By Karen Crawford

It’s a short one, I promise. You see, yesterday I went to the bank because my account was running low. And this little girl standing in line behind me tugged on my coat sleeve and announced it was her birthday. “I’m ten,” she said and held up both hands. “Wow,” I said, “Ten? That’s a good age.” And, I don’t know why I said that, because it’s a shitty age, really. Do you remember being ten? It’s the loneliest number. And this little girl oozed lonely. Why else would she tug on my sleeve? Because her mother was distracted by her late-model phone, her long red nails, that tall swarthy bank teller? 

And you’re probably wondering why I’m telling you this story, and honestly, I don’t know – because it’s not true. It was the mother whose bank account was running low. It was a stranger who tugged on the little girl’s sleeve. It was the stranger who asked how old she was before she held up both hands. Did you know that sometimes loneliness can smell like peppermint candy? That it can look like the ocean in Grandpa’s eyes or a Preacher’s smooth hands? I can still feel that skip in the little girl’s step when she followed the stranger outside. The click, click, click of her Mary Jane shoes, the whoosh of the door closing behind her. And her mother–distracted by her compact, her lipstick, the tall swarthy bank teller. 

And I’m sure you’re thinking this isn’t true either. And maybe you’re right, I haven’t set foot in a bank in years! Even though I pitch my tent in front of one. But today is my birthday. And if you spare me some change, I’ll spare you my age and tell you something real. 

*   *   *

Karen Crawford lives and writes in the City of Angels. Recent work has been included in Best Microfiction Anthology 2025, The Citron Review, Tiny Molecules, Flash Boulevard and elsewhere. Find her on Bluesky @karenc.bsky.social and X @KarenCrawford_

A Memoir by Jillian Schedneck

On a January night that hummed with cold, I waited alone at the empty platform, my fingers buried in my gloves, clutching at the last threads of warmth. I regretted leaving my friend’s rare party—the warm masala corn dip, her long-time boyfriend’s easy jokes, the trickle of old college dorm friends arriving with wine and gossip. More food was emerging from the tiny oven in her cramped apartment, already packed with people I’d once known. Both she and her boyfriend had urged me to stay. But I’d double-booked, and a guy I was seeing was waiting at a bar in Cambridge. It would still take me ages to get there.

I paced to get the feeling back in my toes. A tall stooped, middle-aged white man with a scruffy beard shuffled toward me in a slow, determined beeline.

“Heading into the city?” he said in a South Boston accent. “Got a date?”

“I have a shift at the office,” I lied. Improbable for a Saturday night, but not impossible.

He looked at me warily. “Ah,” he said. Then: “You seen Gone Baby Gone?”

The turn in conversation caught me off guard. The movie had come out recently, set in Boston.

“I’ve heard of it. Ben Affleck?”

He pointed finger guns at me. “Bingo!” He took his time to smile and look me over. “Ben directed. They filmed around Dorchester. I had a small part.”

“Really?”

“Don’t act so surprised!” He laced his fingers over his chest as if I’d wounded him. Then he told me about meeting Ben and acting on set. After they wrapped, Ben had promised to stay in touch but never returned his calls.

I empathized. It seemed we were both used to being forgotten. Ghosting had become a regular rhythm in my life. The friends I’d just left, we’d disappeared on each other after college, only now reuniting for one casual night, likely never again.

I used to think connections faded because people changed. Now I wasn’t so sure. Maybe this was just how adult life moved: quietly, without explanation. And the date I was heading to — the one I told myself had potential — he’d ghost me soon, I figured. Or maybe I’d ghost him.

The commuter rail finally pulled in, twenty minutes late. The man put out his hand. Before I could shift my fingers back through my glove, I extended my hand, offering my balled fist instead. He shook the fingerless cloth of my wool blend.

“Sorry,” I said. “I promise I’ve got fingers in here somewhere.”
The man gave me a slow smile. “A woman like you definitely has fingers.”

I laughed.

“Enjoy your date,” he said, chuckling. We parted on the train.

At the bar, I told the guy I was seeing about the actor from Dorchester. He didn’t believe the man’s story, seemed annoyed I’d even brought it up.

Weeks later, after we’d stopped seeing each other, I rented Gone Baby Gone, sure I’d see the commuter rail man. His story had been too specific to be fake. And there he was, one of the lowlifes the main character meets while tracking down the missing girl.

Fifteen years later, I found myself in another cold place, walking my daughter to school in the early mornings. When I drop her off, we shake hands with our fingers buried in our gloves.

“But I do have fingers!”

“A woman like you? Certainly!”

We laugh at our private joke, one we’ve repeated all winter, gloved hand swinging at her side.

I watch her go, remembering that platform long ago, and the way a passing moment can feel more solid than the people who were supposed to stick around.

