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 Paul Lewthwaite

I taught mathematics, but dabbled with him.
When the affair ended, no formula could encapsulate his rage.
The police were useless.
I withdrew from life; silent anger bubbled in my shell of shame.
A year later, I tracked him down.
Subtracting guilt, an equation arose that I could solve.
Fatally.

* * *

Paul is a retired physician living in Scotland with his wife and a small, but all-powerful cat. Occasionally he writes stories, some even get published. Paul's fledgling (and sadly neglected!) website can be found at When Can I Call Myself a Writer?

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 Anne Howkins

Sea and sky are indecipherable—at night there’s a moonlit line that might be the horizon. Sometimes the flood laps at the weather girl’s bedroom window, seductively shush-shushing that it means no harm. Sometimes it growls the anguish of the drowned.

Without power or paper, the weather girl records her observations in knots. She’s ransacked the house, harvesting anything that can be unravelled, combed, spun, twisted, until every surface is strewn with something like rope, and the wardrobes and cupboards gape empty.

She’s woven and knotted pressure, windspeed and rainfall into whirligig clusters. Her fingers weep blood as the malevolent sky mocks her furious recording. On days when the heavens are silver, not cast iron, when the winds are gentle, yet deviously warm, she allows the ropes to divide. She threads them with rings, necklaces, beads and buttons, treasured memories marking love she hopes isn’t lost. When the barometer falls, again, again, and the house begins moaning, she plaits the strands back together, securing everything precious. She weaves her own undoing into the tapestries, until her limbs feel empty, ready to hold something again, hold her husband again.

At night she wraps herself in her knotted yarns, caressing, letting her fingers explore the chasms she’s seen, she’s created. Sometimes she burrows her nails deep, finds the day her husband left. When her fingers stroke the remnants of love, her heart untethers, her lungs loosen and she weeps, letting the rhythm of the endlessly cruel rain rattling the roof rock her back and forth.

She leaves on a night when the moonlit line is more than a dream. She spools ropes into a sail, launches herself towards the east, hoping her forecast is accurate and the grasping hands of the drowned keep to themselves.

Hoping there is something dry out there.

* * *

Anne loves the challenge of telling stories in very few words. Her stories have appeared in print and online at WestWord, Flash 500, Reflex Fiction, Flash Fiction Magazine, National Flash Fiction Day, Lunate, Strands International and Bath Flash Fiction.

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 Middlesborough and Whitby. In the early 1970s he lived next door to JRR Tolkien.
@chriscottom.bsky.social
@chris_cottom1 (on X)

by Beth Sherman

​I wake one morning, after uneasy dreams, to find myself transformed into a lesser, long-nosed bat. Nights, I hang upside down in your attic or flit through your garden, lapping nectar from bee balm. Endangered. Despised. With my pointy ears, short tail and brown fur, I look harmless enough, like a chipmunk with wings. I can fly now, hitching a ride on the wind’s back, somersaulting through clouds. My hearing has improved. Sound waves determine your exact location: office, park, bar. I know the name of each girl you bed, each lovely lie you tell. Try to get rid of me. Try. I dare you. Plant mothballs in the eaves. Lay your sticky traps. Plug holes in the roof. I am your shadow now, black as an evening glove, translucent as spilled moonlight. While you sleep, I aim for your hair, my fangs tickling your eyebrows.

* * *

​Beth Sherman’s writing has been published in more than 100 literary journals, including 100 Word Story, Fictive Dream, Tiny Molecules and Bending Genres. Her work is featured in Best Microfiction 2024 and she can be reached @bsherm36 on Instagram, Blusky, or X.

by Beth Sherman

A memory. Me, age 11, in the backyard of a stranger’s house, watching a pileated woodpecker tap a sweet gum tree. Ack ack ack ack ack ack ack, the bird calls, in a shrill, urgent voice. My father is inside — this'll just take 10 minutes and then we'll get some ice cream. I can almost taste peanut butter swirls, almost smell toffee bits crumbled on top. I pluck a blade of grass, touch its slippery green to my cheek.

All the curtains in the house are drawn. Tilting my head, I see the woodpecker vacuuming ants down its beak. I don’t own a watch, but it’s been more than ten minutes, so long that I wonder if my father will ever come out or if the house has swallowed him whole.

