Category: Microfiction

She looked at what she had written down eleven months earlier. Lose weightNew jobSave moneyLess alcoholGet a dog She looked at the single tick and chewed on her pencil. Flipping the page over, she started a new list. Adam. Told me not to gain weight.Mike. Told me my job was a waste of time.Nick. Told…

“Hello?” * When they asked her about that phone call a few hours later, with a mug of unpleasantly sweet tea in her hands, she would explain that it sounded as if the person on the other end had a mouth full of fog, heavy and swollen. It made her feel like she was back in…

“How do I know I’m not dead?” “What?” His heart suddenly felt too large in his chest as he looked at his wife, at the two black eyes and the stitches in her head. The accident had been nasty, the concussion severe. “How can I be sure I didn’t die in the accident? What if…

She couldn’t believe the utter devastation that lay before her. She swallowed a scream as dulled eyes looked up at her but saw nothing. The room was a warzone, the victims scattered. “What the hell happened in here?” She turned to look at her husband. “He’s killed them all.” He rolled his eyes. “Stop humanising…

She laid the table for four. Her husband, her daughter, and the imaginary friend. It had gone on for years. She had read all of the books on how to gently transition out of this phase. And yet Jenny remained a constant at their table. “Jenny joining us again?” He leaned against the doorframe, his…

Erin Mackay’s mother once told her that she had a face that carried shadows. As a child she had imagined her face filled like a basket with the ones that she had accumulated over the day, jostling each other as they danced across her cheekbones. She would stare in the mirror, twisting her face to…

She sat at the piano and looked at the keys without really understanding them. They shone beneath the lamp that hung overhead. She swayed in the chair to watch the light dance across them. “Press one, Amelie. See what happens.” She pressed a heavy key down and giggled as the note rang out. * Seventy six…

They had laughed together through the hardest times. Through embarrassment, through heartbreak, through grief. Despite it all, they could laugh. But a crack had broken through their friendship. Life’s path had taken them in three different directions, and despite this the final destination was still at each other’s throats. They had disagreed on the meaning…

They came over the hill at the mercy of the wilderness. Their bodies were bruised and their spirits had abandoned them in disgust. Alongside them walked the devils who carried hatred, pride and cruelty upon their backs, ready to share these preternatural torments with the men they accompanied. The corrupt practices of man throughout the…

“Hello?” That heart-lurch that accompanies the late night phone call. The flicker-fast disaster movie that plays across your mind as you think about which character may have met an untimely end. Your mother calling to say that your father’s heart has finally given out. Your father calling to say that your mother has had a…