Flash Stories

The Voices That Rise

hamed Jan. 15, 2025, 4:51 p.m.

Maya stood at the edge of the crowd, her heart pounding in her chest, a mix of fear and defiance. The protest stretched out before her like a river of humanity, its currents alive with chants and signs that carried messages of pain and hope. She had never done anything like this before, never stood shoulder to shoulder with strangers in the streets, demanding change. But when she heard the news about George Floyd, when she saw the footage, it was as if the weight of the world had pressed down on her chest. Her whole life felt like a series of small injustices, like cracks in the pavement she had learned to step over. But this—this was different. She could no longer step aside.

"Say his name!" the crowd roared in unison, their voices a powerful wave of collective grief.

"George Floyd!" Maya shouted, the words tearing from her …

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 Last Days of El Salvador's Civil War

hamed Jan. 16, 2025, 5:57 p.m.

The sun dipped below the hills, casting long shadows across the fields that stretched like a forgotten memory. José sat on the edge of the trench, the dirt under his fingers cooling as the evening breeze swept through. The faint smell of gunpowder still lingered in the air, though the battles had stopped for the day. In the distance, the silhouette of a soldier—a comrade, perhaps—was barely visible, a reminder that the war was far from over.

1992, the final year of El Salvador’s civil war. A war that had shaped him, broken him, and, in some ways, defined him. It had been more than a decade of fighting, of bloodshed, of choices that had no easy answers. He had once believed in the cause—the revolution, the idea of justice for the oppressed. But now, in the quiet moments before the ceasefire, doubt clung to him like the dust in …

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 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.”

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 …

The Last Shift

hamed Jan. 14, 2025, 4:46 p.m.

Lena wiped the sweat from her brow as she worked the assembly line. The familiar hum of machines filled the factory floor, a sound she had grown accustomed to over the years. She had been here for almost a decade, assembling parts for the latest consumer electronics. The work wasn’t glamorous, but it paid the bills. She had a steady routine—wake up early, put in her hours, and go home. It wasn’t much, but it was enough to keep her small family going.

Her coworker, Greg, was a different story. He had been with her from the beginning, both of them starting as apprentices when the factory was first built. But Greg wasn’t like Lena. He had always been more tech-savvy, always tinkering with things in his spare time. He had taken night classes in automation and robotics, working hard to learn the skills that kept him one step …

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 …

Prohibition’s Dawn

hamed Jan. 16, 2025, 5:56 p.m.

It was the sound of the doorbell that made Benny pause. The bell chimed the same way it always did, a soft jingle that brought a sense of warmth to the dimly lit bar. But tonight, that chime felt like an omen—sharp and foreboding.

Benny wiped his hands on the rag, eyes flicking to the doorway as a man in a heavy coat stepped inside. The man’s face was masked with the cold, but his eyes—those eyes—held a glimmer of something Benny didn’t want to see. Trouble.

“You still open, Benny?” the man asked, his voice gruff, clipped.

“Always open,” Benny replied, his own voice sounding strained in the otherwise quiet room. The old mahogany bar gleamed under the flickering candlelight, as though it too were unsure of the changes to come.

It was January 1919, the start of something he could hardly comprehend, something that would unravel everything he …