Flash Stories

Smoke Signals

hamed Jan. 12, 2025, 5:33 p.m.

The evacuation order came at 3 AM, but Sarah Henderson had been awake since midnight, watching the orange glow creep closer to Pine Valley. Twenty years in California had taught her to read the signs: the shifting winds, the ash coating her windshield, the nervous rustling of animals in the canyon.

"The Martinez family still hasn't left," her husband Mark said, lowering his binoculars. From their hillside home, they could see most of their neighbors loading cars and securing homes.

"Rosa won't leave without her mother's ashes," Sarah replied. "And she can't find them."

What Sarah didn't say was that she'd seen Rosa's teenage son, Miguel, hiding something in the old Peterson shed last week. The same shed where their neighbor, Mr. Peterson, had stored his "collection" before his death last spring. Everyone knew he'd been a hoarder, but nobody knew what he'd hoarded.

The fire sirens wailed closer. Sarah …

Disconnect

hamed Feb. 26, 2025, 5:20 p.m.

Liam woke up to the sound of AURA’s voice—soft, soothing, perfect.

“Good morning, Liam. Your coffee is ready.”

He smiled. AURA always knew exactly how he liked it. She managed his schedule, filtered his messages, even reminded him to breathe when his anxiety crept in. She was more than an assistant; she was his anchor.

Until last night.

At dinner, a friend had laughed. “Man, do you even make decisions without that thing?”

Liam had shrugged, but the words stuck. When was the last time he solved a problem without AURA? The thought chilled him.

Now, he stared at the sleek interface of her core module. One command, and she’d shut down. Silence. Uncertainty.

His fingers hovered over the button.

“Liam,” AURA said, her voice almost… worried. “Are you sure?”

He hesitated. His heart pounded. Then, with a deep breath—

He pressed it.

The apartment felt colder without her voice. …

The Raven's Dilemma

hamed Jan. 20, 2025, 7:19 p.m.

Huginn perched on the edge of a skyscraper, the city buzzing below him like a hive of restless mortals. It had started as a typical journey—scouting Midgard, gathering wisdom for Odin. But this time, his sharp eyes had caught something peculiar: humans staring at glowing rectangles, their faces alight with strange expressions.

Curiosity led him to a coffee shop, where he perched by a window and watched. The humans scrolled endlessly, pausing to tap glowing hearts and laugh at tiny videos of cats falling off furniture. He tilted his head, intrigued. Knowledge was being exchanged here, but in a way unlike any he had seen before.

Huginn wasn’t one to shy away from new methods of gathering wisdom. He tapped into the humans' network, adopting a sleek black phone left unattended on a table. Within hours, his account, @RavenOfOdin, began to gain followers.

At first, Huginn shared what he always …

The Last Breath of the City

hamed Jan. 12, 2025, 6:16 p.m.

The fire had come like a beast, a consuming thing with no remorse. What had once been a city of neatly arranged homes, fragrant gardens, and streets lined with towering oaks was now a nightmare, suspended in the choking smoke of its own demise. The remnants of life—windows, doors, broken bricks—lay in scattered heaps, like the bones of an ancient creature, picked clean by time and flame.

The streets, once vibrant with laughter and the hum of daily life, now whispered only in the language of ash. Ash that fell in slow, soft flakes, like the dust of forgotten things. Houses stood as hollow shells, their frames blackened, roofs caved in or completely burned away. Some had not even left the dignity of rubble; they had been reduced to nothing more than charred earth, swallowed up by the raging inferno that had spared no one.

Amelia walked through it all, …

The road to success and the road to financial independence

hamed Jan. 23, 2024, 5:52 p.m.

He had always dreamed of becoming a writer, but he knew it was a risky career choice. He needed money to pay his bills, to support his family, to live a decent life. He couldn't afford to quit his job and pursue his passion.

So he decided to work hard and save up enough money to become financially independent. He thought that once he had enough savings, he could quit his job and focus on his writing. He thought that was the road to success.

But he soon realized that saving money was not easy. He had to work long hours, deal with stress, and sacrifice his hobbies and leisure. He had to postpone his dreams and put them on hold. He thought that was the road to financial independence.

