Flash Stories

A Child of Promise

hamed Jan. 15, 2025, 4:43 p.m.

The January air in Atlanta was crisp, carrying the faint scent of pine from the hills beyond the city. In a modest two-story house on Auburn Avenue, the cries of a newborn broke the stillness. Alberta King leaned back against the bed, her face glistening with sweat and tears, but her smile radiant with relief.

“He’s here,” the midwife whispered, carefully wrapping the baby in a soft cotton cloth. “A strong boy, Mrs. King.”

Beside her, Reverend Martin Luther King Sr. cradled the child, his broad hands trembling as they held the fragile, wriggling bundle. The boy’s cry was sharp and insistent, a voice that refused to be ignored. “He’s got some lungs on him,” the Reverend chuckled, though his eyes shone with unshed tears.

“What shall we name him?” Alberta asked, her voice soft but steady.

“Martin,” the Reverend said, after a moment of thought. “After me. After the …

All the News Fit to Print

hamed Jan. 15, 2025, 4:41 p.m.

Henry Jarvis stared at the printing press, its gears clanking like a restless machine ready to birth something monumental. Around him, the newsroom buzzed with the frantic energy of ambition and nerves. The air smelled of ink and candle wax, the soft glow flickering against stacks of freshly written articles.

“Jarvis! Stop gawking and hand me that proof,” called George Jones, the paper’s co-founder. His sharp tone belied the bags under his eyes, evidence of sleepless nights spent molding their vision into reality.

Henry handed him the proof, his hands smudged with ink. “It’s all there, sir. The editorials, the local crime report, the financial updates, and the steamship schedules. We even got the story on the European revolutions.”

Jones skimmed the pages, his expression caught between pride and exhaustion. “Good. But don’t forget, this isn’t just a collection of stories. It’s a statement. We’re not here to sensationalize—we’re here …

The Fog of New Orleans

hamed Jan. 15, 2025, 4:39 p.m.

The air hung thick with the smell of wet earth and gunpowder as Private Samuel Hayes knelt in the mud, his musket trembling in his hands. Dawn was still a suggestion on the horizon, its faint light blurring the silhouettes of General Jackson’s earthworks and the dark mass of British soldiers gathering across the field.

“Hold steady,” the sergeant hissed, pacing behind the line. “Wait for the order.”

Samuel’s breath clouded in the cold air, though sweat trickled down his spine beneath his wool coat. His fingers, stiff from the chill, fumbled over the musket’s barrel. He’d practiced loading it a hundred times, but this morning, his hands felt foreign, like they belonged to someone else.

He thought of his farm back in Kentucky—of the cornfields stretching to the horizon, of Mary’s hands brushing flour from her apron as she baked. He’d left all of it behind, chasing a dream …

The Skinny Jeans Rebellion

hamed Jan. 15, 2025, 4:29 p.m.

Emma didn’t even know the attic had a trunk until she stumbled over it, coughing through the dust. She was helping her parents clear out the old house, the one where she’d spent her angsty teenage years.

The trunk creaked open, revealing a kaleidoscope of the early 2000s: studded belts, band tees, and there, crumpled at the bottom—the skinny jeans.

Faded black, ripped at the knees, and still carrying the faint scent of some long-discontinued perfume. She held them up, smiling at how impossibly small they looked.

“Wow,” she whispered. “I used to live in these.”

Back then, those jeans had been everything—her armor against the world. She’d worn them to her first concert, where the bass had vibrated through her chest like a heartbeat. She’d worn them to the rooftop party where she’d kissed Jamie, the artsy kid who painted galaxies on their sneakers. And she’d worn them the …

The Algorithm’s Darling

hamed Jan. 15, 2025, 4:27 p.m.

When Mia’s follower count stalled at 10,000, she knew she needed something big. The curated lifestyle shots, the pastel morning lattes, and the “just woke up” selfies weren’t cutting it anymore. She wanted to break through, to trend, to matter.

One night, in a haze of frustration and half-drunk cold brew, Mia filmed herself cutting up her designer wardrobe—dresses, bags, even her prized Valentino heels. “I’m done with the fakeness,” she said into the camera. “This is the real me. Take it or leave it.”

She posted it with the caption: #DestroyToRebuild.

By morning, the video had 2 million views.

Her follower count exploded. Brands reached out with sponsorship deals, despite—or perhaps because of—the destruction. Mia became “the influencer who wasn’t afraid to burn it all down.” Her followers begged for more. What would she destroy next?

