Flash Stories

The Shah's Departure

hamed Jan. 16, 2025, 5:53 p.m.

The palace was quiet, unnervingly so. It was the kind of quiet that settled deep into your bones, the kind that came before a storm. For years, the royal compound had echoed with the sound of hurried footsteps, the low murmur of courtiers whispering in the hallways, and the rustling of silk gowns and crisp uniforms. Now, it felt as though the air itself had grown heavy, thick with anticipation and fear.

Nazanin stood in the grand hallway, staring out at the vast courtyard where the last rays of the sun flickered over the marble fountains. She had been a part of this palace for as long as she could remember, her mother a maid to the Queen and her father a trusted aide to the Shah. Now, it felt as though the weight of history was pressing down on her, too heavy to bear.

The revolution had been building …

Currency of Survival

hamed Jan. 14, 2025, 4:14 p.m.

Tariq tightened his grip on the bag of potatoes, his knuckles white against the coarse burlap. Around him, the market buzzed with desperation. Sellers shouted prices that changed by the hour, their voices tinged with panic. Buyers haggled with a fierceness born of necessity. Everyone’s eyes carried the same shadow: fear of tomorrow.

He glanced at the crumpled bills in his pocket, the brightly colored notes that used to mean something. This morning, he had exchanged a week’s worth of wages for them, only to find that by noon, they barely covered dinner. Hyperinflation was the word economists used. To Tariq, it was a slow unraveling of his life.

“Five kilos,” the vendor barked, eyeing Tariq’s hesitation. The woman behind him in line shifted impatiently, clutching a handful of wilted greens.

“Can you take less?” Tariq asked, his voice hoarse.

The vendor’s face hardened. “Less? Tomorrow …

Forbidden Touch

hamed Jan. 10, 2025, 6:13 p.m.

The city was silent, save for the soft hum of the surveillance drones circling above, their metallic wings cutting through the heavy air like ghosts. Aeliana stood at the edge of the park, her fingers trembling as they brushed against the cool stone bench. Every movement felt exposed in this world, every glance, every breath, as though the walls of control were closing in tighter with every passing second.

She glanced around. There was no one in sight—just the empty paths, the closed-off playgrounds, the tall fences that surrounded everything. Public affection was forbidden, and the penalty for even a glance too lingering, a touch too intimate, was harsh. For generations, the government had ensured that love was something kept behind closed doors, behind locked windows. Anything more than a handshake, a nod, was a betrayal of the rules.

Aeliana felt the weight of the world press on her chest, …

The Flood Line

hamed Jan. 14, 2025, 4:30 p.m.

Mara stood in her front yard, staring at the faint watermarks etched into the side of her house like scars. The last flood had reached higher than ever before, swallowing the porch and leaving behind a film of mud and despair. She had scrubbed for days, but the stains refused to fade.

The insurance renewal notice sat crumpled in her pocket. The premium had tripled this year.

“It’s the risk,” the agent had said over the phone, his tone clinical. “Your area is now classified as a high-risk flood zone.”

“But I’ve lived here my whole life,” Mara had argued. “We’ve never had this many floods before.”

The agent sighed. “That’s just the reality now.”

Reality. Mara’s reality was a small, creaky house passed down from her grandparents, nestled in a neighborhood that had always been safe. Until it wasn’t.

Her neighbors were leaving one by one, their windows boarded …

The Key to Everything

hamed Jan. 12, 2025, 5:45 p.m.

The dining table was a battlefield, strewn with papers, teacups, and the sharp edges of words.

“It’s mine by right!” Reza slammed his hand on the table, his face red.

“You’ve done nothing for this family,” snapped Farideh, his older sister. “While you were off chasing your dreams in Tehran, I stayed. I took care of Baba and the house!”

“You mean you waited,” Reza shot back. “For him to die, so you could take it all.”

Their youngest sibling, Niloofar, sat silently in the corner, her hands gripping her knees. The old house seemed to shrink around them, the walls heavy with decades of whispers and memories. Their father’s will had left the house to all three of them, but no one wanted to share.

“This isn’t what Baba would have wanted,” Niloofar said quietly, but her voice was drowned in the rising tide of accusations.

As the argument …

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 …

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 Weight of Knowing

hamed Jan. 14, 2025, 4:07 p.m.

Dr. Anya Calder stood at the podium, the sleek conference room bustling with delegates from across the globe. The *World Employment and Social Outlook: Trends 2025* report lay on the desk before her, its pages heavy with data she had analyzed late into countless nights. Her fingers trembled as she adjusted the microphone, though the room's air-conditioning chilled her to the bone.

“Thank you for being here,” she began, her voice steady but brittle, like a pane of glass under pressure. She glanced at the crowd: world leaders, economists, activists, and reporters. The weight of their expectations pressed on her chest.

The report was supposed to be about employment trends, labor markets, and policies. But buried within it were her findings—unemployment and displacement driven by cascading climate crises. Rising seas were swallowing entire industries, heatwaves making outdoor work lethal, droughts collapsing agriculture-dependent economies.

“This year’s report reveals …

The Costliest Blaze

hamed Jan. 18, 2025, 4:13 p.m.

The air was heavy with ash, each breath burning like a silent scream. Rosa stood at the edge of what was once her home, her trembling hands clutching the charred remains of a porcelain angel. It was the only thing left unbroken, spared by the inferno that had swallowed everything else.

A week ago, her living room had been filled with laughter. The family photo wall, filled with decades of memories, had been her pride. Birthdays, graduations, her late husband’s crooked smile—all now reduced to blackened rubble. Rosa closed her eyes and tried to summon their faces, but all she could see were flames.

"Mom?" A voice called softly behind her. Rosa turned to see her daughter, Elena, holding a bundle of singed papers. They were brittle and blackened around the edges—Rosa’s recipes, written in her mother’s cursive hand, smudged and faint but still there.

Rosa collapsed to her knees, …