Worthing Flash

Do you remember when we kissed while the brass band played and our hearts beat in time with the drums? Do you remember when we danced, cheek to cheek at the school disco, as Meatloaf promised to do anything for love? Do you remember when you held me as the piper played in the new year? Do you remember when we made love as somewhere a fiddler fiddled? Do you remember when you whispered ‘I love you’ as the wedding march played? I remember when I should have listened to the words playing in my head and not the music. by Dorcas Wilson

The Music Box by Sue Wright Life, the leveller by  Rathin Bhattacharjee Deja Vu by Ryan Finnerty I didn't know by  Lauren M Foster Imprinting by  Susan Cornford A Fantastic Hobby by  Josie Gilbert In Camera by  Roz Levens Susan's Story

'Look at him sitting there so quietly. Honestly, he's a credit to you. He really is. What's he painting?' The little boy's face is fixed in concentration – his dark eyebrows furrowed with intent. 'Butterflies', his mum replies, pride swelling up within her chest. 'He's so talented. His watercolours are so realistic! How does he manage it?' Now standing next to the little boy, his mum's acquaintance notices the card from which he is copying and sees the pinned live butterfly - its powdery wings still vaguely fluttering. 'Adolf!', his mum calls. 'Show the nice lady how you do it.'  Sukie’s micro fiction has appeared in ‘Made in Shoreditch’ and ‘Memento Mori’. As well as scribing short (pretty dark) pieces of fiction, Sukie also writes and performs spoken word, as well as the occasional comedy character, in and around London. She won 2 nd  prize in the Open Pen poetry competition, has been longlisted for Flash 500 and the Bedford...

“ Leave me alone, you devils. I can make it on my own two feet if you just give me my cane. Where the hell did you put that cane? I shoulda had me some daughters instead of a son. Women know how to find stuff.” “ I don’t know, Dad. I’ll track it down later and bring it to you.” What I don’t know is if he believes me. He’s harder to convince than Mother was. He stiffens as they put him in the van. “Please don’t hit his head,” I tell the middle-aged man guiding him with a tired smile. Patricia Ann Bowen is the author of a medical time travel trilogy, a short story collection about people in challenging circumstances, and a serialized beach read. Her short stories have appeared in several anthologies and most recently in Mystery Tribune, Chamber Magazine, Idle Ink, and Commuterlit.com. She has taught short story writing, and she leads a critique group of short story writers for the Atlanta Writer’s Club. You can connect with her at www.patriciabowen.com .

They kiss. They've done this before; not a polite ' you-may-kiss-the-bride ' kiss; not a chaste ' one for the camera ' kiss. It's practised, probing, passionate. I try to tear my gaze away, but my longing pins me like a butterfly to a board. My mouth waters, my hands rise of their own will, wanting to pull her from him, from his heaviness, his heat, his ownership. I raise my camera, fumble with the lens, desperate to capture this moment, to preserve yet prevent in the same movement. I brush the confetti from my dress, turn away. They kiss. I’m a 62 year old writer living in Devon, and I’ve just achieved a Masters degree in Creative Writing from Hull Uni. This is the first time I’ve entered Worthing Flash. Roz Levens

Being a medieval reenactor is a fantastic hobby. You can dress up in armour, fight your mates and have a feast afterwards. Well, that’s the theory at least but it doesn’t always work in practice. Sometimes you end up in A &E with broken bones, struggling to explain to a harassed doctor that: yes. someone hit you with a sword; yes they meant to do it; no, they’re not a psychopath and no, you don’t want to call the police. All you need is patching up and a chance to attend the feast to show off your hard-earned war wounds! Josie Gilbert

Herman was hand-raised and released into the wild. It had been another case of humans swarming over a planet and decimating nearly all of its fauna before they realised the ecosystem was out of balance. Now Herman felt the inner movement of protoplasm that meant it was time to reproduce. Soon two smaller, amoeba-like bodies would go their separate ways. But something was missing. Slowly Herman shape-changed into the form of his human carer and picked up the item he had smuggled out after seeing Matt use it so often. “Playboy Magazine” fell open to the centrefold and Herman began. Susan Cornford is a retired public servant, living in Perth, Western Australia. She/her has most recently had pieces published or forthcoming in 2024 Anthology Invasion of the Saucer-Men From Mars! 42 Stories Anthology Presents: Book of 42, Arzono Publishing Presents The 2023 Annual, Banksia Journal, Metastellar, Stupefying Stories, The Suburban Review Hills Hoist V. 3 and WELL READ.

