by Chris Cochran

An old man precariously balancing a six-foot ladder above his head walks the middle of the bike path ahead. “On your left,” I call. He turns, swinging the ladder in my direction. I brake hard and swerve into the wet grass. My road tire slips sideways. I overcorrect and topple.
 
The old man, unbothered, continues walking down the path, ladder high above his head. He never sees me or, more likely, doesn’t care. I lift my bike and change directions, promising myself that when I’m older, I’ll leave room for others to pass.

* * *

CHRIS COCHRAN is a high school English teacher whose stories keep getting shorter. He lives in Michigan with his wife and son, where he spends most evenings drinking tea and falling asleep to comedy podcasts.

by Lori Cramer

Wide awake well into the night, the two tweens, side by side in glittery purple sleeping bags, giggle and gab about the careers they’ll pursue (choreography for one, cosmetology for the other), the guys they’ll date (rock stars and baseball players), and—most important—the friendship that will last forever.

* * *

LORI CRAMER’s prose has appeared in Fictive Dream, Flash Boulevard, Splonk, and elsewhere. Her work has been longlisted for the Wigleaf Top 50 and nominated for Best Microfiction and Best of the Net.
Website: https://loricramerfiction.wordpress.com.
X: @LCramer29. Bluesky: @loricramerwriter.bsky.social.

by Michael C. Roberts

Diligent drinkers at the cruise ship lounge, elbows cocked at right angles on the bar, butts conquering the stool with legs locked to the crossbar. With the bartender as their friend for the evening, the cruisers dedicate themselves to the gods of distilled spirits. They order double bourbons on the rocks, saying it saved their sanity through the pandemic and will save them during this turmoil. I didn’t ask if they meant the rocking and rolling of the ship or the chaotic world they’d temporarily left behind.

* * *

MICHAEL C. ROBERTS tries to capture the essence of the world through photography and writing. 

by Chris Cottom

or robbers stealing my rabbit, Mr Nibble, to sell him for vivisection, Mum would spray me with Worry Remover. She’d mix it herself with the squeeze of a lemon and ‘a teaspoon of love’, always kept a bottle handy. She sprayed Dad when he went for promotion as Deputy Foreman, sprayed herself before every appointment up at the General. At the end, I fetched her the bottle, misted her with magic when the nurses weren’t looking. I said I was proof that it worked, because I’d long stopped worrying about Mr Nibble.

* * *

CHRIS COTTOM is a recovering insurance copywriter with recent work in Banshee, Barrelhouse, Fictive Dream, matchbook, New Flash Fiction Review, New World Writing Quarterly, Orange Blossom Review, and The Broadkill Review. Catch him pedalling around Cheshire, UK, and at chriscottom.wixsite.com/chriscottom.

by Karen Walker

The art gallery has rejected it.    
Feel was pacing, and I was napping when the thanks-snicker-but-no-thanks call finally came.
On the way to pick up our painting, Feel wants to talk.
I don't.  
Feel sniffles.
Of course there's no tissue left in the car. Of course Feel used the entire box on the way home after I broke up with John.
Our painting is of his flowers and his card. Says, "Love you. Please don't leave."  
Feel says it hurts.
"Am sure it does," I reply.
The gallery is on the third floor. I climb the stairs alone. Feel stays in the car. 

* * *

KAREN WALKER writes and draws and paints in Ontario, Canada. Her recent work is in or forthcoming in Does It Have Pockets, SoFloPoJo, Weird Lit, Hotch Potch, and Literary Garage. 

by Clodagh O Connor

How alive you were, born from me as clear water, burbling over small pebbles, curving around granite rocks, rushing down mountain slopes.

How you ignored my warnings, leapt down rock faces, not looking ahead until you found yourself trapped in man-made places.

How you were forced into channels, told what was expected of you, pushed underground.

How you were sullied by the foulness of that life, but you pushed on, found your strength, burst forth.

How you deepened and grew powerful, stopping for nothing until you embraced the wide, wild, open ocean.
​
* * *

CLODAGH O CONNOR lives in Dublin, Ireland, and is working on becoming a writer. She particularly enjoys the challenges of tiny fiction. She can be found on Bluesky at @iamagnat.bsky.social.​

by Sophia Adamowicz

not fresh flowers, because desiccated petals never wilt, and because lopped-off buds require no water and no sun, and because, when the dried orange peel and cinnamon sticks lose their fragrance, I can lavish them with artificial sweetness, and because nothing in this house ever grew as it should, and because flowers with the suppleness of a child’s cheek remind me of the times I never wiped yours.

Let the fresh flowers remain at the field’s edge, where they may spill their seeds to the wind and never have to bear the weight of what one person owes another.

* * *

SOPHIA ADAMOWICZ is a writer and tutor based in Cambridge, UK. Her work, both fiction and nonfiction, has appeared in several publications including Cunning Folk, Crow & Cross Keys, Haven Speculative and Trash Cat Lit. Her debut novel, The Brink, releases next year.

by Tim Love

I hold up the old red dress that she was wearing when I first saw her. When I return to the hospice I'll put it on her. It will fit her again now. She's been unconscious all day. I will sit beside her till the end, hoping for the impossible again, lost for words again, just staring.

