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 Kelleigh Cram

Click.

Multi-colored light fills the room, waking me. This is the part when I get up, go about my day, facing trials and tribulations of the lighthearted variety for the amusement of strangers. It always starts the same, that music, upbeat with a moralistic tone. I can’t remember what happened between this moment and reading my name on the closing credits, but the dread of it clings to me, a reminder that none of this is real. I open the door as the song ends, delivering a perfectly timed one-liner. 

Pause.

My hand stops mid-air, reaching for the mug. During pause I am incapacitated yet fully aware, the closest my conscious mind gets to the in-between. The moment stretches on, locking me in place while pulling me apart like one of those medieval torture devices. Unable to move I am forced to remember the darkness, the nothing, the act of non-existence that is my life without an audience. 

Rewind.

A force yanks me backwards until the door closes in front of me. Once again I step out of my bedroom, delivering the punch line to an awaiting laugh track. I don’t know how they stand it, feigned amusement, just as happy hearing the joke for the thousandth time as the first. 

Mute.

I pour the coffee, no splash as the liquid hits ceramic. The cup steams in silence.

Unmute. 

I slurp, hot liquid searing my insides as the pain crawls up my ribcage. I cry out, but only half a scream.

Click.

* * *

KELLEIGH CRAM resides in a small town near Savannah Georgia. Her work has been featured in Bright Flash Literary Review, Bacopa Literary Review, and Right Hand Pointing.

by Kathryn Kulpa

Have you ever noticed the grass that grows in the cracks on the highway? Maybe it’s on the soft shoulder, the breakdown lane, the verge. Maybe it’s on the median strip. Maybe it’s on the old exit spur, no longer used. It’s not pretty spring grass. It’s brown December grass, and if drivers notice it at all they just wonder if the highway’s being kept up, but mostly they don’t notice because they are listening to directions or sneaking glances at a text on their phones or worrying about being late and losing the jobs they hate but can’t quit because they would lose their healthcare, because they live in America and their lives mean less than the scraggly-ass grass that grows where nobody planted it. It’s not a flower or a topiary or a heritage tree. Maybe it’s an invasive species, like Japanese stiltgrass or pepperweed, and if the highway department notices those unruly spikes breaking through asphalt they only want to poison it, but the grass mowed down in their weekly Roundup finds its way past poured concrete to re-cover the earth. It’s here, and it grows, and it doesn’t care if you don’t think it should be here.

* * *

KATHRYN KULPA lives in New England. Sometimes she writes poems on the side of the road. She would stay up all night reading if you let her. Find her writing in Best Microfiction, Flash Frontier, Ghost Parachute, Hot Flash Literary Review, trampset, and at kathrynkulpa.com.

by Zoë Davis

but never the silverfish
​eating history
sometimes wallpaper
feral in a bookshelf. I relate
to being called
something I am not
sexy sibilant sanguinity
static air
thumb-rubbed roll-up
yellowing tin. In the attic
other insects are singing
belly full of coins
I scoffed the pair
placed over my eyes.

* * *

ZOË DAVIS is a Sheffield-based writer, wheelchair rugby league player, and stubborn FND fighter. Her poetry and prose blend the fantastical with the mundane. Find her work in Strix and Roi Fainéant, or chat with her on X @MeanerHarker.

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 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 David Henson

Cans of green beans, corn, carrots, and more litter the kitchen floor. My father sits at the table looking out at the bird feeder. When I ask him how it happened, he says something about needing more sunflower seeds. The ceiling creaks, and white flakes fall. Inside, not out. Bits of ceiling plaster, not snow.

I tell Dad that he must know what this means. My sister is lucky she lives out of town. She’s been warning me this day was barreling toward us, but I’d been putting it off. 

My father points toward the window. “Cardinal.” It was my mom’s favorite bird. Older folks, I’d noticed, seem to anoint favorites for lots of things — birds, flowers, trees. Guess they harken back to pleasant memories. Might be different for me if I forever associate cardinals with today.

I study my dad’s hand. The hand that taught me to throw a curve, bait a hook. He seems shakier than usual. Is it because of what’s happened or what’s about to? 
I go out the kitchen door to the garage to check the damage again. The overhead door is open, but the maroon Impala, its bumper crumpled, has its nose to the wall. 