And so, she leaned in. She shredded paintings, smashed a $1,000 coffee maker, …

The House That Breathed

hamed Jan. 15, 2025, 4:25 p.m.

The walls of the house whispered at night. Not loudly, just a faint rustle, like leaves brushing against each other. For the Patel family, it was another adjustment in the long list of changes since moving to Eden Grove, the world’s first entirely sustainable community.

“This house is alive,” Priya said one morning as she stood in the kitchen, watching the sunlight filter through translucent panels made from recycled algae bioplastics.

“It’s not alive,” her husband Ravi muttered, tinkering with the waterless composting sink. “It’s just... interactive.”

Their ten-year-old daughter, Anya, skipped into the room, her bare feet making no sound on the bamboo-graphene flooring. “It is alive! The walls breathe, remember? It’s how they clean the air.”

Priya nodded absently. The house’s organic insulation did filter carbon dioxide, and the solar tiles hummed faintly as they harvested energy. But it was more than that. She could feel the house, …

The Last Decision

hamed Jan. 15, 2025, 4:22 p.m.

The email came at 8:04 a.m. sharp.

Subject: Job Role Adjustment Notification
Dear Clara, effective immediately, your position as Senior Marketing Strategist will be reevaluated by AXIOM, our autonomous decision-making AI. Your presence is not required during this process.

Clara stared at the screen, coffee cooling in her hand. Presence not required. That stung. It felt like being erased.

She’d spent eight years climbing the corporate ladder at Nexus Corp, crafting campaigns that turned products into household names. Now, AXIOM—an algorithm housed in a fortified server farm—would decide if she still mattered.

Clara marched to the observation room where AXIOM’s interface pulsed on a wall-sized screen, a shimmering flow of charts, recommendations, and decisions. Technicians milled about, barely looking up as she entered.

"Clara Fisher," she announced, voice tight. “I want to speak to it.”

A technician raised an eyebrow. “You can’t speak to AXIOM. It’s not designed for direct interaction.”

Wired Mind

hamed Jan. 15, 2025, 4:20 p.m.

The procedure took six hours. When Ethan woke, his skull ached like a struck gong. The doctor smiled, holding a sleek tablet. “How do you feel?”

He didn’t answer. Instead, he thought: Dim the lights. The room obeyed, bathing itself in a soft, amber glow.

“Your neural interface is working perfectly,” the doctor said, tapping on the tablet. “You’re the first human capable of directly interacting with technology through thought alone.”

Ethan didn’t respond. His mind was already buzzing, testing. He muted the hum of the air conditioner, locked and unlocked the door, and pinged a coffee machine down the hall to brew a fresh cup. The raw power was intoxicating.

Over the following weeks, his fame grew. Corporate executives vied for partnerships, and governments whispered offers behind closed doors. With a glance, Ethan could control drones, bypass firewalls, and even silence someone’s pacemaker.

But what truly unnerved him was …

The Changing Desk

hamed Jan. 14, 2025, 5:20 p.m.

In the early years, Ellen’s desk had been a small, solid oak fixture by the window. It was a place where she could feel the sun streaming in during the morning, warming her as she sorted through the day's tasks. Her files were stacked in neat rows, a small picture of her family on the corner, a few potted plants for decoration. The desk was hers, personalized—an anchor in an otherwise uniform office. The walls around her were beige, the carpet a muted shade of gray, but it didn’t matter. The routine was hers to control.

But over time, things started to change. The fluorescent lights above her desk buzzed more insistently, as if in sync with the shifts happening beneath them.

It started subtly—new colleagues, young faces with bright eyes and a certain energy she couldn’t quite name. Then, the open-plan office layout arrived. The walls came down, literally. …

A Day in the Life

hamed Jan. 14, 2025, 5:18 p.m.

It used to be that Marta’s mornings began with the sound of the rooster crowing, just as the first light of dawn broke over the mountainside. She would rise from her small, modest home in the village, step outside to feel the coolness of the earth beneath her bare feet, and tend to her crops. The soil was her world, the fields her second home. There was rhythm to it, a simplicity in the steady march of seasons. She knew the land. It gave back what she put in. And the days were long, but not without purpose.

She remembers those days—before the land became more of a burden than a blessing.

Now, her alarm rings at 6:00 a.m. like it always has, but the sound is jarring in a way that the rooster never was. She’s no longer outside with the soil beneath her fingers; instead, she’s in a …