by Mark Cooper There’s only me left now — I’m pretty much sure of that. I’m not entirely sure why I’m doing this — for posterity’s sake, maybe? A warning to others? I don’t know. I don’t know much …

by Lora Kilpatrick The coffee pot slips from his hand and hits the tile in a million tiny pieces of it’s all your fault. He growls, stares at me as I shove gummy bears into a lunch box. “You should…

by Paul Thompson The next lady has so many questions. She reads them from a notepad, in perfect handwriting that could be a font. Describe me in a single word, she says. It’s an obvious question, b…

by Justin Deming It had been a while since he’d shaved. Years, in fact. He wasn’t so sure why he wanted the beard to begin with. His wife had probably made a comment about how handsome he’d look wi…

by Adam Shaw Gilbert’s particular about his eggs. I’m cooking them when he walks in, just as I have every morning for the past 53 years. I don’t look up as they bubble against the skillet, but I kn…

age, flash, flash fiction, life, micro fiction, Mitchell Waldman, old, plane, relationships, short stories, short story, vss, youth He’s an old man, nearing the end. via Pocket

by Robert Boucheron Every red-blooded boy kept a cigar box under the bed, where nobody ever would think to look. That was my belief, though I knew of no one else who did. Maybe I read a reminiscenc…

by David Cook “Home-made?” There it is. The question Tracy asks every time I trek back from the microwave to our little office, soup bowl in hand. So either I say no it’s from a tin, and she’ll giv…

by Rhyannon Q Brightwater Even as she threw her prayers skyward from the edge of the porch — hoping the wind would push the clouds away — she knew this was it — the flood that comes once in five hu…

by Rebecca Field I cried in the bank that day. Fat tears slid down my cheeks, making dark spots on my corduroy skirt. Lord knows what they must have thought of me. Maybe that I was grieving; that I…

by Meg Tuite Words do everything but shut-up. Many times once over is never the same once. Ester loses a spelling bee twice to Thomas the earwig. Three times Ester hooks a backpack around her arms …

by Rebecca Williams The hockey stick cracks down on his head like a spoon bashing an egg, blood oozes out like yolk. The look on his face is one of extreme surprise, as if he’d found his passport a…

by Adam Lock The toilet seat was cold and wet beneath her; he’d been pissing on it for months — for as long as the lightbulb had blown. She sighed, imagined him standing over the toilet, his eyes c…

by Janelle Hardacre She doesn’t cry. She didn’t when she was attacked by a punter last week or when another woman stole the trainers off her feet. She didn’t cry when she was rattling and only had …

by Kate Jones She keeps her eyes lowered, as she’s been brought up to do. She remembers the strap her father used the time her older sister dared to meet his eye during a conversation on marriage. …

by Kathy Hoyle Fish looked at Man through an ancient, grey eye. Man was silhouetted, dark and looming, with the sun as a halo. Man proclaimed himself. “I am Man and you are Fish and you have no rig…

by Nicholas Rixon They came, just like they always did, early in the morning. The collective sound of their hooves perfectly suited for that time of day. The shepherds, one at the back of the herd …

by Iris N. Schwartz Belle never should have married a man who didn’t know how to kiss. Benjy’s sloppy, aimless probing of her mouth felt as erotic as a session in a dentist’s chair. He was dyslexic…

by Mark Renney “Door-to-door sales is a dying art,” he says. I don’t want to answer, to be pulled into this again but the others around the table are looking at me, waiting. “It’s just a job,” I sa…

by Stephanie Hutton My mother-who-never-mothered-me has died and I don’t know what feelings to have, so decide not to have any. Lily sits on my knee in this council flat as we rummage in tatty boxe…

by Kate Jones She’s caught the 3.15 train, as instructed by her father. As trees and fields give way to the concrete blocks of the city, the muscles of her stomach tighten. She pulls out a book fro…

by Barbara Renel Edinburgh. A scorching day. The man is stripped to the waist, his decorated torso worn as a garment. “Olá,” he says. And she falls in love. In his studio, a skeleton wearing a suit…

by Steve Cushman The father and son walk silently through the grocery store buying what needs to be bought: mac n’ cheese, milk, cheerios, bread and beer and pretzels, two pounds of hamburger. The …

by Beau Johnson “It breaks my heart is what it does. Because of this, I think it’s fair I keep this little sermon short.” Under overhead lights, upon stainless steel tables, my words bring tears, c…

by David Cook “Jack, as you all know, was a man with a curious hobby. Some would call it an obsession. “His thing with jack-in-the-boxes started when he was six and I was three and Dad got him a ru…

by Christina Dalcher Sunday morning yoga ends with candle meditation. So I have a candle, which is sometimes just a candle, only coincidentally representative of other cylindrical and tubular objec…

by Lee Hamblin Today, just as she has every one of the last fifty-six mornings, Phylis Hutson walks the mile and a quarter to the store. There’s never a need to dress up nice or fix her hair. Somet…

by Bibi Hamblin “What’s the colour of electricity?” I once asked my father. “The colour of regret,” he replied. I had trekked over mountains and skidded over glaciers to hear his answer. Blue orang…

by M.S. Once you let mama in, there’s no turning back. The poltergeist will feed your kids and chase away your dust mites. She’ll berate your husband for his vices and inspire new ones. Her evening…

by Tom Leins Kendall Spate stinks worse than a wank-splattered lunacy booth. He is wearing an over-sized dog’s shock-collar, and looks like he has difficulty remembering his own name. He smiles vac…