When I step back inside, the cardinal flies away. Frightened or has it eaten its fill? I hold out my hand. My turn to tremble. The keys jingle as Dad gives them to me.

* * *

DAVID HENSON and his wife reside in Illinois, USA. His work has been nominated for multiple Pushcart prizes and has appeared in various publications, including Trash Cat Lit and Best Microfictions 2025. His X handle is @annalou8. His website is http://writings217.wordpress.com

by Suzanne Hicks

Everyone’s chatting and forking lunch into their mouths, but I can’t take my eyes off the fish tank behind the bar, remembering the lake back home, watching hooks pulled from jaws, mouths gaping, gills pumping to breathe, smelling that lake water no matter the distance I put between us. If only I could plunge into the tank, gather all the fish in my arms, take them to salty, open waters. But I know they’d suffocate before I could find a place where they could feel what it’s like to swim free.

* * *

SUZANNE HICKS is a disabled writer living with multiple sclerosis. Her work has appeared in matchbook, Gooseberry Pie, Milk Candy Review, and others. Her stories have been selected for Best Microfiction and the Wigleaf Longlist. Read more at suzannehickswrites.com.

by Anne Howkins

maybe I wouldn’t have learnt the correct way to look at a painting. Think light and shadow, see the humility, the vulnerability, but here I am, in front of Rembrandt’s Night Watch, and yes, I see it, the chaos, the girl looking at the powerful, red-sashed man, I get it.  

Now you’ve slinked away like a guttering flame, I’d like to say thank you for all those times you pointed out what Constable, or Turner, or Cezanne had hidden in the shadows. For all those times you talked about the building of layer upon layer on an empty canvas—the way those layers became scumbled, burying what lay beneath. For all those times you stood with me, directing me to the source of light, to trace its delicate illumination of a lace collar, its cruel glare on an old woman’s wrinkles. For all those times you talked about colour; Vermeer’s miring himself in debt to paint a girl’s headdress ultramarine, Turner’s daubed red buoy mocking Constable’s over-use of the same shade.

And I wanted to let you know, I saw you in that gallery a couple of years ago with a woman. I recognised the look on her face before I realised it was you, pointing and talking, and it was too soon for me, that day, there were too many of the layers you’d painted still to be brushed away. It was too soon for me, that day, to look at your face, to catch that familiar flash of blue eyes blazing as you lectured your entranced companion, and just a glimpse of a faded red scarf was enough to send me trembling out onto the street.

But if you were here now, I’d just say that Rembrandt chose to shine his light on the girl, and she’s glowing. 

* * *

ANNE HOWKINS' little stories have appeared at WestWord, Flash 500, Free Flash Fiction, NFFD, Cranked Anvil, The Hoolets Nook and TrashCatLit. Anne also looks after the finances of a charity, walks and spends time with her adored grandson. 
Bluesky @anneh23.bsky.social

by Dustin P Brown

He couldn’t tell her how he felt; it was too mean. His grandmother had taught him to keep his mouth shut if nothing good would come out of it.

Still, he wanted to. The pilot warned of turbulence in a crackly voice. He wanted to scream at the woman, all the horrible things he couldn’t say out loud. She wasn’t real to him. She could be a void to toss bad thoughts into.

But he didn’t. Instead, he ignored her feet on the back of his plane seat, same way he’d been ignoring the lump near his scrotum. Couldn’t do it. It’s what killed his Poppa all those years ago. Oops, there’s the bump, oops now you’re in a casket covered in unflattering makeup.

He could yell all of this at the feet shoving cushion into his spine. He could do it. It was all he wanted in that moment, but he didn’t. He literally bit his tongue, chewed it up into used gum, really tapped that rage down into the pit of his stomach where it throbbed next to the lump. Then he waved off a drink-cart-pushing flight attendant.

Did death hurt? Was he just afraid of pain? No, there was more. The unknown. The same fear his grandmother would soothe in her bedroom late at night when he’d spend the night at their house as a child. The way she’d flick on a nightlight and solve all his problems in a moment. Moments can be so powerful. A diagnosis. The insistent throbbing of an impolite woman’s feet against your back. A last breath. A light in the dark.

