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Madeleine Armstrong
@Madeleine_write
Writer; runner; winner @hhpublish1 short story 2023; published by @TrashCatLit @nationalflashfd @HooghlyReview @LondonISP @flashficmag & WestWord
London
Joined September 2023
817 Following
703 Followers
1.9K Posts
@1funnyfarmAdams Thanks Tracie!
Happy to say I made it into this issue! 🥳
Looking forward to reading the other stories 🖤
All responses for Issue 7 have now been sent! If you haven’t found yours, please check your spam folder, and feel free to contact us at [email protected] with any questions!
Thank you for the privilege of reading through so many brilliant submissions.
@NinaMD1 Thanks Nina! ❤️
@MeanerHarker So great to see this story in the wild, Zoë. It makes me smile
MICRO MAYHEM v7
Mythic Micros by @WriterLeeFlatt @MeanerHarker @ronita_c @Foreverasheley @NinaMD1 @KennethMGRAY2 @CletusCrow @Writer1990Mark @TheDarkestStar_ @angela_joynes @tcboudreau & @justin_karcher
Curated by @NathanBorn2010 / Nathan Pettigrew
#MythicPicnicTweetStory
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All the Streets in My Town Are One Way Now
It’s wildly impractical. When I backed out of the wedding, Katie’s father took it hard and ran for city council. Swung his weight around. This—the road thing—is temporary, he promised. A favor, an experiment, depending on who he bribed. On my way home from work, I have to pass Katie’s house. No way around it. Believe me. Needless to say, everyone despises me. And, there's the billboards. “700 bucks on fish, Mike. You son of a bitch.” on the corner of Willow. “For chrissakes: call her.” at the ramp onto the highway. Another says “Please.” where I always turn back.
-
by Travis Flatt / @WriterLeeFlatt
Travis Flatt is an epileptic teacher and actor living in Cookeville, TN. His words appear in Had, Flash Frog, Fractured Lit, and elsewhere.
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Plastic Noir
Rain headbutted the window like a perplexed cat at a malfunctioning cat-flap. It was one of those nights when being inside was the best option.
Unless you were dead.
I stood over the victim, hands on hips. It was a tidy job. Cold. Professional. No wonder I’d been called in. The perp had dismembered the body with surgical precision. A boxy torso sat alone, the solid trunk of a man stripped of his decency.
To my left, legs, bent in a permanent, rigid stride. This poor bastard wasn’t going anywhere fast.
My coffee-fuelled eyes strained right. The head. Detached. Perversely yellow. It was encased in an astronaut’s helmet, pin-black eyes staring into the heartless void of the afterlife. And yet… a smile on that smooth, hairless face.
The living room, I snorted at the irony, was a map of a life interrupted. No blood. No struggle, just an acceptance I couldn’t accept. I grimaced, noting the chipped stalk of a neck pointing towards its missing piece. Someone had wanted to send John Doe-Armstrong a message. And that message was damn clear. They wanted him in pieces.
I took a shuddering drag from a vape that tasted of regret… or Blueberry Ice. I couldn’t crack this case alone.
“Hey, Miller!” I grunted. “Get your arse in here.”
Her heels pad-padded across the laminate. She was good. We’d been working homicide for twenty years. Only took me ten to put a ring on her finger. Hardest mystery I ever solved.
Miller didn’t say a word, her form slack in an oversized hoodie and joggers. She sighed, reaching down with a hand that became a gargantuan claw in the semi-light. She pinched the victim by his midsection, snapped his mismatched legs onto his hip-pegs, and CLICK! reunited him with his head.
“Good thing you didn’t tread on him this time,” Miller said, tossing the body into toy bin purgatory, where a broad in a business suit was wearing the spaceman’s trousers.
She shot me a wink.
It was time to go interrogate the suspects.
Although, maybe after a bedtime story.
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by Zoë Davis / @MeanerHarker
Zoë Davis is a writer from Sheffield, England. She's a stubborn FND sufferer and fights what her body says she can't do by playing wheelchair rugby league. She writes poetry and prose, and especially enjoys exploring the interaction between the fantastical and the mundane, with a deeply personal edge to her work. You can find her words in publications such as: Ink Sweat & Tears, Strix, Roi Fainéant and Red Ogre Review. You can also follow her on X @MeanerHarker where she's always happy to have a virtual coffee and a chat.
