Worthing Flash

We were sprawled on the hospital bed, counting all the dead people we had kissed. “My teenage boyfriend, the one who killed himself.” “The tennis-player in college. Those shorts!” “How about the boy across the street? His sister was so appalled I had touched her precious brother. She’s dead now, too. At least I never kissed her.” “Well I did. Summer of Love Redux, baby!”  She loved to say stuff for shock value and as usual my startle reflex made her laugh. “Well, aren’t you the judgey one,” she said. The doctor came in, his stethoscope dangling.  “I bet he’s going to Halloween as a doc-tah,” she stage-whispered behind her bruised hand. He smiled and pulled the curtain around her and once again I was on the outside. “This will take a while, she called through the fabric. “Bring me back something Halloween-y. We’ll trick-or-treat the ward!” To spend her bit of remaining time being monitored like that─ what good did it do? She was going as fast as she could. I...

by Marcelo Medone “ Tell me if it was you or your brother, Betsy: it's very serious matter. The strawberries were for Grandmother Lola's birthday cake.” The woman points to the mess in the kitchen, with traces of strawberries staining the floor and the counter. “ It wasn’t me, Mum, I swear.” Betsy makes a contrite face and sighs. “ And where's Timmy?” “ He left home. He hasn't come back yet.” “ Weren't you going to ask for sweets together?” “ Timmy says I'm too young to go with him. That I am a nuisance. That Halloween isn't for little four-year-old girls like me. That's why he left without me.” “ So, did you see him?” Absolute silence. Betsy bites her lower lip. “ Did you see your brother?” Betsy looks at her mother and realizes she can't lie to her. She swallows and musters up the courage to speak. “ Kevin came to get him earlier. They were the ones who ate the strawberries. Kevin must have eaten strawberries at ho...

Josh didn't believe in ghosts, so he fearlessly set out to explore the haunted castle ruins. Nothing happened until he came across a female phantom in one of the tunnels. - A white lady - he muttered. - Anyone, but no lady. He turned on his heel and fled. He reached the door and tugged on the handle. It was locked... The phantom was right behind him. - Relax, you don't have to open it for me - she announced. - I advocate equality, and can easily penetrate matter. - AAAAA! - shouted terrified. - And you don't have to fear me. I'm just a hologram in your game. Christopher T. Dabrowski We have had a number of stories for Halloween. They are all worth reading!

Mother Halloween Camp is awful. No one likes me and they're all horrible, anyway. Dad's old RAF sleeping bag is enormous. I look more like Sherpa Tensing than a 12-year-old. Sometimes I think you must hate me. Also, that bite I received from the huge red centipede has taken root. This morning I woke up really early and found myself outside the tent. I must've wriggled outside during the night. Please collect me at 4pm by the woods. My shiny forcipules keep twitching and I'm worried I might start biting soon. Biting parents doesn't count. Regards Pinky   by Sukie Shinn

Revenant. Yesterday, I found out that Gibbs' Emporium, up on High Wynd, in the town, our only decent shop, with its beautiful curvaceous facade and art deco windows, was closing at Christmas. Not that I live there any longer. I left to spend a year in France as an au pair in my late teens, studied in Paris, and only now go back for holidays, but as soon as I read that news on Facebook, I felt something fall in me, a sudden lack, and a growing grief. What is a ghost, I asked my mother, when I was eight. My deeply religious mother. She wasn't happy with the word ghost, but conceded that there might be spirits. Perhaps they had left something undone on this earth, and had come back, fruitlessly searching for a way of making amends for a sin of omission. I stayed awake that night, trying to lay my own ghost, wandering the basement, and the three upper floo...

Grandad, what are you doing with the laptop? Making a book Won't your fingers get tired? I'm going to use a mouse. How can his tiny paws press those huge keys? This is an audiobook of short stories (flash fiction) for your entertainment. Postage is free in the UK. It also makes an excellent gift. Buy one of these and you are giving money to Alzheimer's research. Click here Equally, you can write your own flash fiction in under 1000 words and email it to worthinglfash@gmail.com Join the 100 writers for #worthingflash and be read by our 100,000 readers.

Doctor Harris murmured: ‘Good lord, extraordinary thing,’ when he found a dove inserted in the anus of young Gwendoline, and, as he pulled it out, he dislodged three feathers, which fluttered and swooped down to the crimson rug beside the bed. He had been summoned to certify her death after she was found in her bed that morning cold and rigid, with horror in her wild, wide-eyed stare. The contorted posture of the body led him to investigate further. Bruising indicated to him that force had been used in a vicious assault on the poor girl. * The night before, when Gwendoline went to bed, she pulled back the bedclothes to find spread out before her a human heart, a glistening coil of entrails and several unidentifiable organs and lumps of flesh. She gasped, and then the stench of blood and excrement reached her and heaved bile up into the back of her throat. Suddenly a figure with a maimed face rose up in front of her, gripped her hand and shouted. She fainted and fell to th...

Flight of Fancy We were once the Sparrows, a pair of ordinary birds engrossed in our daily rituals of courtship dances, nest upkeep, and caring for our young. Our tranquil existence took an unexpected turn when you all of a sudden, declared yourself a penguin, adopting a comical waddle, craving fish suppers, and insisting on us being addressed as Mr and Mrs P. "Darling, what on earth has gotten into you?" I asked one day as I watched you flop around in your strange gait-a -go. "I just feel like I belong with them," you replied with a determined look in your eyes. "Them? Who are 'them' exactly?" "Penguins! Don't you see? They're my true family!" You exclaimed, flapping your wings in an excited manner. Your family tree seemed to be a breeding ground for avian identity crises; there was that eccentric uncle convinced he was a peacock trying to woo the peahens, and some distant relative who believed he was part duck until ...

Now that you've gone, a storm rips my apartment apart, letters scattered everywhere. I weigh down plates too late, spoons soon disappear, cups fly up and away through windows smashed by wind, walls all gone, stairs open to the stars. But I'm most worried about my hearth, my empty shelf. Tim Love

A couple of days after his marriage, Ratan, an employee of BoB, Bhutan left with his divinely innocent wife. In those days he would travel to Bhutan by The Royal Government of Bhutan bus. The luxurious bus would set off from Esplanade at 7 p.m. and was supposed to reach Phuentsholing, the border town, by 10 in the morning. After the relatives coming to see the couple off, had hugged them and said their final "goodbyes" at the bus station in Esplanade, Ratan turned to his wife in the semi-darkness inside the bus and thought to himself that he was lucky to have her in his life. Ratan, talked nonstop on the way. He was possibly too excited to be married finally at 39 to take note of how preoccupied his wife was. He remembered the bus stopping near the Petrol Station and him getting off the bus to see if he could get some coffee or tea for his newly-wed wife. There was no tea-stall in sight. As he kept talking to his wife from below the window, his wife just said o...