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 th...

Mark was fired, although he was employee of the month. The insurer increased his life insurance fee five times. The employer and insurer found out he was terminally ill - he had months left. Mark doesn't know - he would wait a year to see specialists.  AI decided not to burden the inefficient healthcare system with him. He would be given anaesthetics discreetly but would be increasingly unproductive, so should manage by himself. The disease was detected by microchips injected in a compulsory vaccine.  Like most citizens, he never found out. They scanned and monitored bodies, reporting daily to the relevant authorities. Christopher T. Dabrowski. translated by: Julia Mraczny Note about the author: Books in USA: "Escape" (2019 - Royal Hawaiian Press), "Anomaly" (2020 - Royal Hawaiian Press)   Books in Spain:"La fuga" (2019 - Royal Hawaiian Press), "Anomalia" (2019 - Royal Hawaiian Press) Books in Germany: "Die Anomalie" (2020 - Der R...

Here are four 100-word stories. I am a retired civil servant and local government officer and live in Shoreham. I write mainly short stories but occasionally lapse into poetry.    Tony Roberts   AFTERMATH Dr Jones was on his house calls when he heard that a bomb had gone off nearby; he went to help. He treated several of the injured the best he could. Then he found another; he recoiled in horror as the man was clearly dying in a pool of blood. He gave him a pain-killer, and held his hand. “Doctor can you help please.” It was one of the emergency team calling in some exasperation. “I’ve checked him; we can’t do anything.” Dr Jones nodded. He brushed away his tears, kissed his son goodbye and hurried over to the waiting medic.   MISSING MOBILE   It was the morning after the party and the house resembled a battlefield. I had the task of clearing up while Judy went to work. “Bye then,” she muttered. I sighed; things were not good between us. Later I fou...

She cocked her head to one side catching a sound. She was suddenly glad she was at the entrance of the alley and not swallowed by its dark embrace. She took a step back towards the lights of the club and the happy chatter of people spilling out into the night. Safety. She looked again; he had appeared out of nowhere. He moved with lethal grace, inhuman in his speed. One moment he was there and then…then he was here. She had only stopped briefly to light her cigarette. They had told her repeatedly that smoking would kill her.   Jo Beckett BA(Hons) MCLIP Librarian Oriel High School

by Roberta Beach Jacobson Every morning as I leave for work, I hide a few berries and some beach pebbles in my front garden as gifts for visiting fairies.  When I return home at 5 pm, the berries are gone. Always. Birds?  The pebbles are rearranged, sometimes stacked. Other times, a couple are missing. Thinking about it, it can’t be birds. Author, Demitasse Fiction: One-Minute Reads for Busy People Roberta Beach Jacobson | Linktree

“ Surprise” They waited for me inside the office, but I came prepared. Did they think me stupid? All week, their conversations dwindled when I approached. Their eyes lingered before darting away. “You’re paranoid,” my wife said. Could she be involved? I stared at the bedroom ceiling until dawn painted it grey. Then I overheard hushed voices while hiding in the toilets: “We’ll get him tomorrow.” I stepped through the doors and into their ambush. Whipping out the gun, I fired with frantic abandon. “Surprise,” my wife said, slumping to the floor. The birthday cake slid from her lifeless hands. Christopher Mattravers-Taylor  Author bio: favourite hot sauce: Encona. 

  It was dark and the road was deserted. I was driving, my friend sat in the back seat.   Suddenly two motorcycles started chasing us. They signalled us to slow down. "They are robbers," said my friend. "They have been tipped that there is cash in the car. Drive on."    Instead, I slowed down. One motorcycle overtook the car and blocked our way. I pressed the accelerator pedal. The motorcycle lost balance and fell by the wayside. The other motorcycle too gave up the chase.    I drove on and stopped the car only when I reached the next town.   -- Dr. Bhargavi Chatterjea Bhattacharyya MRCPsych (London)

Paper Lullaby by Rebecca Klassen Two stories by Biswajit Mishra

THE TWIT-O-LOGICAL MECHANISM (response to Paul Klee's Twittering Machine. URL: https://www.moma.org/collection/works/37347 ) Precision is essential to operating the machine. That statement is very true despite what some call the whimsical form of the device. For one, it takes exactly three pounds of force per square inch to turn the fitted handle. Any less proves futile. Any more poses risk of machine implosion. A game enthusiast, heedless of what was required, once revved the handle that hard both it and the transmission bar adjoined burst into a thousand, random bits. The parts had to be reassembled at great cost to the machine owner. Properly instructed, however, most people turn the handle without such embarrassing incident. When the transmission bar is set going at the optimal revolutions per minute, the coiled wire will activate. Each coil on it is looped two hundred ninety degrees to allow the best force transmission along the line. As a carefully calibrated piece o...