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Dear P
You know… lately, I have found myself talking to other women about managing housework with professional commitments (this work life balance is really a mirage, isn’t it?) and benefits of one washing machine over another and whether non-stick cookware can lead to cancer and how, now, we are clearer in our minds and hearts about what we want but our bodies have decided to fall apart! Almost every conversation veers towards these irritating aches from just sleeping wrong or lifting something heavier than what we should have and how we seem to be perpetually tired and often struggle to hold on to joy.
It is true what they say. As we grow older, we do turn into our mothers. At least I am. It is a privilege that escaped you since you will always stay seventeen.
Love
R
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by Ronita Chattopadhyay / @ronita_c
Ronita Chattopadhyay is an Indian writer and poet. Her micro prose chapbook Preparing to be Wrecked was published as part of an anthology (Grieving Hope) by Emerge Literary Journal. Her work has also appeared in The Hooghly Review, Akéwì Magazine, Porch Lit Magazine, FemAsia, JMWW, Blood + Honey Lit Magazine among others, and anthologies by Querencia Press, Sídhe Press, Rough Diamond Poetry, Bare Bones, Black Pear Press and Pippa Rann.
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Timestamps
The flower petals danced slowly through the air, brushing past molecules of carbon and nitrogen.
There was a small breeze that came through that shifted the right most corner of one of the petals to curve at twelve-degree angle. Instead of floating, its pink tips melted into the lake. With mercy on my shoulder and machoism in my palm, I pray it dissolved before it hit the bottom.
-
by Naa Asheley Ashitey / @Foreverasheley
Naa Asheley Ashitey is a Chicago-born writer and MD–PhD candidate at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. A first-generation, low-income Ghanaian-American and University of Chicago alumna, she writes at the intersection of race, medicine, and belonging.
Her creative and editorial writing examines how policy, media, and academia reproduce structural violence—and what it means to resist with truth.
Her creative work appears or is forthcoming in The Cincinnati Review, Hobart, The San Antonio Review, BULL and editorials for The Xylom, MedPage Today and KevinMD. She has been nominated for multiple awards, including Best Small Fiction and a finalist for the Claire Keyes Poetry Award.
More at NaaAshitey . com
Twitter/Instagram: @foreverasheley
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Suture Removal Kit Model 24-7
Sterile/Latex Free
Like the room in your doctor's clinic, the one used for procedures, the one with "good lighting," and the one you visit every few weeks.
Contents:
Alcohol Wipe
The doctor examines you. Dark black sutures push up and out of the light brown skin of your forearm. Are they trying to escape or being rejected? Both could be the answer, you think, as alcohol is applied to your skin. Alcohol, which is at first cold and then stings, much like the words that come out of your partner's mouth with each completed cocktail.
Povidone-Iodine Prep
The doctor rubs the pad gently along the jagged wound on your arm from the "cooking accident" that brought you to the ER last week. The yellow-brown liquid matched the healing bruises you've cleverly concealed under your eyes. Yet, you avoid their gaze as they make small talk. Just in case.
Tweezer
Scissors
4x4 inch gauze square
Holding each suture by the knot, the doctor slips the scissors under it, severing the tie. If only your bonds unraveled, your binds severed, if only each day didn't feel like the tightening of a noose. You finger your wedding band as they snip each one until ten small broken pieces lie on the gauze. If only all your broken bits were this small and removable.
They return to you, gently rub in bacitracin, and bandage the raw skin, the puckered, jagged laceration with pinpoints of blood where the sutures once resided. They tell you there may be a scar. They don't know there are more deep inside.
The doctor asks if you're okay and if you need any pain medications. Slips a number into your hand and asks if you're safe, if they could help get you removed from the trauma you're embedded in.
-
by Nina Miller / @NinaMD1
Nina Miller is an Indian-American physician, epee fencer, and creative.
Find her @NinaMD1 and ninamiller . bsky . social
Read more at ninamillerwrites . com
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DEMONS PT. 2
Rose returned to the table, never taking her eyes off her brother.
Randall continued, "In the morning, Pandemonia and Levi would roll the bones to see who got to take me out for a spin. Asmodeus never took me for a ride; he preferred to watch. Most of the time, it was Pandemonia who won. I think she cheated. After a night of being gang- possessed, I was a blubbering, drooling, shit my pants, idiot. She would parade me around town, making me flash women and children, piss on a cop's leg, or take a shit on the bar at that biker's hangout."