Later, when my mother asks where we’ve been, I don’t mention the woodpecker or the curtain house or the strange look on my father’s face when he got in the car, like he’d been lost in the woods and just spotted a breadcrumb, or that the ice cream place was closed when we got there. We drove around, I say, which was partially, mostly true.

* * *

Beth Sherman’s writing has been published in more than 100 literary journals, including 100 Word Story, Fictive Dream, Tiny Molecules and Bending Genres. Her work is featured in Best Microfiction 2024 and she can be reached @bsherm36 on Instagram, Blusky, or X.

by Mathieu Parsy

Once inseparable, jealousy over a boy caused a landslide that buried their friendship. Their chests turned into large crevices, overgrown with trees and foliage. Tectonic plates shifted in search of a mutual core, but the continents didn’t align. As new rock formations spanned the distance, the divide remained. Their magnetic fields wavered—drawn close, yet skewed off course.
 
And eruptions disturbed the stagnation, the magma of their discontent reshaping the landscape.
 
From the Atlantic ridge, Isadora can only glimpse the tip of a crag surrounded by murky waters, mist filling the air. Chirping warblers peck at her chest—out-of-tune memories. It aches. Her skin splits; warblers burrow into her heart. She cups the wound to contain the pain.
 
One day, Isadora splays her fingers to peek through the gap between her breasts. She sees the other side of the Eurasian plate, where her friend lives. Green hills and dense forests have grown there. And then she spots her friend—she bears a similar hole in her thorax. There’s no bird there. Only an abandoned nest.

* * *

Mathieu Parsy is a Canadian writer who grew up on the French Riviera and now lives in Toronto, where he works in the travel industry. His writing has been featured in FEED, Panoply, and Brilliant Flash Fiction.
Instagram: @mathieu_parsy.

by Diane Payne

On this particular morning, there was a light wind and plenty of sunshine, rare for early autumn. One by one, the neighbors carried their wet laundry out to hang on the clotheslines. Those that lived in upstairs apartments reeled in their clotheslines that hung above the street, singing the same song with their neighbors, harmonizing as they pinned their socks, bras, tablecloths, and underwear.

Those with small city yards engaged in lengthy conversations about what they were making for dinner, boysenberry jam recipes, and how to train your cat to do fabulous tricks.

One neighbor talked about a long-ago boyfriend who tossed his grandmother’s chamomile seeds in the garden that he later harvested for their morning tea. She lamented how she left him for the boyfriend who meticulously shaped bonsai plants, hovering over them for hours, while she knew he’d never trust her with anything, especially his bonsai, unlike the seed thrower who trusted her with everything.

“Yeah, we rarely pick the right one,” the neighbors on both sides of the lawn said while the sheets flapped in the wind simultaneously, and everyone breathed a bit more freely.

* * *

Some of Diane Payne’s most recent publications include:  Cutleaf Journal, Mukoli, Miracle Monacle, Hairstreak Butterfly, Invisible City,  Best of Microfiction 2022, Another Chicago Magazine, Whale Road Review, Fourth River, Tiny Spoon, and Bending Genres.   More can be found here: dianepayne.wordpress.com

by Morgan Chalfant

Everyone has baggage
Mine’s a backpack
Nothing snooty
Two straps and heavy
Nothing fancy
Filled with the norm:
A disappointed old man
Lost keys to the past
Friends I wish still were
And a little secret pocket of aspirations

* * *

Morgan Chalfant is a novelist, poet, and an instructor of writing at Fort Hays State University. He is a native of Hill City, Kansas. He received his bachelor's degree in writing and his master's degree in literature from Fort Hays State University. He is the author of the horror/thriller novella, Focused Insanity, and the urban fantasy novel, Ghosts of Glory.

by Paul Lewthwaite

“This isn’t working." My words mix with the thrum of our car. You start to cry, fists pounding the steering wheel, ignoring the road.

Wheels skid on ice—we slide onto a mad helter-skelter of blurred tarmac, looming headlights, and adrenaline.

I come to, dangling upside down, hot petrol fumes thick in the air, the engine running.

Your eyes are shut. Blood trickles from your nose. Outside, distant shouts and the wail of sirens. Flames burst into life behind us.

I call your name. Your eyes flicker open.

I croak out the words I should have said. “Let’s try again.”