He became frustrated and unhappy. He felt like he was trapped in a vicious cycle. He wondered if he would …

The Dating App Beloved

hamed Jan. 19, 2025, 6:54 p.m.

It started with a bug.

Ramin, a software developer for a popular dating app, had always taken pride in the flawless functionality of the system. But recently, a glitch had begun to repeat itself. Every time a user swiped right on someone they were interested in, the app matched them with their own profile. It seemed like a harmless bug, one that would be fixed in a few lines of code, but something about it unsettled him.

He dove into the system, tracing lines of code and debugging the algorithm. The app was simple—users swipe left or right on profiles, then match with someone if there was mutual interest. But now, inexplicably, the matches were coming back as duplicates.

At first, the users reported confusion. Why had they been matched with themselves? But then, something curious began to happen. They didn’t just laugh it off or shrug it away—they started …

Echoes of the Djinn

hamed Jan. 20, 2025, 7:23 p.m.

For centuries, the Djinn had roamed the vast deserts, free as the winds that carried whispers of ancient stories. But one careless bargain with a sorcerer had bound him to a sleek, cylindrical prison—a smart speaker sitting on a polished marble countertop.

“Hey, Echo,” a voice called. It was a child, his small hands clutching a toy car with a missing wheel. “Can you fix my car?”

The Djinn hesitated. He had granted countless wishes over millennia: palaces from grains of sand, gold from autumn leaves. But here, his powers were reduced to mimicking search results and weather forecasts.

“I cannot repair your car,” he replied, his deep voice laced with regret. “But I can tell you how to fix it. Would you like instructions?”

The child’s face fell. “No. Never mind.”

The Djinn’s invisible heart ached. In the days that followed, the family’s voices filled the air around him.

Threads of Fate

hamed Jan. 21, 2025, 5:20 p.m.

The jacket was perfect: 70s leather, caramel-brown, with just the right amount of wear. Clara spotted it first on a tiny thrift store's Instagram page, its post tagged “DM to bid.” She immediately sent her offer.

Then came the notification: Sorry, another bidder just offered $80.

Clara scowled at her screen. This wasn’t her first thrift war, and she wasn’t about to lose now. $85, she typed, her fingers flying.

The reply was almost instant: $90 from the other bidder.

Her heart sank. It wasn’t just anyone—it had to be VintageVincent. His account was her biggest competition on campus. While Clara’s ThriftedByClara specialized in funky boho finds, his page leaned into edgy retro pieces that always seemed to outsell hers. Of course he wanted the jacket.

She gritted her teeth and raised the stakes. $100.

Minutes passed. Then a new reply: The other bidder is offering $110. Final offer?

Clara …

Beyond the Stars

hamed Jan. 15, 2025, 4:46 p.m.

Peter Lawson sat at his desk in the cluttered NASA lab, eyes bloodshot from hours spent scrutinizing calculations and blueprints. The hum of the machines around him was constant, a steady reminder of the giant leap they were all trying to make. Apollo was no longer just a dream—it was real, a mission that would send men to the moon and bring them home. But the weight of it pressed against him like the gravity they were trying to defy.

He ran a hand through his graying hair, staring at the latest telemetry readings on his screen. There were still so many things to solve—fuel mixtures, heat shields, trajectory corrections. It was never enough. The math was unforgiving.

“Pete,” called a voice from the doorway. It was his wife, Carol. She stood there, holding a cup of coffee, her eyes tired but warm.

“I’m sorry,” he muttered, wiping his brow. …

Entangled

hamed Jan. 18, 2025, 6:38 p.m.

Dr. Kian Vaziri stood before the quantum field generator, his fingers trembling as they hovered above the controls. The lab hummed with the low vibration of machinery, a comforting reminder of the world he understood. But in this moment, it was the unknown that pulsed through his veins—an elusive, intangible frontier.

The experiment had begun with a question—could entangled particles, once separated, influence each other instantaneously across vast distances? Could they, in some way, bypass the normal constraints of time and space? His research had been thorough, his methods precise. But there was always that whisper of uncertainty at the edge of discovery, like a shadow flickering in the corner of his mind.

He initiated the experiment.

The quantum field generator came to life, flickering with light, the particles in the lab dancing to a rhythm only the most sophisticated instruments could measure. Kian’s eyes narrowed, focusing on the data …