Flash Stories

Under the Veil

hamed Jan. 15, 2025, 6:25 p.m.

The streets of Kabul felt suffocating, quieter than they’d ever been. It had only been a few weeks since the Taliban had taken control, but it felt like years. Zaynab pulled her chador tighter around her, the fabric heavy, the weight of it a constant reminder of the world she had woken up to—one she no longer recognized.

The city she had known as a bustling center of life, with its crowded markets and laughter-filled cafés, had grown still. The laughter, the freedom, the faces of her friends and colleagues—all of them now buried beneath a veil of fear.

Zaynab stood at the window of her apartment, watching the soldiers march past, their boots echoing in the silence. The checkpoints had returned. The voices of protest that once filled the streets had been replaced by whispers. Women were no longer walking freely to their jobs, to their schools. The signs …

Frozen Days

hamed Jan. 15, 2025, 6:23 p.m.

The house felt like a tomb, cold and silent except for the creaks of the old wooden floors beneath their feet. Jasmine hugged her daughter, Ellie, close to her chest, both of them wrapped in blankets, the flickering candlelight casting long shadows across the walls.

Outside, the wind howled, a relentless force that seemed to freeze everything it touched. The power had been out for hours, maybe days—Jasmine had lost track of time. The temperature inside their house had plummeted, the chill creeping into their bones despite the layers of clothing they wore.

"Mom, when is the power coming back on?" Ellie asked, her voice small, fragile, as she looked up at her mother with wide, trusting eyes.

Jasmine tried to offer a reassuring smile, though it felt like a mask. "Soon, sweetie. They’re working on it. I’m sure it’ll be back before long."

But she wasn’t sure. Not anymore. …

Pixels and Possibilities

hamed Jan. 15, 2025, 6:22 p.m.

Lena sat in her cramped apartment, surrounded by canvases, brushes, and tubes of paint that hadn't seen much action in the past few months. The small desk in front of her was cluttered with a laptop, its screen glowing with the latest news about NFTs—those strange, cryptic digital tokens that were taking the art world by storm. Everyone was talking about them. Collectors. Artists. Investors. Everyone except her.

She wasn’t sure what to make of it all. Digital ownership. The idea of selling art that wasn’t physical—art that couldn’t be touched or held, only viewed on a screen. It felt like a betrayal of everything she’d ever learned about creation. Art, she’d always believed, was something that lived and breathed in the real world, something you could stand in front of, examine from all angles, feel the texture beneath your fingertips.

But the world was changing, wasn’t it? Her phone …

The Echoes of Time

hamed Jan. 15, 2025, 6:20 p.m.

It was the kind of discovery that made the air thick with anticipation, the kind of moment when history itself seemed to hold its breath. Dr. Layla Hassan stood in the half-lit tomb, her fingers trembling slightly as she traced the edges of the ancient stone carvings on the wall. The symbols were foreign to her at first glance, their meanings tangled in the mists of centuries, but the shape of them—so familiar, so deliberate—told her everything she needed to know.

This was not just another tomb. This was something far more significant.

"We’ve found it," she whispered, barely believing the words that escaped her lips.

Her colleague, Dr. Omar Khalil, stepped forward, his face ashen with awe. His eyes scanned the walls, following her gaze, then locking on the pharaoh’s name that appeared carved in a cartouche.

"That can’t be right," he murmured, his voice cracking with disbelief. "That’s… …

Stuck in the Drift

hamed Jan. 15, 2025, 6:17 p.m.

The horizon was a dull line where the Suez Canal met the sky. It was the kind of day that seemed to stretch on forever—no end, no movement. Ahmed stood at the helm of the Ever Given, staring out into the endless expanse of water, his knuckles white on the railing. The ship had been stuck for days now, wedged sideways across the canal, its massive hull blocking one of the busiest trade routes in the world.

It wasn’t the kind of thing you imagined happening when you signed up to work at sea.

"How much longer, do you think?" Farhan, the youngest of the crew, asked from behind him. The boy had a nervous edge to his voice, one that had been growing sharper with each passing hour. His eyes darted across the horizon, as though he could will the ship to move with nothing but sheer will.