Randall's hand twitched toward his mouth. "That's when I lost the rest of my teeth."
Rose placed a cup in front of Randall.
"Levi was the worst. Even for a demon, he was an evil son of a bitch. He made me tear apart a live pigeon and swallow it in the confession booth at St. Francis. That's when they dragged me off to Wellscroft, but Levi busted me out through a third-floor window. He healed my bones so I could walk, but didn't take away the pain. Evil Bastard!"
Randall jerked up in the chair.
"They made me kill a nurse and an ambulance driver. The ambulance is parked outside."
Rose poured, trying to make eye contact with her brother. "You never told me how you got free from those demons."
Randall laughed, slammed his face into the table, and lurched to his feet, a toothless smile on his ruined face.
"Well, this has been a hoot."
Randall reached over and touched the radio. Nickelback came on.
"Hello, Rose. I'm Pandemonia. These are my brothers, Levi and Asmodeus."
Rose stared aghast at Randall's swaying body and, for the first time, noticed the slashes running up his wrists.
"Randall pulled a fast one on us. He was so full of antipsychotics that we lost touch for a minute and… oops.”
Randall's body collapsed to the floor, and Rose heard Pandemonia's true voice.
"Come, Rose, let's take a walk."
-
by Kenneth Gray / @KennethMGRAY2
X- @KennethMGRAY2
Instagram- @graykennethm
Bluesky- @ kennethmgray . bsky . social
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LAST NIGHT IN TOKYO
at hangover bar
we write our names
on receipt paper
as we pronounce letters
differently
and i want to know
at least how hers looks
before i never see her again
until three nights later
she saws my legs off
in a dream
mostly about
people sawing my legs off
but it's nice
to not never see her again
despite stairs
and what's possible
-
by Cletus Crow / @CletusCrow
Cletus Crow is mostly a poet. His latest chapbook, Flying High, is out from New Ritual Press.
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The Promised Land
It was like the pain riffled through her like bullets as her expression changed. A damaging blow of agony pulsing and throbbing, almost breaking her and even on her deathbed, she spoke heavily about my future and how I’d live without her.
I knew her mind was dissolving and the light that followed her was fading into dark. It was like it was flickering out of power, losing its purpose. And she was, in time, balancing pain with a beam she ultimately did suit.
This pain didn’t subside, her skin yellowing, her body brittle. Weakness drew its cards, and this woman felt sapped, filtered through and thoroughly broken.
Witnessing this decline made me think about an old motorbike which became defunct due to its engine. A part that created the ruckus, output. To me, it served as a wonderful and bashful sound, a lively atmospheric pulsation.
Though, inside her, the engine hadn’t fully crashed but it was imminent that it would. The mechanisms were corroded, especially her vital organs, pushing her to the end of her stay on earth.
I dried her brow a little and read a riveting story to her. A piece of truth, in which, stirred conversation. Though she was buckled under immense pressure, she didn’t stall in speech.
Every momentous word made her immersed, captivated and assured literature could change lives. The dramatic difference was, in fact, she’d feel good when I read to her. She felt like she was also floating in the story’s middle core, deeply embedded in its worth.
All those characters were vulnerable, like her. All of them, bound in anxiety, featuring in their own private hells. In time, they all had disappeared into thin air, sabotaged by the ways of a dark existence.
The story blew her mind though, even with its dark theme, and some of the lost light appeared in her eyes. It was only a small glint, but it had real urgency and energy. From then on, she spoke about the past, her endearing life, and the days she spent in the garden cutting down weeds to let the flowers bloom.
And the story I read aloud lent itself to courage and inspired the lady to live every minute even under the circumstances, while feeling groggy and fatigued. The fable also reminded her of her past where demons were partying in her head.
The nurses eventually came and gave her water that she drank sparingly. Eating was a no go, as her guts burned and churned.
I did cry at times as I couldn’t conceal my tears. I couldn’t mold a coping mechanism in those moments. She cried too, tears dripping down her gown. And attached to her, in her hands, was an old teddy bear which reminded her of her youth.
The ambience was bleak too. The room was bleak. Every piece of equipment that analyzed her vitals beeped loud, often blaring like a siren in my head. She became desensitized to it though, programmed to take it on board.
