Category: Microfiction

They had been on the site for weeks before something unnaturally white caught her eye. “Professor!” “What have you found?” “I’m not sure. It’s a skull, but the teeth aren’t right. They’re small and sharp.” He smiled at the gaps in her historical knowledge, showing uneven, off-white teeth. “Back then, some people would file their…

They were oblivious to the eyerolls. Deaf to the tutting. Blind to the hands around mouths, trapping the whispers made about them. Because yes, their energy was filling the space around them, threatening to engulf everyone else. Yes they were laughing too loudly, sharing inside jokes that would make no sense without impossibly long explanations.…

“What are you up to out here?” She had listened to her daughter tinkering in the garden for almost an hour. Sometimes she chattered with the birds, bidding them good morning or trying to speak to them through chirps. At other moments she hummed to herself as she made daisy chains, their already wilting forms…

She placed the note in the bottle and kissed the cool glass before sealing it shut. She handed it along with a penny to the man on the boat with the weathered face beneath a grizzled beard. Told him to drop it as far out to sea as he could manage. Over a hundred years…

Most people remembered through scents. A spicy sweet perfume layered with talc. Stale cigarettes and beer crusted carpets. A dog’s sea salted fur drying in the sunlight. But her anosmia meant that her memories were odourless. Instead they were shaped by clothes. Her kilt took her back to school, the safety pin nostalgically uncomfortable. Her…

“What’s the most interesting fact you know?” He was laughing before he said it. “Wombats poop cubes.” He also laughed so hard his milk threatened to escape through his nose. “What about you? What’s the most interesting fact you know?” He swallowed the last of his milk, confident it would now stay put. “It took…

She had managed to avoid danger for so many years. Not intentionally of course. It just so happened that life wasn’t how it appeared in the comic books. Those with secrets rarely had cause to share them. But now she had a choice. As the man slipped from the construction site, his casually perched helmet…

Sun dappled earth. Hands sticky with ice cream. The scent of warmed stone mixed with barbecued meat and cut grass. Sweat pooling in her clavicles. Ankles scratched raw. The scent of humid skin mixed with chemical insect spray and melting tarmac. Wide awake days beneath cloudless skies. Freckles peppering smile-filled cheeks. Coastline adventures to find…

The painting was surrounded by silence. People stood before it in hushed wonder, putting away their phones in favour of absorbing brushstrokes. He went there often, but not so often that it aroused suspicion, sitting before a handful of paintings. He always lingered a little longer at this one. He could remember the day so…

He had followed the forecast and tracked the storms. Knew that tonight would be the best chance he had ever had. As the thunder rumbled in the distance, the air thick and heavy with the humidity that had been building for days, he ran out into the field, the sweat on his back both uncomfortable…