Accrued income The boy was setting up his wares by the street stacking his bananas in the wicker basket layer by layer. It was too early in the day for customers but he was getting all ready. Then he picked a banana, peeled and was about to eat when the bored old manager from the book store behind him shouted: “Hey, already eating from your stock? Have you sold any” The boy shot back: “ What? No, but I’m only eating from my profit” Indelible Thuk… thuk… thuk.. . That’s how she started recounting of her grandfather whom she might not have seen or at least it didn’t seem she remembered seeing well. Her stories, in any case, are now jumbled in our heads. She’s gone but our kids too recall those three beats of the walking stick hitting the mud floor—not sure how that sound was even possible on earthen floors. She’s gone and nobody seems to remember much past thuk…thuk.. thuk… from my mother’s story telling. Biswajit Mishra www.biswajitmishra.com

She reads the words from the bed warmth in the lamplight, her voice familiar to their foetus, muffled syllables relaying messages from Daddy, home in a year. His letters have crossed oceans to lull their unborn child, all the way from the chaos of roaring bombs and missiles. There’s no mention of these things in his letters, just his anticipation to hold his family. But she has decided that she will cradle and rock him. When he returns, while their baby sleeps, she’ll pat his back, and tell him everything will be okay. His turn to be soothed.   Rebecca Klassen is co-editor of The Phare. Her work has been published in Shooter, Mslexia, Burningword, Ellipsis Zine, and performed on BBC radio. She has won the London Independent Story Prize. 

  We were so awkward—he the first Asian I bedded and I his first Westerner—I giggled myself to sleep when he left my hotel room  that night.   Still smiling in the morning, I waited on the beach where he had, the day before, collapsed his limbs like pick-up sticks on my beach towel.   We’re together still. James Penha Expat New Yorker  James Penha   (he/him🌈) has lived for the past three decades in Indonesia. Nominated for Pushcart Prizes in fiction and poetry, his work is widely published in journals and anthologies. His newest chapbook of poems,  American Daguerreotypes , is available for Kindle. Penha edits  The New Verse News , an online journal of current-events poetry. Twitter:  @JamesPenha

A new hat is cause for celebration. Once, wearing my latest acquisition, a gust of wind caught its brim, whisking it across Park Lane. A young man launched out in pursuit, wielding his umbrella to stop the traffic.  Arresting my errant chapeau with the point of Excalibur, he cried Cauch’ya!   Sadly, an approaching taxi braking too late, knocked him to the ground. He was unharmed but my hat escaped into Hyde Park. It was only right I should invite my hero to lunch. A week later he invited me to marry him. Frances Aitken  

Poor woman. Her husband has a heart condition. As she says, the old man has a dodgy todger. And as for her brother-in-law, nothing wrong with his health unfortunately but he treats his wife like a skivvy. He deserves to be hung drawn and quarantined. And when she doesn't quite understand what you are talking about, she wants to know what you are on about Pacifically. She wants you to laugh. She wants you to correct her. The last thing she wants is for people to be 'polite' and ignore the faux pas. She isn't Mrs Malaprop, she's Ms Conceived.   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 with the cheery title "Murder From Beyond the Grave" which is available on eBay. Check it out.      

The child is fed and smiling, sits back with her mum, tired after a day of fun. Toys across the floor. The front door opens. He's early.  The house isn't tidy, child's face is dirty. Fear overcomes her, apologies pour out.  He turns and leaves. She cries and cleans.  But knows what is to come. He returns, breath smells of beer. Child sleeps, she cowers. Maybe tomorrow will be better. Claire W

Locksmith. I imagine myself as a house, with as many doors as an advent calendar. Some doors are armoured and bolted securely; some spring open at the merest touch. I’ve spent years barricading a few of the doors - wedging the contents under the doorknob to ensure nobody ever goes in there again. Sometimes I long for patio doors that open onto sunlit gardens full of vibrant flowers and trilling birds. Occasionally, people tempt me to leave a spare key under the mat, but mostly I’m content to open the public rooms to admiring visitors. You, though. You have my skeleton key. I’m a 62 year old writer living in Devon, and I’ve just achieved a Masters degree in Creative Writing from Hull Uni. This is the first time I’ve entered Worthing Flash. Roz Levens