Anne Marie Lyall

Seth placed his mother by the hearth. It had been her favourite spot. Until that night. When she’d stormed out. Swore never to set foot in his house again.

He supposed she’d kept her word.

Banjo whimpered as he sniffed the opaque jar. He had always been fond of mother. 

* * *

ANNE MARIE LYALL is from Scotland. She can almost see Loch Lomond on a clear day. She is published in the Oxford Flash Fiction Prize Anthology, 101 Words, Cafe Lit and long listed in the Myslexia Flash Fiction Competition.  

by Ariel M. Goldenthal

You told me that the ocean held your family’s secrets for centuries and that the rope tethering us ashore could fray without warning. We danced along the edge of the icy water, your hand in mine, smooth rocks coarse against fresh cuts on the soles of my feet.

You said the stairs were too steep; the electrical, too old for me to be alone by the sea. You didn’t tell me you’d be the nightmare worse than the wind-scraping of oak tree branches against shutters.

Now the house keeps all my secrets and more than the remnants of your pain.   

* * *

ARIEL M. GOLDENTHAL is an associate professor of English at George Mason University. Her work has appeared in The Citron Review, Fractured Lit, Exposition Review, and others. Read more at www.arielmgoldenthal.com. 

by Shanti Chandrasekhar

Mother remained stoic when my father, her husband of fifty-five years, died. With her firstborn on his deathbed now, she howls, gibbers. Hysterical.

My sister, who shuttles between the hospital and Mother’s home, yells from somewhere in the room, “Ma? Stop!” Her shrill command betrays her threatened mettle.

“How?” Mother asks me, the word trembling between her sobs.

My back slides down the wall. I sit on the floor, holding the phone. Far away from my mother, from my sister, from my dying brother.

Mother’s wail echoes across the Atlantic. It devastates, it haunts, it bridges. It glues us together. It does what her pretend stoicism couldn’t.

* * *

​SHANTI CHANDRASEKHAR’s words have appeared in Persimmon Tree, Bright Flash Literary Review, 50-Word Stories, Flash Fiction Magazine, The Journal of Compressed Creative Arts, and elsewhere. She writes and lives in Maryland.

by Lois Anne DeLong

She always loved sunsets, he recalled. If her schedule permitted, she stopped everything when the first red streaks appeared in the sky.  If they were together, he would wrap his arms around her, and they would stand in silence until the last drop of color drained from the sky.

They met in Key West, a place where the sunset is celebrated every night. He was seeking temporary escape from a staggering series of failures. Her history had been equally difficult, yet somehow she had retained a deep well of inner joy that was triggered every time the day made its fiery surrender.

When she passed away—ironically just as streaks of red and orange made their first appearance within a crystal blue Montauk sky—he could no longer continue these end of day celebrations. Every night, as the sun made its descent, he would close the curtains, turn on the TV, or retreat to a dark and noisy bar.

But, today, a sunset caught him by surprise. He went to draw the curtains, but the reflection of the fading rays off the snow stopped him in his tracks. He stared deeply at that shimmering mirror of ice and snow and caught the reflection of a man buried in darkness. Not his beloved’s darkness, which she likened to a warm, encompassing blanket. No, this was a darkness filled with monsters, most of them of his own making.

As he slowly lifted his eyes to the skies, he decided the curtains would remain open tonight. He poured a glass of wine and moved closer to the glass.  Pulling the warm blanket of her darkness around him, he toasted the night as it slowly rolled in.

* * *

LOIS ANNE DELONG is a freelance writer from Queens, New York, and is active in the Woodside Writers literary forum. Her work has appeared in Dear Booze, Short Beasts, Bright Flash Literary Review, DarkWinter Literary Journal, and The Bluebird Word. 

by Colleen Addison

In those days his madness struck me as magic. He made drinking cups from foxglove flowers, replaced buttons with the heads of dandelions. Stories fell out of him about the fairies living in mushroom rings. As I grew older, I saw how the cups leaked; how the blossoms withered and grew grey. I saw how neighbours shifted away from him, fearful of any perceived association. I was angry but stopped short of wearing a hat like his, a long-abandoned coalhood he said kept off the rain better than any poncho. I felt trapped, jealous of his playful nature and reluctant to condone it, furious at the condemnation he endured while secretly harbouring a similar discomfort. One day when I trotted up the multicoloured cobblestones of his garden path, I saw emptiness in his house windows. Where had he gone? My eyes fell, surprised and envious, on a ring of mushrooms. 

