansy would remind me of my good friend, Mr. Rochester.”
Lea is a ghost writer who hides in another person’s shadow. She came out today to write stories again.
Silence. Except for the dripping. So this is what it’s like to die, he thought. He moved slightly, and the knife grated against his ribs. If only he’d put the garbage out when she’d asked him the first time, or the second, or the third…
Drip drip.
Silence.
Jackie has written three (unpublished) novels, and is also a mosaic artist and tutor, when she’s not working at her “proper” job at a training agency.
She stood, unsteady, surrounded by the chaotic aftermath.
Tailored suits and shirts strewn everywhere. The glittery remains of a vase sprayed across the floor. The background “whir” of a shredder, determinedly chewing on a silk tie.
And in the mirror, the mascara-smeared face of unrecognizable madness stared back at her.
Jane is a current writer, former teacher, mother, and happily married wife—unlike the character in this story. She just moved from the big city of Toronto to a teeny tiny town called Fonthill with her husband and three sons, giving her more time to write and less time to make a living.
They say women use 20,000 words per day. I believe it.
Since we got the kitten, my wife’s vocabulary has been reduced to “cutie pootie”, “diddy thing”, “kittiness”.
Never thought I’d say this, but I miss the old days. There were too many words, but at least there was variety.
Mary Steer finds herself mildly addicted to 50-word stories.
I am crouching in rain, snapping spruce twigs to place them on my infant fire. He hadn’t checked my pockets, had missed the flint when he stole my gear.
Larger sticks next. First focus on defying death by hypothermia; then get my knife and his gun, and kill my husband.
Rosemary Bush is a scientist and writer living in Chicago. Some of her work can be found at rosemarybush.org.
“Bobby, when does your wife get back from her four-week holiday in Paris?”
“In three days. Sunday.”
“Well, can I recommend you do some tidying up around your house?”
“No way! If I do that, the risk is that she’ll walk in and say, ‘You’ve had a woman in here.'”
Barry O’Farrell is an actor living in Brisbane,Australia. Barry’s other stories have appeared in Cyclamens & Swords, A Story In 100 Words and here at 50 Word Stories.
“You’ve been locked in this bathroom far too long,” I whispered into the grimy mirror.
I sighed and straightened my black velvet dress. The door creaked open and I could feel their penetrating gazes.
Upon entering my husband’s funeral, I prayed that I could feign the tears one last time.
Isabella Blakeman is a sophomore at Yale University majoring in Latin American Studies.
He once admired her quiet efficiency.
But now she moves cheerfully through her task and he knows that he will never look her in the eye again.
“There you go, all clean.”
He arranges his face into a smile as his wife tucks the clean sheets around his failing body.
Delancey Stewart is a fiction writer living in Southern Maryland. When no indulging her imagination, she works for the man as a tech writer and tends two small boys who, her husband assures her, are hers. Find her at delanceystewart.wordpress.com.
“You’re under arrest for the murder of your husband,” said the cop.
“But it was all his fault!”
“What did your husband say to you when you woke him up this morning?”
He said, “Where am I, Trixie?”
“And that upset you enough to shoot him?”
“My name is Margo.”
Gary Clifton, forty years a cop, has nearly 60 short fiction pieces published or pending with online sites. He has an M.S. from Abilene Christian University.
Sometimes when I fall asleep I see pictures moving across the back of my eyelids, strange pastel cartoons, usually, where a round-headed caricature of me is trying to escape from a cloud labelled “Future” or “Responsibility.”
My wife says that sometimes she can see the projector’s flickers behind my eyes.