Worthing Flash

Red, orange and yellow leaves surround gaudy plastic Gerberas and teddy bears more fitting for a child than an adult. You loved, you danced, you worked hard for that degree and would soon have been a dad, although you didn’t know. I didn't know either. Your mother's only son. She never wanted to let you go, having lost her husband , your father , so young. All that dark trapped inside you . I thought we’d turned a corner, moved towards the light. What happened that morning to change your mind? I haven’t told your mother yet. She banned me from the funeral. Lauren M Foster Bio: Lauren is a writer and musician from Charnwood. Published in Ink  Pantry, DIY Poets, The Journal, 81 Words and more. Drummer and  vocalist in The Cars that Ate Paris, a garage-punk band.

I always see him. Whether on a stroll with my wife, a nightly jog through the highstreet, or as I drive  by the wide pedestrian bend — he’s there, on the corner. “They must be a profitable enterprise,” I told my wife one evening, her petite nose behind a coffee  cup. “How else could they afford him to stand with a sign all day?” I cut short my midnight run from my usual route to the bleak, personless bend. Slouched on a  roadblock, “Superstore” sign in hand. I asked, to no avail, what he was doing; Then panted home for bolt-cutters. by Ryan Finnerty

Suraj spends his time visiting the holy places now! I remember hot-headed Suraj talking about his fights with his dad. “I wish the bastard’s dead!” He concluded. Uncle wanted his only child to step into the family business. Suraj, to be an actor! Uncle died a dissatisfied man.  ************************************* Ananya, hysterical, came out of their son's that day. She'd caught Aryan hooked onto that obscene video game again.  Later, Aryan held his dad's raised hand, menacingly. Suraj could do nothing! The painful face of his late father came back to haunt him.  He missed his dad sorely.

I am not sure how old I was when dad gave me the music box. My fingers were strong enough to turn the small brass key, but I did not recognise the tune it played. Inside there were pieces of her costume jewellery: a letter D fixed to a black-ribboned bracelet, a brooch in the shape of a leaf. I took the box to college, filled with beads, chunky resin rings from market stalls. Now it holds the tiny footprints of my baby daughter, a w isp of her hair, the hospital bracelet cut at the end from her lifeless wrist.  

Sawtooth by  Karen Schauber Another individual to be milled Christopher T. Dabrowski. translated by: Julia Mraczny Five Stories by Tony Roberts Bad Life Choices by  Jo Beckett BA(Hons) MCLIP Fairy Joy by Roberta Beach Jacobson Surprise by  Christopher Mattravers-Taylor 

Sawtooth - Karen Schauber - He waves at me with that sawtooth smile and halloumi complexion, and I swoon just like the last time (last guy). My bus leaving in ten, but I jump up and squeeze past the bulky woman seated next to me, her closed-loop reusable plastic bag bulging with a thick baton of Hungarian salami, fragrant spicy olives and pungent Bryndza, Limburger, and Epoisses cheeses—she mentions meeting her beau for a picnic by the lake, him bringing the libation and the worsted wool blanket—as I zoom to the front of the bus begging the driver to let me off, and I don’t even want a refund, I just need to get off. Hiram is perplexed but willing to indulge as I force his arms open for the hug of a century, I’m squeezing so hard he issues a little cough, but I don’t let go because I think I’ve found what I’ve always been looking for and realize that I can make the Carpathian Mountains my home after all. I’ll learn to sew pretty embroidered blouses and sell them at the ma