* * *

COLLEEN ADDISON completed a PhD in health information; she then promptly got sick herself. Her work has been published in Halfway Down the Stairs, River Teeth, and Little Free Lit Mag. 

by Jennifer Griffin Gaul

The blue dots scatter across my chest like a constellation. These stars have lit my life before. They burned on my husband before they burned on me. In less than four months his were gone, their promise unfulfilled. Mine have remained. So like a ship from days of old I will use them to navigate my way.

* * *

JENNIFER GRIFFIN GAUL is a pianist and music educator who writes in the moments of silence when not making music. 

by Patricia Russo

The old man is weaving a net out of ashes
in which to catch a name.
She can tell his eyes are burning
but he won’t stop to wipe them.
She’d like to stroke his head 
as she passes behind him
but he’d only shrug her off.
She has names in every pocket
tucked inside twists of pretty paper
but he wouldn’t thank her
for any of them
so she keeps them for the children
who visit her shyly
on certain afternoons
when a quarter moon
is visible in the sky.

* * *

PATRICIA RUSSO's work has appeared in One Art, The Sunlight Press, Vagabond City, A Sufferer's Digest, Hex Literary, Eulogy Press, Revolution John, and Crow and Cross Keys.

by Steven Bruce

We’ve learnt to carry it
like a sack of half-rotten potatoes,
the skin split,
the smell lingering behind us.

The days drag on,
each one more worn,
duller than the last.

There’s no choice
but to keep walking,
heavy footed,
eyes on the clouds.

With hope,
that somewhere ahead
we’ll find a place
to set it down.

* * * 

STEVEN BRUCE is a multiple award-winning author. His poetry and short stories have appeared in numerous international anthologies and magazines. In 2018, he graduated from Teesside University with a Master of Arts in Creative Writing. Born in England, Steven now resides in Poland.

by Kelleigh Cram

After driving for days, it’s the cows that do it.

A flock of them in a field, some standing, some grazing, some stealing a lazy nap in the afternoon sun. Activities that seem careless to us, performed with steadfast diligence.

 I slow down to watch them, these cows. Something is off. They have brown fur with white faces, like they are wearing their skulls inside out. Ghost cows. Are they real? I pull off on the side of the road and get out of the car. The gate is open, so I let myself in.

You call my name but I ignore you, walking up to one of the cows until we are standing face to face. I spread my fingers over its head, right between the eyes, the scratchy texture of cracked bone piercing my palm. So it is a skull, worn in reverse.
           
You run up from behind, your breath hot and rapid against my neck.
Wait, where were we going again?

When you grab my shoulder everything snaps into place: our bedroom, my feet sinking into the mattress, the cow painting looming over me.

“Why don’t you lie back down,” you say.

I yank my hand away as though it has betrayed me, revealing the portrait of a cow’s face. You guide me by the arm back to the car—or is it the bed? And once again we are on the highway, the ghost cows with their reversible skulls fading in the rearview mirror.

* * *

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

by Chris Cottom

​Go full mortgage on a fixer-upper in Forest Gate. Love the way Beth swears she can’t live with this prissy Laura Ashley shit, wrestles the wallpaper stripper like it’s a hissing serpent. Try different finishes in different rooms; go bold in the bedroom with Salsa Red or Jungle Ginger.
 
Watch Beth mark out a spare-room mural with puddleducks and beaky geese. Start with the ceiling, careless about speckling her raven curls with Haystack Gold. When she splodges you in Jersey Cow Brown, let her lead you to the shower to loofah it off.
 
Assemble mood boards for Beth’s new business: mid-tone caramels, indulgent ochres, earthy terracottas. Let her chatter about tonal contrast, about Crushed Aloe and Distressed Leather. Photograph her remodelled basements, her faux-marble bathrooms, her kiddies’ bedrooms.
 
In your kitchen awash with swatches of Lost Lake and Atlantic Surf, ask your seven-year wife if it’s time to redo the spare room in Classic White, turn it into an office. Dab her tears with a handy length of curtain lining. Hold her tight until she pushes away with a sad little nod.
 
Wait until her workshop in colour psychology; spread your dust sheets as the front door closes. Bid goodbye to the pigs and chicks, the carthorse and the collie, the tractor and the barn. Be sure to use low-tack masking tape. You don’t want anything to tear as you start to pull away.