*   *   *

Jillian Schedneck has published a memoir with PanMacmillan. Her stories and essays have been published in a variety of journals, including Tahoma Literary Review, Brevity, Redivider and elsewhere. Her work has been chosen as a notable essay in the Best American Essays series and won a Solas Award for Best Travel Writing. She lives in Canberra, Australia, with her partner and two children. Her website is jillianschedneck.com.

 

By Tinamarie Cox

Terror always attacks the heart first. The rhythm changes, gallops like a stallion with hooves pounding against the eardrums. The fast pace supercharges the electricity running through the body, and the high voltage causes the hands to shake. Makes muscles tight. Winds tendons up like springs. The growing pressure in the chest cavity spreads, reaching up and squeezing the delicate throat. Paralyzes the lungs as claws clamp down on the organs. And then, there is nothing left to do in the full-body agony except scream. Scream like a hot kettle until one runs out of steam. Or is silenced by the source of the fear.

  *   *   *

Tinamarie Cox lives in Arizona with her husband, two children, and rescue felines. Her written and visual work has appeared in a number of publications under various genres. She has two chapbooks with Bottlecap Press, Self-Destruction in Small Doses (2023), and, A Collection of Morning Hours (2024). Her debut full-length poetry collection, Through A Sea Laced With Midnight Hues, arrived with Nymeria Press in 2025. You can follow her on Instagram @tinamariethinkstoomuch, and find more of her work at: tinamariethinkstoomuch.weebly.com

By David Lowis

On their first date, they went to the cinema to see an art-house film. They opted for coffees over popcorn and took their seats. He placed his arm on the armrest between their chairs, feeling the air charged with the prospect of romance. Did she feel it too? He wanted to reach for her hand but, fearing she’d find it too presumptuous this early in the date, kept his arm anchored to the rest.

Each chair had a small table attached to its armrest. Once he’d finished his coffee, he left his empty cup on his table. Later, when she’d drunk hers, she placed the cup on his table rather than her own. His attention drifted from the film to the touching coffee cups. Could it have been an unconscious gesture of desired intimacy?

                                                                       *

On their second date, they went to an Italian restaurant. They agreed the tiramisu was the finest they’d ever tasted. After the meal, they sat on a sea-front bench, his arm draped over her shoulders, her head nestled against his chest. She sensed that if she tilted her head upward, they would surely kiss. Aware of the significance of the moment, she held back, weighing up the risk. The kiss would seal a partnership with someone she still knew very little about. She could continue to resist and give herself more time or she could commit, right now. She deliberated for the shortest of moments before raising her head.

Afterwards, they sat in silence, staring out to sea, dreamily watching golden speckles from the street lamps flickering on the water.

“Fancy a coffee?” he asked.

She nodded and gave a tender smile of agreement.

They headed away from the waterfront and, without hesitation, he reached for her hand. He knew of a quaint coffee shop in the backstreets and led her into the late-night crowd.

*   *   *

David Lowis is a writer from Surrey, England. He writes mainly micro and flash fiction. His work has featured in various online journals and he’s recently published a microfiction collection, Imprints. More details are available via his website: https://dlowis.wordpress.com

By Lynn Kozlowski

On rare nights when nearing sleep, I still foolishly recall an old episode, again testing its power over me. Decades ago, in our early months together, when you were wanting me, you also still desired this captivating, noncommittal older man. You secretly sought his bed while we were planning our lives together. You two are fresh from sex, and I feel angry, humiliated, and pathetic over your love and lust for him. These nights the calm I need to sleep burns away.

You begged me to forgive your finished affair. I did, but, as you expected, I still cannot forget.

*   *   *

Lynn Kozlowski has published in The Citron Review, Molecule, The Zodiac Review, 50-Word Stories, Every Day Fiction, The Dribble Drabble Review, Bright Flash Literary Review, Friday Flash Fiction, The Quarterly, The Malahat Review, and failbetter.com. He has a volume of short pieces, Historical Markers (Ravenna Press). He is based in New York State, USA, but spends a great deal of time in Ontario, Canada.

