It’s our first Micro Monday of 2025, and what a way to start the new year! Loads of fantastic mini stories to enjoy, from old Cranked Anvil familiar favourites, as well as authors brand new to the website. Welcome all!
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To The Moon
by Christine Dubuc
Standing outside the back door, he feels himself being lifted high up into the sky. Like a child on a bouncy castle, he dips, spins, screams, laughs, cries tears that fall as light drizzle. He dives down to the crashing waves and then swoops up towards the moon, its mouth like a cave into which he could crawl and sleep forever. He flies backwards as if pushed violently by a bomb blast and loses consciousness. When he comes round, there is no moon. He is floating through grey matter, cannot feel his body. So this is death he thinks, before even thought evaporates.
Christine writes short stories and poetry. She attends a writing class once a week.
A Trace Of Silver
by Fizle Sagar
The heavy door closed behind me with a soft hiss. In the half-light your face glowed and I thought I saw you breathing.
Music sounded from discreet speakers hidden within the alcoves. Some hymn or other. I imagined you rolling your eyes and shaking your head with a sigh. I’ll ask them to change it. Siouxsie singing Dear Prudence perhaps, but then you never were one for the Beatles either.
I wanted to kiss you but I shuddered at the thought of your cold lips against mine.
I pressed a button and the music faded, the light dimmed. It was just you and me and the silence while from beneath one closed eyelid, a tear rolled a trace of silver down your cheek.
Fizle is a creative writer of historical fiction and an artist. Her first book ‘As the World Spins’ in its final edit before approaching agents/publishers etc.
Follow the author on X/Twitter.
Enter our flash fiction competition here, to win cash prizes and publication.
Submit to our Fiction123 here.
We Care For You
by Ros Levenson
A long queue at the hospital’s X-ray department. I stare at their ‘We care for you!’ pledges. Dignity, treating people as individuals. That sort of thing. I reach the front of the line.
‘Name?’ barks the receptionist. I tell her. She looks down and says ‘Computer says you live at 19, Glassington Villas?
‘Correct,’ I say. She doesn’t look convinced.
‘And your date of birth?’
‘It’s three: eight: fifty,’ I reply.
‘So that’s the third of August – is that nineteen-fifty then?’ I give her a look, but just say yes. ‘Over there now,’ she says, and please tell the radiographer if you might be pregnant.’
I can’t resist asking if she enjoys her job. ‘Course I do,’ she says.
Ros is mostly retired and is a keen writer of short fiction. She is continually amazed at the inspiration that comes from daily life.
The Raven’s Toll
by Angela G. Williams
1849, Prague. The old city held its breath. They said the clockmaker, Anton, made a bargain – not with flesh and blood, but something darker. Now, a raven, black as midnight, perched atop his crooked spire, tolling the hours with a voice like grinding gears.
Anton hadn’t been seen since. Whispers followed the raven’s chilling cry. Each toll, they said, marked a year stolen, fuel for Anton’s infernal clockwork – a clock measuring not time, but souls.
Tonight, the raven’s cry was different, laced with frantic urgency. It was my name day. As the final, agonizing toll echoed, I saw it in the window’s reflection. Not my face, but Anton’s, gaunt, hollow. The raven, perched on the sill, croaked once, this time with my voice.
Angela G. Williams is a South African genealogist currently residing in Illinois, where she channels her passion for history into writing gothic and supernatural fiction. Her stories often explore the dark corners of the past, weaving together folklore, mystery, and the haunting echoes of forgotten lives.
Enter our flash fiction competition here, to win cash prizes and publication.
Submit to our Fiction123 here.
Possible Reasons Why My Husband and I No Longer Receive Invitations to Breakfast Private Views at the Museum
by Sandra Hirons
1. I dropped a mini-Danish and my husband accidentally stepped on it.
2. We didn’t notice that his flies were wide open until 45 minutes in.
3. I called one of their Trustees Mr Burns by mistake.
4. I pointed out to the Senior Curator that many Old Master depictions of Baby Jesus look like alarmed, middle-aged extras from The Sopranos.
5. My husband looked at a painting of a nude man and said, loudly: “It’s like it’s following me around the room!”
6. We might possibly have accepted too many free mimosas.
7. All of the above.
Sandra is originally from Canada but now based in the UK where she works in the heritage sector. Her flash fictions have been published by Books Ireland, Anansi Archive, Pulp Fictional and she was a finalist in Mslexia’s Flash Fiction competition 2023.
Two Boys, One Book, In Jim Crow’s Jackson
by Fiona Dignan
Emmet knows the math book is raggedy, but his teacher doles them out like they’re candied yams. His fingers trace the name inside the cover. Randall.
Emmet pictures a gold-curled boy claiming the book when it’s crisp new.
“It’s no matter, numbers don’t change,” the teacher says. But Randall has already written the incorrect answers in the book. Emmet knows math comes at you true as a Mississippi morning. Emmet has learnt it’s words that lie. Like lynching can mean justice. The word separate can mean equal.
Emmet corrects Randall’s answers. His slim black fingers learning to make things right.
Fiona is a stay-at-home mum of four and writes short stories and poetry to keep herself sane.
Enter our flash fiction competition here, to win cash prizes and publication.
Submit to our Fiction123 here.
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