* * *

CHRIS COTTOM lives near Macclesfield, UK. One of his stories was read aloud on the Esk Valley Railway between Middlesbrough and Whitby. In the early 1970s he lived next door to JRR Tolkien.
Bluesky: @chriscottom.bsky.social

by Bernard Pearson

In the  cradle
Of our last night,
When all things hang
In the balance of time
Will we see, really see?
The world that dies with us,
or the one that has waited
So patiently, for our return.

* * *

BERNARD PEARSON: His work appears in over one hundred and thirty publications worldwide, including; Aesthetica Magazine, The Edinburgh Review, and Crossways. In 2017 a selection of his poetry, In Free Fall, was published by Leaf by Leaf Press.

by Karen Schauber

We hug the coastline, the water lipping and lapping, squeezing us against the scrub brush and pink granite boulders. Sophie stomps her feet in plops of seafoam eddying in tide pools. We let her play. So much has been lost. But not this. Her innocence glinting in the sunlight, giggles clutching our heartbeats. We safeguard this last remnant, this singular, unsullied, untarnished, vestige. Otherwise, what is it all for. Trudging at night beneath ribbons of greenish-blue light, the auroras coxswaining us toward safety in the northern hinterlands. We press ahead. Agents two days behind at most. Our precious cargo intact.

* * *

Karen Schauber’s flash fiction appears in over 100 international journals, magazines, and anthologies with nominations for the Pushcart Prize, Best Small Fictions, Best Microfiction and the Wigleaf Top 50. Schauber curates Vancouver Flash Fiction – an online resource hub. Read her at: https://KarenSchauberCreative.weebly.com 

by Veronica L.

Lorena took a sip of wine. The intense ruby red, tending towards garnet, reflected the terracotta tones of the Roman sunset. For the first time, she admired that sunset alone, surrounded by a scene still capable of moving her.

Rome, her adopted city, for two decades the stage of stolen kisses under the Colosseum. Rome, a silent witness to many nights of love under a generous moon. 

Slow rhythms, a comfortable life, built brick by brick. Those same bricks that had gradually ceased to be the sign of solid foundations and had become an imposing wall between her and her husband. An overwhelming gap for those who can no longer see themselves in the other’s eyes.  

* * *
​
Veronica L. is an Italy-based writer with a PhD in Iberian and Ibero-American Languages and Literatures. She has authored several non-fiction books, some published in English by Anglo-Saxon presses, along with works of fiction. Her short story The Poor Copy appeared in Adelaide Literary Magazine (No. 73, February 2025).

by Chris Cottom

I get home to find Marion radiant and every bookcase empty.
"Happy retirement," she says, handing me a Kindle.
Even family photos, it appears, aren’t sacrosanct.
"Digital storage is eco-responsible," she says, as her scanner-shredder swallows our wedding album.
"But we can’t digitise my LPs. My Flying Burrito Brothers, my Motown Chartbusters."
"I have seen the future of rock ’n’ roll," says my once hippy-chick wife. "It’s called Spotify."
 
She drags me around a canal-side complex for the over sixties.
"I’m happy where we are," I say. "And none of these flats have kitchens."
"We’ll eat out. I’ve done a cost-analysis."
"What about making a sandwich? A cup of coffee?"
"Duh! Ever heard of meal deals, David? And there’s a coffee shop across the bridge. Called Nomad."
"I feel like I’m a nomad."
 
On our way to sign the lease, Marion takes me to the whole-life memory scanner at the health centre.
"Copies everything onto an SD card," she says. "Ideal for when we start losing it."
I step to one side. "Ladies first."
I slip the technician a wad of fifties, tell him to press Wipe. Then I get out the lease and ask him to shred it.

* * *

Chris Cottom lives near Macclesfield, UK. One of his stories was read aloud on the Esk Valley Railway between Middlesbrough and Whitby. In the early 1970s he lived next door to JRR Tolkien.
@chriscottom.bsky.social

by David Thompson

No news for several days:
I went to the florist anyway.
An armful of flowers
means love in any language:
new buds, odours, colours,
fresh beauty shared.

But if today was different?
Outside the shop, sun hit the blooms.
As I paused, a butterfly
slipped through a gap in time,
danced a last poem,
and settled softly
on a white cyclamen
to tell me I was too late.

When I got home,
a message said
you'd left my world that morning.

* * *

David Thompson was a translator, interpreter, editor and publisher with the UN and WHO in New York, Bangkok and Geneva. He has since published two poetry collections: Days of Dark and Light (2021) and Where The Love Is (2023).