And it was vicious, the disease, and while I tried to console her, she’d yelp in pain, angrily pushing the morphine button to ease it, to hold it back from completely ravishing her body like a wild animal pinpointing its prey.
To be able to withstand the storm of utter discomfort and agony, took strength and durability, and this angel in a hospital robe, showed her resolve until tiring like a baby needing her blanket. She also spoke in parts, letting her eyes close on occasion. And in the room, it was only us, embracing old music from the old TV set.
Music implanted a seed in her, where happiness came as a flying visit. Though it had to be short lived, she sang in tune, absorbing a shuddering bassline and powerful percussion. She loved punk rock, particularly, which truthfully, sent shivers down her thin spine.
In the midst of singing the revolutionary songs she stopped and said a statement which made the hairs on my head stand up.
‘In life I was a thinker, in death I’ll be a spirit which will fly high and wide across the sky looking at you as you smile at your children. Don’t be sad either, as I won’t let you dwell on my demise. You’re young and smart, so able and in time you will have everything you want and need. I will cross over into the promised land, and I will swagger on the fields of purity.’
Her eyes got heavy and the tiredness came quickly. On her lap lay the bible, a book she knew off by heart, a truthful text, which she swore by.
She also always told me to look differently at the world, be free of trends and disconnect from the herd. She knew from an early age that dreams don’t just appear, as you must work for them.
As I sat and watched on, her vitals went flat.
She had gone to the promised land.
-
by Mark McConville / @Writer1990Mark
Mark McConville is a freelance music journalist who’s written for many online and print publications. He also likes to write dark fiction and poetry.
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Strange Visions
My love — they say there’s
a fool on the hill.
The fool is me.
I watch, and dream —
clouds fold into
a baby’s plump cheek,
the Irish countryside,
green, untouched lands.
I yearn for a heathered moor
my feet will never reach.
I wake, sweating, to the dread of what
the fools under the hills do.
The world is melting —
that must be where the sulphur
in our nostrils comes from.
The horror: burnt lands,
open battlefields, stolen homes;
a snake-like, swirling gas
set to kill any dream we have.
My love, you are a testimony
to what endures: a light
breaking through a crack in the dark
when all is doomed.
Like a wildflower growing on stone,
you bring me back from the dead.
-
by Karina Longo / @TheDarkestStar_
Karina Longo (she/her) is a Brazilian-Italian neurodivergent poet based in Milan. She's the EIC of La Rotonde Review. You can find her work in Expat Press, Eulogy Press, Dodo Eraser, Michigan City Review of Books, Burning House Press, Eunoia Review, Some Words, and other places. X: @TheDarkestStar_
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Aunt Ruby Rooster
Chickens and one snarly rooster pecked Aunt Ruby’s yard, squawking away when Pearlie’s family drove up. Like Aunt Ruby, the veranda yawned points and edges, weather-shined gray, slightly off kilter.
Last visit, her aunt had mocked Pearlie’s pox of face freckles and her pumpkin-pie hair, so today Pearlie hid her face behind Mama’s chunked thighs and listened to the songs of rubbing nylons.
Up the steps, shoved by Mama through the screen door, Pearlie tenter-hooked across the threshold, balloon-holding her breath for the coming inspection.
Aunt Ruby kestrel-eyed the shrinking bodice of Pearlie’s best dress, the hem twice let out, the scrawny wrist bones glaring below button-cuffs, and shin bruises the color of pond scum — every failing of Mama and Daddy and Pearlie herself immediately spied by Aunt Ruby.
Like Carl the rooster cockadoodledooing outside, Aunt Ruby spurred forward, and taloned her fingernails into Pearlie’s sunburn-ripe shoulders, her vexed breath clouding Pearlie’s face. “Land o’Goshen, girl, looks like you belong in some alley.”
The blacksmith-forge pain in Pearlie’s collarbones plus her rising antipathy set an olive-green slurry worming her throat. Although words defied Pearlie, she found vindication.
She launched one defiant loud belch, just before sliming her aunt’s peep-toe pumps with a puddle of puke splat.
Aunt Ruby balked. She blinked, dislodging her talons. The old rooster jiffied a hasty retreat.