By Oliver Cubillos 

Today starts just as it always does, except when it doesn’t: a woman is taking me home, so I’m told, and as she starts my engine for the very first time I chirp with glee—there are some errands we must run, she tells me when we’re on the road together at last, including but not limited to: an oil change, a fresh coat of paint, a scrub to my windshield, and a new set of tires; and when that’s all done, my new owner tells me I have a new name, that she’ll call me Shirley, and together we spend that afternoon roaming gray peaks and valleys and hills, listening to the squeak and whine of worn rubber on gravel, and it’s here where I honk and beep to my heart’s desire; when we stop for gas for the very first time, I watch the sky roll over my back; when we return to the street, I sing contently with oil slick on my lungs—I’ve come to discover there’s great excitement to be found on the open road, and for the first time I see such lovely sights (vistas and meadows and turnpikes); the woman has a set routine, she tells me, and together we’ll go from home to work to home to store to work to home; there are rules to follow and of course I abide by them (I’m obedient and resilient, factory-made)—she treats me well, for when I stumble and scrape my bumper on the curb, she coos from the driver’s seat and reminds me that I can feel no pain (I’m only made of metal and steel), and I know she loves me because it’s then she recites: we’ll sweep all that away, that rust and grime and, come tomorrow, you’ll be clean and good as new—and it’s only when I come to rest at last in that dusty garage, and the woman taps my hood one final time before she goes inside for sleep, that I blink away cobwebs and dust, and suddenly there’s a great hollow husk in the dark shell of my body, and I wonder: if only I, myself, could take control of the wheel…like a guttural punch, I remember I’m only an automobile; though I have a name and a voice, I have no heart, and when, tonight, slumber eventually finds me, no dreams will ever come. 

*   *   *

Oliver Cubillos is a writer and filmmaker from Southern California. He recently graduated from Emerson College in Boston, Massachusetts with a BFA in Media Arts Production and a minor in literature. 

By Barry Yedvobnick

There were no sonograms in 1952. As the auditorium lights dim, I open my eyes and glance toward the stage. Mothers learned about complications like the smack across their newborn’s bottom. It’s framed by burgundy curtains. During your first minute, my obstetrician and nurse placed you on a table. The acoustic shell is maple, your favorite hardwood for sound projection. They examined your right hand, and I heard the words—developmental defect. Walking on stage, you pause beside the piano. Frantic, they tried to calm me. Spotlights rise and one hundred applaud. What’s wrong with her? Missing a pinky and ring finger? You touch right hand to heart and bow. Alone, as your dad waited elsewhere, I screamed his name. Dad takes my hand like he has for thirty years, interlocking our fingers, and you sit. Oh my God, can you fix her? Your eight fingers produce the exquisite refrain of Canon in D by Pachelbel. They brought Dad in, and I couldn’t speak, so I pointed. I study your hand and recall your struggles to master the modified techniques. He turned to the group surrounding you and demanded to know what was happening. You stand and bow.

*   *   *

Barry Yedvobnick’s fiction is forthcoming at Literally Stories and appeared recently in The Phare, Sky Island Journal, Neither Fish Nor Foul, 10 by 10 Flash Fiction, Wordrunner eChapbooks, and elsewhere. His nonfiction writing received a 2025 Georgia Press Association Award. A retired scientist, he narrates stories for AntipodeanSF radio shows. http://www.chillsubs.com/profile/barryyedvobnick

By Ken Poyner

It is difficult to explain to a child why the loose spiders he catches in the corners of his room should not be mixed in with the spiders purchased for next week’s spider loaf. To him, a spider is a spider. His senses have yet to learn fine distinction. Eight legs are eight legs. Every web is gossamer. He delights in the morsel, imagines adding it to the family larder. He is too young to judge gradients of capture. Make a game of it. Tell him his spider is special, not for spider loaf, but tastier if he eats it alone, raw.

                                                                        *   *   *

The latest of Ken’s twelve collections of poetry and flash fiction is “Science Is Not Enough,” speculative poetry.  He lives in the lower right-hand corner of Virginia and is married to a world champion female power lifter. He spent 33 years herding computers. See him in “Analog”, “Asimov’s,” “Café Irreal,” “Blue Unicorn” and another hundred or so places.  www.kpoyner.com.  

 

 

By Mike Lee

At eight o’clock in the morning, the first summer thunderstorm arrived, pelting the corrugated metal awning covering the aging porch. The porch, painted light blue and flaking, exposed the oak planks.

The screen door opened with a screech of rusting springs, and a young man stepped out, his feet in black Doc Maarten’s boots creaking on the aging oak planks.

Not tall, or small; fat or thin, just nondescriptly normal, a man who could pass into and away from a crowd barely noticed, and when otherwise, quickly forgotten; a nondescript man/boy in transition from youth to adulthood without notice. 

While jogging to his car, he pulled his black motorcycle jacket over his head toward the car parked on the curb next to the crushed gravel driveway. 

It was a dark blue 1983 Mercedes station wagon that Dad bought at a bankruptcy sale in the aftermath of the 2007 financial crisis. The station wagon was missing the chrome on the driver’s side, and the upholstery had stains, but the Mercedes ran well, although they had to drive to Asheville for repairs. 

He was a kid then. A young family owned the house, and the belongings were being auctioned off by their creditors. They had kids, a dog, a cat, and a nondescript brick house with five bedrooms and two stories. Dad remarked that the house was as shoddy as the garbage mortgages the parents took out to pay for it. Cheap rewards get you nothin,’ he said, and the other bidders near him nodded.

