Comfortless Cove by Linda Walsh I grip the sides of the swaying rowing boat, my face scorched by a cold-hearted sun. Ahead is Ascension Island, Queen Victoria’s lonely outpost, lying between Africa and the New World, a desolate rock in…
It’s Raining Today
It’s Raining Today by Mark Left When I dream it is raining. That is normal, that is what it does in Poland. Rain falling in sheets like wire mesh stretched to the four horizons. Keeping me in, shutting me out…
Freedom Pass
Freedom Pass by Tamsin Cottis Jackie and me on the bus. Front seat, top deck. Number 38. Hackney Central to Victoria. Memory of this bus came with me to Hospital. German Doodlebugs screaming through clouds. Stop. Wait. Boom! Doctors said…
Down the Long, Long Line
Down the Long, Long Line by Mary-Jane Holmes Dark to light, the tunnel births the train and there’s the river’s head damned blue to reservoir, the ore rakes Da hushed lead from since the valley was drowned, the best sward…
Bedlam
2019 FlashBack Fiction Microfiction Competition: Moon First Place Bedlam by Jo Withers I sit rigid, body taut as wooden chair. Physicians unleash freezing water against flesh, hoping to exorcise hysteria. They blame the moon, say its phases corrupt menstrual cycles.…
Gene Cernan Boards the Apollo 17 Lunar Module
2019 FlashBack Fiction Microfiction Competition: Moon Second Place Gene Cernan Boards the Apollo 17 Lunar Module by Sutton Strother In his Boy Scout days, he had wandered off trail into thick woods and convinced himself that once he returned to…
Moon Burial
2019 FlashBack Fiction Microfiction Competition: Moon Third Place Moon Burial by Johanna Robinson Is it lonely up there, high as heaven? Did you once, alive, imagine looking down on us all, pinching the Earth between finger and thumb, as though…
Moon Rabbit Over Honshu
2019 FlashBack Fiction Microfiction Competition: Moon Highly Commended Moon Rabbit Over Honshu by Caroline Greene “There, now you can see it,” said Kazu’s grandmother guiding his pointing finger around the shadow-shape of a rabbit on the bright, white moon. The…
Three Minutes Before St Mary’s Chimed The Quarter Hour
2019 FlashBack Fiction Microfiction Competition: Moon Highly Commended Three Minutes Before St Mary’s Chimed The Quarter Hour by Marissa Hoffmann Father blamed the moon’s blink—three days past apogee—for the westerly raging-bull-wind that butted their Dundee train. Bella had been following…
Wolf Moon
Wolf Moon by Jude Higgins Peter is back from the Wyre at full moon with wolf blood on his hands. He says the wolves are denning and he caught more cubs today, their feet sticky in the pitch he laid…