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by Angela Joynes / @angela_joynes
Angela Joynes (she/her) is a Canadian writer now living in Tennessee. Grateful for words in The Ilanot Review, Susurrus, South 85, Bright Flash Literary, Fictive Dream, Westchester Review, among others.
X@angela_joynes
angelajoynes . bsky . social
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Hurricane Penelope
“It’s not coming anywhere near us, we’re too far North,” Penelope’s kids call to tell her, but driving through rain and wind, wine still wet on her lips, she smiles at the road jumbled with broken branches, garbage can lids, cheeseburger wrappers, orange peels—her thoughts like squalls of wind and water: concerned co-workers, ex-husband, grownup kids worried she’s drinking too much but too busy to come check on her.
When she shows up at the Golden Palace, no one from work’s there to meet her. She doesn’t recognize the cars in the parking lot, and when she asks at the front desk about the Employee Party, they don’t know anything about it. Still she continues to the bar, orders a glass of wine, watches coverage of the hurricane on the corner TV: swelling rivers, power outages, flattened homes, splintered pavement. She downs the wine, orders another, turns, bumps a chair, trips over someone’s leg, swipes her sleeve through a plate of fries, wanders down the hall to the Function Room, trailing wreckage behind her.
She pauses outside the door to listen: voices, laughter, definitely a party of some kind. She sways in with her glass of cabernet, belches sautéed onion, her stomach sizzling. “Hey, is it finally her?” someone asks, looking up, hoping Penelope’s the Her they’ve been waiting for—Penelope tottering into the room, silk blouse, silver earrings, charm necklace, windstorm debris caught in her hair, knocking back the last of the wine, beaming around the room at tables of unfamiliar faces, her throat bile-blazed, shining eyes raised as she announces, “It’s me everyone, it’s Penelope!"
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by Timothy Boudreau / @tcboudreau
Timothy Boudreau lives in northern New Hampshire with his wife, Judy. His fiction collection Love You, Miss You, Goodbye Forever was recently published by Stanchion Books. His fiction collection Stepdad on the Dance Floor and novel All We Knew Were Our Hearts are forthcoming from Unsolicited Press. He is an editor at The Loveliest Review.
Find him at timothyboudreau . com
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Every Year at This Time, the Men Turn Into Tigers
gathering mulch from gardens and cooking it
on grills. The smoke in the air brings growls
to our hearts. I'm floating when I hear the guy
in front of the liquor store talking about his dad
who accidentally shot himself. The guy takes
a swig of wine, assuring his friend that it's okay
because reincarnation is a thing.
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by Justin Karcher / @justin_karcher
Justin Karcher is a Best of the Net and Pushcart-nominated poet and playwright from Buffalo. He is the author of several books, including Tailgating at the Gates of Hell (Ghost City Press, 2015). Recent playwriting credits include The Birth of Santa (American Repertory Theater of WNY) and “The Buffalo Bills Need Our Help” (Alleyway Theatre).
Twitter: @justin_karcher
Bluesky: @ justinkarcher . bsky . social
https:// www . justinkarcherauthor . com
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end
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"There’s no easy way to post on Instagram or even tell someone that my dad died and I didn’t even like him"
Really felt this one🥺
New micro CNF by Anson Tong!!
“I’m down to one living grandparent, and he lives on the other side of the world, and I’m nervous to talk to him because we didn’t tell him that his son, my father, died three years ago.”
https://t.co/k7rSAK4rlG
The Green Bin is now OPEN for subs of flash and short fiction until 14th June 🦝
Make sure to check out our mood board to see what we'd love to read. https://t.co/9Ww4LorQuM
Sub guidelines and form: https://t.co/mba9iPnDIi
We can't wait to wallow in all your green 💚
@litgarage01 Love this one! Really creepy
Our Green Bin sub call is almost upon us! 🦝
Check out our Mood Board here for inspo and ideas: https://t.co/Sy9jGOq3Bl
We always love stories about flora and landscape - here's @SophiaA_writes 'Wixton Fen' from Summer 2025
https://t.co/eG5cNu3MWS
Call opens 1st June 💚
We're opening on Monday!
Here's a reminder about our guidelines. Find out more: https://t.co/FwGG56OsrP
@carlottadale38 That might be the only advantage the UK has over LA 😂
@andrewcareaga I'm so sorry to hear this, Andrew. She was a beautiful girl
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