Fuckin’ good farmland gone for this shit, one of the men remarked, after spitting out a small stream of tobacco juice.

The only item on auction that interested Dad was the station wagon. He slid his fingers over the roof, gentle as feathers.

Fuckin-a, I didn’t realize they built these.

Dad motioned to the auctioneer, an older, rotund man wearing a gray Stetson. 

I want 200. Stetson man nodded and made a gesture. Dad walked over to him, pulled out a pair of Franklins, got the papers signed, and received the keys.

Years later, his father admitted that he had obtained the Mercedes for so little on a no-bid basis because the auctioneer owed him money from a card game.

As they drove away, they passed the family. Two girls. One boy. The mother was blond. The father’s light brown hair was thinning.

When he was in fifth grade, the boy learned the meaning of the word stoic and realized that was who they were on that day.

As the rain subsided, he wondered what eventually happened to that family. Did they start over? Break up? Or pass through the years as apparitions of their former lives, haunting the brief years they spent outwardly wealthy, though unknowingly, overwhelming, leveraged.

When he arrived in Weaverville, he stopped at a café to get an Americano and write in his notebook. 

The counterperson was a black-haired Goth with a narrow face and nose, with gray eyes, and was distracted while attempting to take his order. They kept glancing out the window at the Mercedes station wagon.

He knew why. He has been coming by the café every Sunday for a month. They never say anything, exchange only the rote language of the service person and the customer.

There is no other acknowledgment. Eyes never meet.

After getting his Americano, he found a red upholstered booth with a painting of flamingos on a velvet backdrop, set against a lakeshore. This booth was always the same one because Sunday mornings are always slow at the café.

He hung up his leather motorcycle jacket and sat.

He began writing. Sometimes, he observed the counterperson, their arms crossed, staring through the window at the blue Mercedes station wagon parked at the curb.

                                                                   *    *    *

Mike Lee is a writer, photographer, and editor at a trade union in New York City. His work appears in or is forthcoming in Waffle Fried, Lowlife Lit, Wallstrait, Panoplyzine, Brilliant Flash Fiction, Bristol Noir, BULL, Drunk Monkeys, and many others. He also has a story collection, The Northern Line. 

By GJ Welsh

Back in 2025, one person was born every three seconds.

By 2030, it was one every 3 days.

In 2035, he was the only one born. It was the first time The Guinness Book of World Records had an entry for the Youngest Person Alive next to the oldest. The picture of him as a baby was placed next to an old Japanese lady, who was the first to live to 150 years old. There was no print edition that year; the cost of printing it outweighed the sales price.

The following year, no babies were born, nor the next, nor any year following.

Adam was not only the only child in his class, but he was also the only child in his school. The previous kid had moved to a school where he didn’t have to play catch with himself.

He had a teacher to himself, a physical education teacher, even a janitor followed him around making sure it was clean around him. And that he still had a job.

When he reached the age of fourteen, his parents sat him down, not to explain the facts of life to him, but to break the news that he would be the last one left.

On his 120th birthday, he buried his father in the backyard next to his mom. He had no way of knowing what he had passed away from. The last doctor died 10 years ago.

Adam was in perfect health; he figured he still had a good 10 years left. So he decided to start a hobby.

Every day, he tried something new to see if it would stick. He painted, he sculpted, he gardened. He baked, he tried to play guitar, and then he decided it was no use; he had no one to play guitar for.

The next day, he set off after placing a flower on each of his parents’ graves.

He walked for a whole day before he found signs of life. An old garbage tip that hadn’t been added to in close to 20 years by the looks of it. Deep in the detritus, he found an old comic book and read it to a squirrel who did not seem interested in a story read by the last man alive. He found a woman’s pink knitted hat. He put it on.

Suddenly, Adam felt like dancing. “Shall we?” He flung out one arm and glided over the trash of humanity; he imagined the woman who owned the hat. Her name was Brooke, like the river; her laughter filled his mind. She twirled as he raised his arm. Oh, how her hair glittered in the reflected light of the broken glass that shredded his bare feet. 

They danced until the sun set. Then they walked hand in hand toward an old farmhouse. She told him stories about her grandmother. They were funny stories, about how she used to throw Brooke into the air when she was little and of the cakes she baked every birthday, with sugar icing the color of her favorite hat. He had never known such joy.

Brooke made him grin, even though he no longer had teeth to show off; it felt good to stretch his gums. It had been years since he had last even thought of smiling.

That night, he made a fire from an old couch in the farmhouse and he and Brooke held each other as the flames consumed their bodies.

*   *   *

GJ Welsh is a copywriter with a manuscript and a bunch of awards for his writing from the Clio Awards, Cannes Lions, Loerie Awards and more. He is from South Africa, but currently lives in Karachi, Pakistan. His work straddles the fine line between mythology and reality.