One of my 50-word stories, "Bitter," is live on @tinyfrights podcast!!! You can listen here:

https://caracabecreations.bandcamp.com/track/tiny-frights-episode-8-bitter-by-francesco-levato

#WritingCommunity #50WordFiction #50WordFriday #horror

Numb

On the restaurant patio, string lights glowed under the purpling sky. It was cold for Florida, and I was numb and well into my second margarita, the street’s dirt and exhaust a stark contrast to the lush greenness of my first Orlando visit on a girlhood train trip from Arkansas.

Photo: Unsplash by Filip Mroz

#50WordFriday #microfiction #50WordFiction

Numb

Drinking beer al fresco at the Lazy Gator bar within view of gator-infested waters, she feels her head, bald from chemo, sweating beneath her wig. She doesn’t feel her feet numb with neuropathy. She realizes dating in this condition she is essentially a piece of meat. Dan leans in, hungry.

photo by Jessica Griffith, public domain, flickr

#50WordFriday #microfiction #50WordFiction

#50WordFriday 's next sensory word summer prompt is a great suggestion from @levato ----"numb." As an adjective, it is used to depict a lack of physical sensation or emotional responsiveness. As a verb, it can mean "to deaden" or cause to "feel less intensely." Google "numb" to find synonyms and example sentences in Oxford Languages. This word has creepy potential for a #50WordFiction so thank you so much, Francesco! That being said, all genres welcome. Please use # above. 🖤 💀

A 50-word I wrote for Halloween a couple of years ago and published in the wonderful zine @tinyfrights. If you like to write the dark-bite-size fiction, up to 250 words, consider submitting. I am considering the sensory prompt for this week's #50WordFriday and am running late. In the meantime----"Leonard." #microfiction #50WordFiction

https://wordpress.com/post/brokenwriterblog.wordpress.com/5835

Random #50WordFiction, just coz. More like #autofic I'm about to read some more Lydia Davis and she's rubbing off on me.

My son sends me a picture of the meal he is enjoying with my ex in Mexico after a day of fishing---no faces, but the hands and shoulder of a person I don’t recognize. But then I realize it must be him, and I’m sad I’m no longer sure.

#microfiction

photo: public domain by FoozlePro, flickr

Here is a blogpost link to a #50WordFiction for #50WordFriday, prompt word gossamer. I felt the picture would need a content warning and I'm feeling lazy. It's not obscene, just a little out of the box so know that if you follow it. It describes the way I felt once upon a time in a certain academic context. Peeps who want to participate in #50WordFriday don't have to share their piece in a post, but can use a link to a blogpost or piece published in a journal, etc. 💜 https://brokenwriterblog.wordpress.com/2023/08/09/interloper/

Gossamer

Lanie felt drifty, like a gossamer web blowing with every breeze until one day she detached and flew free, floating over the highway, over the city, over her childhood home, out to the sea at sunset. She would stay here a while, she thought. There was a lot of sea.

unsplash photo by Pawel Nolbert

#50WordFriday #50WordFiction #microfiction

Prompt: Hush

There was this stillness, when the temperature turned breath to crystal and snow kept our footsteps from unsettling the dead.

We buried them, what body parts remained after losing ourselves to the impossible geometry of the ruins we discovered, to the blasphemous thing we had awakened there—and in ourselves.

#50WordFriday #50WordFiction #MicroFiction #SFF #Horror #SciFi #Fantasy #WritingCommunity

Hush

At sunset, she walks the beach hushing a nonexistent infant in her arms. But no one else has seen her, only me. They say I imagine her, dead and barren in my longing.

#50WordFriday #Microfiction #50WordFiction

photo: "Florida" by Mickey Luigi Logitmark, public domain, flickr

Hush

There was a hush after the pied piper of souls disappeared from conscious awareness. Ideas, knowledge, thoughts, creative inspiration had been harvested and kept elsewhere to the benefit of the rich who hired the clever men to press buttons and pull levers so the rest of us did their bidding.

(photo: Adam Levine, public domain, flickr)

#50WordFriday #50WordFiction #microfiction

Shorts, Poetry & #WritingPrompt Hashtag List

This is for my own and others reference. Thanks again to everyone who told me about these!

Poetry Tags
#SmallPoems #Poetry #Micropoetry #Hailku #PoetryCommunity #VssPoem #575prompt

Prompts About Wips
#WritingWonders #PennedPossibilities

Fiction Prompts
#WriteEver (SFF), #MastoPrompt #Vss365 #50WordFiction #VisualWritingPrompt (reply to prompt toot) #MicroPrompt #130WordStory [& tag #MicroFiction]

More from @Codgertator: https://paper.wf/codgertator/prompt-info#poetry

@ElisesWritings there's the #50wordfiction tag, seems to be most active on Fridays - fifty is very short, of course, but it's a challenge.

Grotesque

Time seemed to be stretching on forever, like pulled taffy, so Miriam surrounded herself in ticking clocks. One night, she awoke to a grotesque battle between the black mantel clock on her dresser and the country French clock on her desk, each marking the seconds in increasingly loud ticks.

#50WordFriday #Microfiction #50WordFiction

Unsplash photo by John Tyson

Grotesque

Don’t ask me why I feel compelled to make a midnight trip to my childhood home across town. It always seems to be not solid but rather a gaseous grotesque collection of whirls dancing and circling. A woman stares at me from the upper window, her eyes two burning coals.

Public domain photo by Crusty da Klown, "Psychedelic flower of the trance-human revolution," flickr

#50WordFriday #50WordFiction #Microfiction

Grotesque

Monika reluctantly followed Kristofel into the strangely fragrant house in the middle of the wood. Once inside, she noticed little faces in the unpainted walls, grotesque faces with mouths the color of the raw wood and with wood knots for eyes. Monika felt a thrumming in her neck and ears.

#50WordFriday #MicroHorror #Microfiction #50WordFiction #HorrorFiction

Prompt: Fragrant

Their skin smells of honey, undercut with ambergris, a rotting scent, sweet and animal. You can sense it as they walk past, subtle like a memory lost in the crowd. We don’t know its origin, or how the curse spreads—but we know they’re dead, even if they don’t yet.

#50WordFriday #50WordFiction #MicroFiction #SFF #Horror #SciFi #Fantasy #WritingCommunity

There are so many wonderful stories at #50WordFriday, I wanted to post some journals accepting submissions in this form.

Molecule
https://moleculetinylitmag.art.blog/

Blink-Ink
http://www.blink-ink.org/

The Dribble Drabble Review
https://www.thedribbledrabblereview.com

50-word Stories
https://fiftywordstories.com

I'm sure I've missed some, so please respond to this thread with others.

And, if you can, please boost.

#50WordFiction #MicroFiction #WritingCommunity

The next sensory summer word prompt for #50WordFriday is "fragrant" meaning pleasant-smelling, as in flowers, food, candles, incense, a person, the woods, etc. But what about a narrator/character using "fragrant" with something not normally associated with a pleasant smell? Also, what are "fragrant memories?" Below: fragrance & synesthesia. For your fifty-word, use the # above. All genres. Sometimes the weirder the better. lols. Enjoy🌺 🧁 #WritingCommunity #50WordFiction
https://www.allure.com/story/frederic-malle-perfumer-synesthesia

Prompt: Spicy

You could taste it on the air, this pungent bite that left ash in your mouth. The pyres were lit again, and the smoke carried with it everything but bone. They thought burning the bodies would stop the horror, deprive it a means of walking among us. They were wrong.

#50WordFriday #50WordFiction #MicroFiction #SFF #Horror #SciFi #Fantasy #WritingCommunity