* * *

TIM LOVE’s publications are a poetry pamphlet Moving Parts (HappenStance) and a story collection By all means (Nine Arches Press). He lives in Cambridge, UK. His poetry and prose have appeared in Stand, Rialto, Magma, The Forge, The Cortland Review, etc. He blogs at litrefs.blogspot.com/

by Moira Richardson

Do you remember picking black raspberries, staining our fingers with their juice, laughing in the sunshine? Your hair like diamonds, lips stained red. Your hand on the small of my back. The way the brambles scratched our skin. 

​You’d run your thumb along my lip, kissed away my tears when I confessed what I had done. You’d never stop loving me, you’d said. 
​
I’d believed you. 
​
But the next summer, when I drove my old truck along the cowpath to the back of your family’s property, our secret berry patch was gone, all that remained a burnt patch of earth.

* * *

MOIRA RICHARDSON lives near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania with her partner and three grumpy cats. She’s been published by Rat Bag Lit, Dragon Tomes Publishing, ELA Literary magazine, and The Writer’s Workout, among others. 

by Luanne Castle

When she saw the umbrella she envisioned their hereafter. Tattered, dirty, obviously pulled from a nearby trashcan, the umbrella’s frame still functioned. He held the umbrella without any help from her. They were separated by a foot. The over-sized umbrella was a castoff from a golfer’s cart, so they both kept dry. She debated herself. The umbrella’s skeleton seemed sturdy. But the tatters. Eventually holes would form, and in a storm, she would be drenched.
 
Now the rain’s velocity had reduced to a trickle, yet they both stayed motionless, he gazing off in a direction opposite her, she toward her future.

~After photo of umbrella, man, and woman by Naveen Ketterer on Unsplash

* * *

LUANNE CASTLE has published four award-winning poetry collections. Scrap: Salvaging a Family,  a memoir-in-flash, was recently published by ELJ Editions (2026). Her ekphrastic flash and poetry collection Hunting the Cosmos is forthcoming from Shanti Arts in fall 2026.

by Emma Phillips

We’re astronauts, floating. I’m the stronger swimmer. Hey, you say, it’s as if we could reach out and pocket the Earth. Like a marble, like God. I grin at the contrast in colors. Every single star feels like mine.

There’s unexpected joy in weightlessness. You release a cape from my hospital gown, pull back your hands and make superhero arms. Out here, constellations are strung to fairy lights. Where are we going? you mouth. I shrug. In recovery, gravity will do its work. Enjoy, I whisper. It’s a long way down.

* * *

EMMA PHILLIPS lives by the M5 in Devon, which sometimes lures her away in search of adventure. Her words appear in print and online, and have placed in competitions such as the Bath Flash Award and NFFD Microfiction Competition.

by Cailín Frankland

She was of two minds, and in more ways than one—her parents’ divorce drove the rift between her brain’s hemispheres long before the surgeon called for a scalpel. A simple procedure, really—the skull drilled through, dura pulled back, axons carefully severed—her seizing neural clusters were neatly quarantined, the cognitive effects negligible. Cortices are hardy things, she learned. Marriages, less so.

​Her left brain led her public life, reducing her right self to a stowaway on her commute, an eavesdropper to her mother’s calls. Her right mind maintained ambivalence, cluttering her home with life-sized portraits of her father.

* * *

CAILÍN FRANKLAND (she/they) is a British-American writer and public health professional based in Baltimore, Maryland. They live with their spouse, two old lady cats, a rotating cast of foster animals, and a 70-pound pitbull affectionately known as Baby. You can find them on Twitter/X as @cailin_sm.

by Karen Baumgart

Oh love, don’t apologise—I understand. It’s not you it’s me, right? I wonder, though, could you maybe just hit send sometime? Let them see you’re anxious, how it comes from a wounded place? Stop saying I think maybe when you’re sure?

​I remember how your dad would return each letter with grammatical corrections; there’s such shame behind your impeccable use of semi-colons. My darling, what I’m trying to say is: maybe it’s fine to soften an email with three exclamation points, or to sign off with a pink flower emoji. Maybe, sweet girl, your first draft is always ok.

* * *

KAREN BAUMGART lives in Australia and adores beautiful quotes, pink things, cats and chai lattes. She used to be an English teacher and is quite certain that writing is, indeed, the best therapy.
Instagram @miss.cake.girl | Bluesky @cake-girl.bsky.social | Twitter/X @cake_girl__

by Alastair Millar

We married young and uncertainly, seeking security in a time of portents—when storms, wildfires and UFO sightings made the future precarious and frightening. Then we weathered the natural disasters, inevitable conspiracy theories, and First Contact; turned out that those were the challenges that would really bring us together.

* * *

ALASTAIR MILLAR lives in the Czech Republic, and enjoys good books, bad puns, coffee and travelling. His flash science fiction collection ‘Mars & More’ was published in 2024. Find his social & other links at: https://linktr.ee/alastairmillar

by Moira Richardson

My calves burned like fire, my hair streaming behind me in the wind of my own creation. For the first time in a long time, I felt free.

You’d wrapped me in bubble wrap like a precious heirloom, but my lungs needed crisp fall air and hints of bonfire smoke. I dreamed of sunshine park benches with bayside views. I wanted to follow the bike path to its natural conclusion, the way our love had reached a breaking point.

But I knew I’d turn back, return to our apartment, my cheeks flushed with life, and let you make me tea.

* * *

MOIRA RICHARDSON lives near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania with her partner and three grumpy cats. She’s been published by Rat Bag Lit, Dragon Tomes Publishing, ELA Literary magazine, and The Writer’s Workout, among others.