* * *

Paul is a retired physician living in Scotland with his wife and a small, but all-powerful cat. Occasional flashes of inspiration generate stories. To his continuing surprise, some get published. Paul's fledgling website can be found at Can I Call Myself a Writer? 

by Rebecca Klassen

Harry comes home after work.

"Right where I left you both," he says. Shivering and tired, I swear at him while Lily's head jiggles at my breast.  

The streak of light is sudden like a gunshot from the wall. From its root, the tiny porthole above the mantlepiece, I see the diminishing day, swallowed up by baby.

When Harry peers through the hole, it casts a bright monocle around his eye. I press Lily to him, then retreat upstairs for shallow sleep until Lily needs me again.

   ~*~

Harry arrives home and asks about dinner, and I babble about initiative, swearing again. He calls me a prickly cow. More holes appear in the lounge walls, and Lily screams when Harry slams the door.

   ~*~

Lily teethes, and Harry and I jostle for position of most impressive martyr. The walls become more pocked, the holes weeping brickwork. What do I know about plastering? It’s probably impossible when you’re holding a baby.
​
   ~*~
​
Harry comes home and looks at the walls, the light freckled across his dark suit. Tears plop from my jaw onto Lily’s cottony body.

"Everything’s going to collapse," I say.

Harry sits next to me and strokes Lily’s head.

"She’s beautiful, like her mama."

I shake my head. "Now way; she looks like you."

He slips his arm around my shoulders as the light in the room fades. I hear the rattle of stones and catch the scent of disturbed dust.

"She looks so content," he says. "You’re doing an amazing job with her."

I rest my head on his chest, sleepy in the rapidly dimming light. "It can’t be easy, being away from her all day."

As Harry kisses my cheek, the room darkens, but I can still see his face as he rests his forehead against mine, Lily nestled between us.

* * *

Rebecca Klassen is co-editor of The Phare and a Best of the Net 2025 nominee. She won the London Independent Story Prize and was shortlisted for this year’s Alpine Fellowship. Her work has been performed on BBC radio.

by Linda M. Crate

​when best friends
transition to
ghosts,
this aching heart
feels as if it will
ache forever;
i wish i could let her go
but she was my childhood— 
i still see the auburn and gold
of her hair in the summer sun
when i look at the childhood in my past,
how am i supposed to simply forget her
as she has me?
i hate living ghosts,
at least you know where to visit the dead. 

* * *

Linda M. Crate (she/her) is a Pennsylvanian writer whose works you can find at her social media links: 
​Facebook 
Instagram
Twitter

by Colette Coen

Our argument seemed trivial now, but as she approached, I wondered if she would stop or even say hello. I stood my ground, determined not to shrink into the detergents and tissues. I might not have noticed her slight hesitation if I had not been watching her so closely, but it was there. I could almost see her mouthing the words I had said to myself when I spotted her. She kept coming until she stood in front of me, our trolleys side by side, blocking the aisle.

"He’s dead, you know."

I nodded, smiling slightly. "Water under the bridge."

* * *

Colette Coen was a runner-up in Mslexia’s SS Competition 2023 and most recently published in Causeway/Cabshair. Her books are on Amazon. She lives near Glasgow where she runs Beech Editorial Services. She’ll swap a story for dark chocolate.

by Ani Banerjee

The fan overhead makes a creaky sound; somewhere, a dog howls, and from downstairs, Baba coughs. The couple toss and turn in bed and he says, "Let's go to the roof."
 
Under the stars, their bodies meet, sweat dripping salty over her, both breathless, air thick as mango pulp.
 
“Like dipping in the Ganges,” she jokes.
 
“Next year, we should get some air conditioning,” he says. 
 
“Or we could just hop on a cloud and go to the mountains,” she replies, and he laughs.
 
Below, on the street, four flights down, the night watchman stomps his cane and asks, “Everything ok?”
 
On cue, from downstairs, his ninety-year-old Baba calls out to her, the disposable daughter-in-law, “Munni, water, water.”
 
She says, “Coming, Baba,” but she can’t get up; her saree is crumpled and wet and tangled. As her feet keep slipping beneath her, she clings to the railing, but like old houses do, it groans and the railing gives way.

​* * *

Ani Banerjee is a retiring lawyer and an emerging writer from Houston, Texas. Her flash fiction has been published in Lost Balloon, Janus Literary, Dribble Drabble Magazine and others.