Ahmed …

The Unseen March

hamed Jan. 15, 2025, 6:15 p.m.

In the quiet town of Pine Ridge, where the roads were dusted with memories of a slower time, the protest felt out of place. Pine Ridge was a town that barely made it onto maps, let alone news headlines. But when the world’s rage over police brutality ignited, it didn’t stop at the boundaries of the big cities. It seeped into small towns too, to places like Pine Ridge, where people might not always raise their voices, but when they did, it was hard to ignore.

Samantha was the first to show up, walking alone toward the town square. Her sneakers kicked up the dirt as she glanced at the empty street. It felt like an impossible thing to do in a town where everyone knew everyone else’s business. She wasn’t sure how this would go, but after months of scrolling through the news, watching videos of people whose lives …

Voices of the Forgotten

hamed Jan. 15, 2025, 5:36 p.m.

In the small town of Willow Creek, tucked away in the rolling hills of the countryside, the world seemed a faraway place. The local café served the same cup of coffee, the high school football games were still the talk of Friday nights, and people smiled at each other on the streets. But, in the shadows of their quiet existence, something had shifted. The ripples of the global protests against police brutality had reached even this remote corner of the world.

Maya stood on the edge of the town square, watching as people began to gather. There was a nervous energy in the air, a feeling that something momentous was about to happen. She had never been one for public displays, but the images of George Floyd’s death—his final breaths, his cry for help—had haunted her every night. The injustice, the brutality, had pushed her to the breaking point. She …

Embers of the Earth

hamed Jan. 15, 2025, 5:33 p.m.

Jenna had been a firefighter long enough to know that the crackling fire on the horizon was a harbinger of destruction, but nothing could prepare her for the enormity of what was coming. The sun, a fiery orb behind the smoke, painted the sky with the color of rage, its heat suffocating the land.

The fires had started as a whisper in the distance—an ember, a spark, a small flame. But by the time she and her team arrived, the inferno was a monstrous roar, devouring everything in its path. She gripped her hose tighter, her hands raw from the constant pressure. "We fight, we don’t run," she whispered to herself, but the words felt hollow.

As the fire raged, the thick, choking smoke made it hard to see, harder to breathe. The world around them was an endless sea of orange and black. Jenna’s mind flashed back to her …

In the Waiting Room

hamed Jan. 15, 2025, 5:05 p.m.

Mira sat at her cluttered desk, eyes scanning the screen in front of her, the cursor blinking beside another email from a supplier—another delay. The shelves in her small bakery, Sweet Beginnings, sat half-empty, a stark contrast to the days when her display case would be brimming with freshly baked pastries, warm bread, and vibrant cakes. Now, there were only a few sad loaves and half-baked attempts at new recipes, each more experimental than the last.

“Flour, sugar, eggs... where are you?” she muttered under her breath, clicking on yet another message about an estimated shipment. No guarantees. No exact dates.

The global supply chain crisis had made even the most basic ingredients difficult to source. Mira had spent weeks calling, emailing, and begging her regular suppliers to send the most basic things she needed—flour, chocolate, butter—but each time, she was met with the same cold, impersonal reply: delayed, no …

The Silent Arena

hamed Jan. 15, 2025, 5:03 p.m.

Yumi stood at the edge of the track, her heart pounding with anticipation. The Tokyo 2020 Olympics, held a year later, had been nothing like the Games she’d imagined. There were no roaring crowds, no energetic cheers, no vibrant national flags waving in the air. Just the quiet hum of an empty stadium, the muffled echo of footsteps, and the occasional beep of a camera clicking.

This wasn’t the Tokyo she had dreamed of—where she’d envisioned the cheers of thousands lifting her to victory. Instead, she found herself competing in the quietest Olympics in history, held under the heavy weight of pandemic restrictions.

As she adjusted her racing bib, Yumi tried to block out the isolation that had defined the lead-up to these Games. The months of quarantine, of training in sterile gyms, of virtual team meetings with her coach—everything had felt distant, disconnected. Even her family, usually her loudest …