* * *

Dustin P Brown is a Michigan-born, Spain-based author of poetry and prose. He received his BA in Creative Writing from Western Michigan University and currently works as an editor and interpreter. 
Instagram: @dpbrownwrites / BlueSky: @dpbrownwrites.bsky.social‬
Author site: https://dustinpbrown.wixsite.com/author

by M.D. Smith

“We’ll grow old together,” you whispered that night under the streetlamp, your thumb tracing circles on my wrist. I believed you. That was our first lie—the sweetest one we ever told.

Eight months later, you moved to Chicago to teach. I stayed in Virginia Beach, running my father’s store. We promised distance wouldn’t matter. Your blue-ink letters arrived every Friday, smelling faintly of cinnamon and cigarette smoke. You wrote of your students, your loneliness, and once of a dream where we were gray-haired, still together on a porch somewhere, still in love. I carried that letter until it fell apart.

I always wrote you back.

Time moved on. You married a kind man. I married a good woman named Claire. We built separate lives, but sometimes, when the night went still, I’d wonder if you were looking at the same moon.

Decades later, your handwriting returned, shaky, fragile.

“I’m sick,” you wrote. “I wanted you to know I kept our lie alive longer than I meant to. Maybe love doesn’t die. It just changes its address.”

Claire read the letter and said quietly, “You should go.”

You were waiting on your daughter’s porch, eyes bright despite the disease. We spoke for hours. When the sun dipped low, you asked, “Do you still believe it?”

“I think love did conquer time,” I said. “Just not the way we thought.”

You smiled. Three weeks later, you were gone.

Your final letter arrived after the funeral:
​
“If you’re reading this, watch the sunrise at the ocean and think of me. That’s where I’ll be.”

I went. The tide whispered your name, and for one impossible moment, I felt your hand in mine again.
​
Maybe love is just the lie we keep believing. Our unfulfilled promises wash over me like the surf.

* * *

M.D. SMITH of Huntsville, Alabama, writer of over 350 flash stories, has published digitally in Frontier Times, Flash Fiction Magazine, Bewildering Stories, and many more. Retired from running a television station, he lives with his wife of 64 years and three cats. 

Marc Littman

They called Todd Go-Go Boy because he was always on the go yet he ran about in a very small world. See, Todd couldn’t afford to go anywhere, no money and tethered to a rusty old trailer with a rusty old mother who drank away whatever money he scrounged from hustling odd jobs in a neighborhood where everyone hustled.

      But Todd escaped reality by roaming the Internet booking exotic trips from the bowels of Death Valley to the sublime heights of Mount Everest and canceling his reservations in the nick of time before his mother’s credit card could be charged. Still, the dreamy prospects of finally taking off plastered a bright smile on Go-Go Boy’s face and blinded his eyes.

      That might explain why Go-Go Boy failed to sense the thug on his tail one late night exiting the liquor store with a nightcap for mother. Now Go-Go Boy doesn’t need to make reservations or cancel. He goes where his soul pleases whenever and wherever.   

* * *

Marc Littman is a former journalist who now writes fiction. He lives in Los Angeles.

by Allison Renner

When my grandmother died, I went with her. I floated just behind, through the ceiling and over the roof. As she surged toward the sea, I took one last glance down at the lush treetops, wishing I could reach for her so she’d know she didn’t have to make this journey alone. I remember her arranging my tea set just so, completing puzzles with both our hands pushing down the final piece, me struggling to stay awake while she watched the late-night talk show, baking snickerdoodles while the rest of the family talked in the den. The silence of us reading together on the couch, side by side as we are now, waiting for the waves to wash our spirits away.

* * *

ALLISON RENNER is the author of Green Light: The Gatsby Cycle and Won’t Be By Your Side. Her fiction has appeared in Ghost Parachute, SoFloPoJo, Ink in Thirds, Gooseberry Pie, and others. She can be found at allisonrennerwrites.com.

by Shama

Water chalked out marks on the apartment walls,
roping me in; the macaque screeched--
its toy lungs failing.

The rising brine strengthened
its noose. I swatted flies circling
the swollen coffee table.

The carpet's frayed hands
released their hold of Lego bricks,
from which you once made a house.

Mothballs rolled down and rattled
in the drain filter as I pulled the plug
and scavenged my leftover pieces

from your jetsam.

* * *

Shama has work featured in Gyroscope Review, ONE ART, The Pierian, and elsewhere. She writes from an old dusty corner of the earth and can sometimes be found on Bluesky @entangledrhyme.bsky.social and IG @entangledrhyme.