Worthing Flash

She wanders the fields where the elms once stood. Nothing stands there now, only the winter grass and a cold wind barrelling down the hill to the broken willow. Close to the edge of the stream, she dives into her coat pocket coat for the seeds and crumbs she keeps. She will wait for them to arrive; their fluttering wings matching the fluttering in her heart. No one knows she comes down here, day after day. Especially when the snows come, especially then. She won’t worry. Her feet have trodden these paths for eighty years – they belong to her now. Like the fox that passes each evening, they inhabit her dreams.  This story is by Bronwen Griffiths. Bronwen Griffiths is the author of, A Bird in the House , 2104, Not Here, Not Us – stories of Syria, 2016 , and Here Casts No Shadow , 2018. Her flash fiction, short stories and poems have been widely published. When writing this piece, Bird Woman , she was thinking of the walks she did as a child and a teenager growing up in North ...

Et Iterum Brutum (and Brutus again) Gaius couldn't help but grin behind the scroll he was carrying, using it now to hide the insulting expression. But really, Marcus was a funny little man, with his strange philosophies. In fact, Gaius was rather worried; Marcus was a scholar, a statesman, a lawyer and an accomplished orator, and the very idea of his that somewhere out there in the great expanse of the universe there were alternative worlds, alternative realities – well, it just didn't make sense for such an intelligent man to make such asinine declarations, so maybe his friend was ill. But he had no more time for Marcus Cicero today. It was the Ides of March and he had to get to the forum where the last of the public trials of the conspirators who tried to assassinate him was being held, putting to bed once and for all the tyranny of these plotters. They had all confessed to their plans and the motives therefor, and once this last would-be murderer had been dispatched...

A story by Annemarie Musawale Chapter One: Apocalypse Now Paula Domitia wiggled her way from under the pile of rocks she’d been hiding under shielding the baby in the groove of her abdomen. It had been almost a week since she’d seen the light and she didn’t know what was waiting out there. She’d kept an ear out, listening for the things. The things that used to be her neighbors, her family, her friends. Now they were just…mouths and hands and destruction. They would eat anything; concrete, steel, brick, flesh, bone or blood. The comic books had gotten it all wrong. Zombies didn’t eat brains. Or maybe these weren’t zombies. Maybe they were just horrible mutations brought about by radiation, global warming and adaptation to the befouled air. It had started so slowly, so insidiously that hardly anyone noticed. CNN first called it a new craze; people craving stones to eat. There was precedent after all. Pregnant women were known to eat stones now and then. For...

sunday morning mr pembrooke wakes up in a bed next to a woman for the first time in fifteen years and he goes downstairs and makes breakfast for a woman for the first time in fifteen years and he thinks about the lectures his father used to give him about sex before marriage for the first time in fifteen years and he puts the coffee on the table next to the halved grapefruits and toast dripping with marmalade and soft boiled eggs and four strawberries each for the first time in fifteen years and he opens the newspaper and listens to the sounds of a house that is not empty and it is so different from the sounds of one that is and he decides that this morning he shall do his sunday morning crossword puzzle in pen. John Brantingham is  the first poet laureate of Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Park, and my work has been featured in hundreds of magazines and in The Best Small Fictions 2016. He has eight books of poetry and fiction including The Green of Sunset from Moon Tide Pre...

This story is written by Vijai Pant who is a freelance writer living in India “Hunger has been banished,” he thundered. The crowd roared. Kalawati, too, feebly cheered. After all, they had been given clear instructions on what all to do during the course of Netaji's speech, before being ferried in a truck to the rally. Meeting over, she jostled with the others for the promised 500 rupee note. After a lot of pushes and shoves she managed to lay her hands on one. Clutching the crumpled note she hurried home. She didn’t want to lose one more child to starvation.

This is the first poem in #worthingflash and it is written by Laura Solomon You have to be dead to be invited to this party. As is to be expected, all the stars are here. Janis, Marilyn, Jesus. There are ordinary people too though. Kevin Watson who died of a blood clot to the brain shortly after his 40th birthday. He’s been resurrected. Now he’s partying in the corner – he’s put himself in charge of the music and is playing Nirvana as Cobain toys with a segment of his blown-off head. Other run-of-the-mill folk present? Jimmy Molesworth who hung himself and is now hitting on Janis Joplin who is oblivious to the attention, dancing wildly to Come As You Are a whisky bottle clutched tightly in her right hand. Jimmy’s still got rope marks around his neck. There’s Cindy Rutherford who was hit by a car while simultaneously cycling and listening to her iPod. Not a good combination. She’s got splinters of glass from the windscreen embedded in her face. Mari...

This story is by Nod Ghosh http://www.nodghosh.com/about/ 'There's no crabmeat in heaven.' So you've come back to life, and the first thing you say to your grandson is some bullshit about seafood? 'Hey,' I manage. There's butter in my voice. Overcome with emotion, I see your open eyes, your limbs moving. You speak, and the death-stubble on your chin trembles. 'No streetlamps, no ice-cream, no tax returns, no armatures, no orgasms.' 'Steady.' It's not like you to talk that way. I've never heard you say the word  orgasm  before .  Or  armature.  What is an armature anyway? We haven't spoken for so long and the first words I say to you are  hey  and  steady . Classic. 'And,' you continue. 'In hospital, when you held my hand, said I'd see Eddie in heaven.' Eddie. I loved that dog. My eyes fill. I relive my eight-year-old self cradling the Labrador’s golden head. He died in my arms. You ...