Worthing Flash

There is only one rule. All stories must be below 1000 words. There is also an annual contest for 100-word stories.  Looking at the blog you will see there is no restriction on subject matter or type of story.  Although the majority of the posts are of prose, I have recently accepted two poems. If you take the two most popular poems in England, Tennyson's "The Charge of the Light Brigade" and Rudyard Kipling's "If" they do not total 1000 words between them. And "brevity is the soul of wit" according to Shakespeare. Derek McMillan Send your masterpiece to worthingflash@gmail.com for consideration for inclusion in the blog.

By Savannah Hernandez She has no face– this girl sitting and hugging her knees beside me. She has no face, but I can tell everything about her; her body says it all. She is shy, perhaps, easily frightened by me at first– as was I by her– but we learned neither of us was a threat to one another. I suppose she decided to stay– or perhaps I decided to stay with her, to keep her with me. Maybe I pity her, seeing her dressed in rags and her hair matted, and when I look into her home, it is nothing but bare floors and crumbling walls. I do not know her story. “What is your name?” I ask her. She doesn’t answer; but then again, she has no mouth. She stares with nothing but a faceless expression. “Well…that’s okay,” I say. “I don’t remember mine either.” Her shoulders slump, and she scoots closer to me. “I promise to keep you safe.” Savannah Hernandez writes, "This is .  a chapter from my novella-in-flash that I am writing and developing.  This beginning piece focu...

Stella handed the door as the dimension turned dark. She rushed through the stairs, grasping the candle holder on the left, jolted breaths, bared feet, grabbing to find the egress, unexpectedly with a black gown. She sensed the unheard as she was in cordolium. It was after her reflection, dark and dusky, red blazers, horrendous sights. All went off. The stairs stretched endlessly beneath her feet. Stella sniffed unpleasant breaths around. She named the Maudlin a thousand times. She had a dogma that he appeared when she whispered his name. But she was unaware of emptiness in empty barrels, sometimes the beliefs banish the inner battles, and sometimes the moral lies in deep struggle. We were blurred and rightly buried in the tower of trash. We thought we had a strong grip over however the planning was altogether unexpected. As same as the moon betrayed the ocean. Yet, it was very hard to be the last star in the galaxy that endured, it was one in all rare. She was i...

LaVern Spencer McCarthy ` The man who called himself Lizard, for unknown reasons, stood at the roof edge of one of the tallest buildings in town. Today he had decided to jump off the building, not for the first time. The very first time he had done it, the authorities were called before he had worked up enough courage to jump, and firemen arrived with a big, round net that saved his life. He had been suicidal that day, but after the net broke his fall, he was exhilarated. That was fun! He had not noticed the people gathered far below him, nor the firemen holding the net. His eyes had been blurred with tears. Lizard had been in and out of the state insane asylum since then. Once or twice, he had been arrested and fined for being a public nuisance. Periodically, he managed to get to a roof of a building without being noticed. He either stole a key to the door that led to the roof and locked the door behind him, or he blocked the door with objects he found on the roof. There w...

"This door is alarmed". The door was also the emergency exit. The fire started in the hardware department. A battery exploded and soon the department was filled with choking black smoke. Customers rushed to the door. It was locked. By chance, there was a display of hammers. The manager, a big brawny bloke, grabbed a hammer and made his way to the door.. "Stand back, everybody." It was the sort of commanding voice people obeyed. He attacked the door with a will and smashed it so the grateful customers could escape. The door had a good reason to be alarmed. Derek McMillan is a writer in Durringon in the UK. His editor is his wife, Angela. He has written for print and online publications in the UK, USA and Canada. His latest book is the audio-book "Flash Fiction" which is available on eBay.