Flash Stories

The Elastic Friday

hamed Jan. 20, 2025, 6:38 p.m.

It started innocently enough. Dan woke up on the first Friday of the new four-day workweek, his phone buzzing with a government-mandated notification:

"Enjoy your new day of freedom. No work. No emails. Just you."

He stared at the message while sipping his coffee, feeling an unfamiliar emptiness in his schedule. By 9:00 a.m., he had already walked the dog, tidied the apartment, and considered organizing his sock drawer. By 9:05 a.m., the thought of another weekend stretching ahead filled him with cautious optimism.

But by 11:00 a.m., something strange happened. Time slowed.

Not in a metaphorical sense—Dan actually felt the minutes drag, each one stretching thin like taffy. The digital clock on his oven ticked over sluggishly, as though it was fighting the act of progression.

At first, he assumed it was just his mind playing tricks. After years of Fridays packed with deadlines and meetings, an empty schedule …

Kappa and the Plastic Cucumber

hamed Jan. 20, 2025, 7:11 p.m.

Kawa, the kappa, sat at the edge of his polluted river, flicking a plastic bottle into the current with his webbed fingers. He hadn’t tasted a fresh cucumber in years. Gone were the days when villagers left them as offerings, crisp and green, floating like tiny rafts of gratitude. Now, the river was choked with trash, and even the cucumbers were fakes—cheap, plastic imitations that bobbed lifelessly in the murky water.

Today, another plastic cucumber drifted down the stream, its bright green sheen mocking him. With a sigh, Kawa waded in and grabbed it. “Is this a joke?” he muttered, examining the hollow tube. “Do humans think I eat this junk?”

“That’s not for eating!”

The voice startled him. On the riverbank stood a child in oversized rain boots, a net slung over their shoulder. Their face was smudged with mud, but their eyes sparkled with determination.

“Then why is …

The Last Coin

hamed Jan. 20, 2025, 6:33 p.m.

In a world of invisible transactions and silent swipes, Ezra’s shop stood as an anomaly. The hand-painted sign above his antique store read: “Cash Only.”

People mocked him for it. "You’re clinging to fossils," they'd say, tapping their sleek AR glasses or gesturing at wrist-bound payment bands. Ezra didn’t care. The jingling of coins and the crisp rustle of bills felt real to him, grounding, like the dust that clung to the air in his store.

But business dwindled. Week by week, fewer customers walked through the creaky door. Most of them turned away, muttering about inconvenience. By the time winter rolled in, Ezra was days away from closing for good.

That’s when she arrived.

The bell above the door jingled, and Ezra looked up from his ledger. A tall woman in an old-fashioned coat stepped inside, her dark eyes scanning the shelves. She looked out of place, as though …

Baba Yaga’s Social Detox

hamed Jan. 20, 2025, 7:05 p.m.

Nadya stumbled through the dense birch forest, cursing the dead battery of her phone. The GPS had failed her, and now the pristine backdrop she had sought for her latest post had turned into a nightmare. Hours of wandering had led her nowhere, and her perfectly curated outfit—white boots and a faux fur coat—was ruined by mud and brambles.

“Hello?” she called, her voice cracking. “Anybody out here?”

A creaking sound answered her. Nadya froze, watching as a hut perched atop giant chicken legs lumbered into view. Its crooked windows glowed faintly, like watchful eyes.

“Of course,” she muttered, rubbing her temples. “I’m hallucinating.”

The door swung open, and a figure emerged—a hunched old woman with wild hair, a nose like a hawk’s beak, and eyes that gleamed with unsettling sharpness. She wore a patchwork dress and carried a mortar and pestle like a queen bearing her scepter.

“Who dares …

Entangled Hearts

hamed Jan. 20, 2025, 6:35 p.m.

Dr. Maya Patel stared at the glowing console, the hum of the quantum computer vibrating through the room. She had spent five years designing the algorithm—a breakthrough meant to predict chaotic systems like weather, stock markets, even molecular behavior in medicine. But now, the QubitArray-7 had veered off course.

“Output anomaly,” the AI assistant chimed. “Prediction set unrelated to input parameters.”

Maya frowned and leaned closer to the screen. The predictions weren’t about weather systems or protein folding. They were... personal.

Prediction 1: Ben from Materials Science will ask Chloe from Analytics out tomorrow. She will say no.

Maya blinked. “What the—”

She scrolled further.

Prediction 2: Rachel in HR is about to resign after a fight with her partner.

Her pulse quickened as she scanned the list. Each line was someone in her lab, their private lives exposed and laid bare by an algorithm that should never have cared …

The Last Rainbow Serpent

hamed Jan. 20, 2025, 7:03 p.m.

In the heart of the Yarra River, where city bridges cast long shadows over its tired waters, the last Rainbow Serpent lingered. Once, Goorialla had woven through pristine streams and billabongs, painting the land with life. But the Dreamtime had shifted, and the waters were no longer pure. His shimmering scales, once vibrant with all the colors of the sky, were dulled by oil slicks and waste.

Still, he remained. He had to.

One twilight, as the horizon blushed with the last streaks of orange, a young scientist knelt by the riverbank. Her name was Kirra, and her hands trembled as she sifted through muddy water samples. The pollution choked her spirit as much as it choked the river. She had grown up hearing whispers of the Rainbow Serpent, her grandmother's voice weaving tales of its wisdom and power. But those stories felt distant now, like the stars.

Kirra froze …

The Nine Pieces of a Kumiho's Heart

hamed Jan. 20, 2025, 6:53 p.m.

Hyejin wandered through the village, her pale hanbok fluttering like mist. The villagers whispered as she passed, her beauty unearthly, her steps too quiet. They did not know what she truly was, but they sensed the truth in their bones: Hyejin was a Kumiho.

Once, centuries ago, she had been like her sisters, devouring the hearts of men to taste fleeting humanity. But something had changed. She had tasted enough pain to see its futility, watched countless lives extinguished by her hunger. One night, standing beneath the full moon, she vowed to live differently.

She discovered her gift by accident. The first man she saved was a boy, barely fifteen, who had been overcome by grief after losing his mother. Hyejin had felt the ache of his sorrow like a physical weight. She had reached into herself, pulling free a shard of her immortal heart—a glowing ember, warm and alive.

The Orb

hamed Jan. 20, 2025, 6:31 p.m.

The vast emptiness of space was peppered with glinting shards, remnants of humanity's ambitions: fractured satellites, discarded boosters, the flotsam of decades of exploration. For Rhea, a space debris cleanup specialist, it was just another day in the orbital scrapyard.

Her ship’s claw arm maneuvered deftly, snagging a defunct communications satellite spinning lazily through the void. She guided it toward the collection pod, her movements precise, mechanical. She was on the final sweep of her shift when her radar pinged.

“Uncatalogued object detected,” the AI chirped.

Rhea frowned. “Show me.”

The screen displayed a faint blip in a decaying orbit over the Atlantic. She adjusted course, curiosity piqued. Objects that weren’t logged were rare—space agencies tracked nearly everything up here.

As her ship approached, she caught sight of it through the viewport: a smooth, obsidian sphere, perfectly round and glinting with an unnatural sheen. It was unlike anything she’d ever …