Flash Stories

A Letter to G.H. Hardy

hamed Jan. 16, 2025, 6:06 p.m.

Srinivasa Ramanujan sat in the dim light of his small room in Kumbakonam, his hand trembling slightly as he dipped the quill into the ink. The weight of the paper before him felt impossibly heavy, though it was no thicker than any other sheet he had written on. He stared at the blank page for a long moment, the words caught between his heart and his mind, unsure how to bridge the gap between his passion and the world he was about to reach out to.

He was no stranger to the vastness of mathematics. To him, numbers weren’t just symbols on a page; they were living, breathing things, a language of the universe he had been listening to since childhood. But it had never been easy. His education had been fragmented, his talent unrecognized by those around him. For years, he had worked alone, writing out formulas and theorems …

My First Story

ahmad May 1, 2024, 5:58 a.m.

I didn't expect this feeling to hit me like a dodgeball to the gut during Mr. Johnson's epic history lecture on, like, the bubonic plague or something. Jessica, who usually doodles unicorns with butterfly wings in her notebook, was taking actual notes. And for some reason, the way the light hit the highlighter in her hair – it was like a sunset exploding in a highlighter factory.

My stomach did a weird flip, and I swear my notebook started sweating. This wasn't normal. Jessica had been my best friend since kindergarten, the kind of friend who shared her Dunkaroos and helped you cheat on pop quizzes (shhh, don't tell Mom). But suddenly, Dunkaroos seemed, well, childish. Now, all I craved was the courage to ask her if highlighter sunsets happened to everyone or just me.

The bell shrieked, jolting me back to reality. Jessica, ever the blur of sunshine …

A New World

hamed Jan. 15, 2024, 4:15 p.m.

Ali had never seen anything like it. He had just arrived in Sweden from Iran, where he had won a scholarship to study engineering at Stockholm University. He was excited and nervous, but also curious and scared.

He had grown up in a strict and conservative society, where men and women were separated from each other and had very little interaction. He had never seen a man and a woman being affectionate in public, or even holding hands. He was taught that women were to be seen and not heard, and that they were inferior to men.

But in Sweden, everything was different. Men and women were equal and free, and they could do whatever they wanted. They could dress as they liked, go where they pleased, and love whom they chose. They could hug, kiss, and laugh in front of everyone, without any shame or fear.

Ali was shocked …

The Hidden Voter

hamed Jan. 18, 2025, 6:16 p.m.

Elena stared at the screen, the edges of her vision blurred from hours of reviewing flagged posts. Election season was a minefield. The guidelines were clear—remove misinformation, allow healthy debate—but reality wasn’t so simple.

She hovered over a post: “The election is rigged. Don’t even bother voting.” It was a lie, but not quite explicit enough to violate policy. She marked it for review. The system wouldn’t thank her for hesitating.

Her phone buzzed on the desk. A text from her brother, Adrian: “You’re coming to Mom’s for dinner, right?”

She sighed, fingers hovering over her response. Family dinners had become battlegrounds lately. Adrian was all in for one candidate; their father was rabidly for the other. Last time, their argument nearly ended with a broken plate.

Another post popped up on her queue, this one from a fake account spewing hate speech disguised as satire. It wasn’t hard to …

The Pivot

hamed Jan. 21, 2025, 4:13 p.m.

For years, Marcus had been the go-to web developer for small businesses in his city. He built sleek websites for bakeries, boutiques, and even a local zoo. His clients loved his work, but the grind was relentless. Late nights debugging code, endless revisions, and the constant pressure to meet deadlines left him drained. He was good at what he did, but he wasn’t happy.

One evening, while scrolling through tech forums to unwind, Marcus stumbled upon a thread about affiliate marketing. People were raving about how they earned passive income by recommending products on their blogs. Intrigued, he dug deeper. He learned about tech review sites that earned thousands of dollars a month by linking to gadgets, software, and hosting services. It sounded too good to be true, but Marcus was desperate for a change.

The next morning, instead of opening his usual project management tool, Marcus started sketching out …

The Line in the Sand

hamed Jan. 14, 2025, 4:23 p.m.

Leila sat at her father’s kitchen table, the faint smell of tobacco clinging to the curtains. The radio hummed with angry voices, a populist politician railing against “elitist climate agendas.” Her father muttered in agreement as he stirred his tea.

“You know they want to take our jobs,” he said without looking at her. “Shut down the factories, ruin what little we’ve got left.”

Leila’s chest tightened. “That’s not true, Baba. The factories could transition to clean energy—there’s funding for that.”

Her father scoffed. “You’ve been reading too many of those articles again. Climate action is just a way for the rich to keep us poor.”

It wasn’t the first time they’d had this argument, but tonight felt heavier. Leila had been invited to speak at a town hall meeting tomorrow, to represent a grassroots climate initiative. She was proud of the work they were doing—installing …

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… …

A Curtain Divides the World - Prologue

dehongi Jan. 17, 2025, 6:36 p.m.

In Arash's world, everything came in pairs but was never allowed to mix. There were two entrances to every building: one for men, marked with bold, no-nonsense letters, and another for women, adorned with a flower motif that no one questioned. There were two sections in restaurants, separated by a curtain so thick it could muffle a scream, and even two lines at the bakery, as though bread had a gender preference.
But it was school where the divide felt the strongest. Arash’s all-boys school was a loud, chaotic world of roughhousing, competitive shouting, and an unspoken rule that everything, from pencils to playground arguments, must involve some form of combat. Across the street was the girls' school, a fortress of pastel walls and floral murals that seemed to hum with a serene, mysterious energy. For years, Arash and his classmates had speculated wildly about what went on behind its gates.
“Do …

The Memory Collector

hamed Jan. 10, 2025, 5:36 p.m.

Daniel's grandmother left him an old smartphone when she died. Not money, not jewelry, not her cherished recipe book – just an iPhone 6 with a cracked screen and a Post-it note that read: "One photo every day. You'll understand."

At first, he thought dementia had finally won. His grandmother had never owned a smartphone; she could barely operate the TV remote. Yet here was this device, its battery somehow still holding a charge, filled with 4,380 photos – exactly one per day for the past twelve years.

The first photo was of a half-eaten toast on a blue plate. The second, a pigeon on a windowsill. The third, his grandfather's reading glasses left on yesterday's newspaper. Mundane moments, captured with trembling hands and poor framing.

He almost deleted them all until he noticed the pattern. Every photo had a story, written in the Notes app with surprising technological proficiency:

Life is Short

khayam Jan. 27, 2024, 8:42 a.m.

افسوس که نامه جوانی طی شد
و آن تازه بهار زندگانی دی شد

آن مرغ طرب که نام او بود شباب
افسوس ندانم که کی آمد کی شد

Alas, the letter of youth passed
And that fresh spring life became winter

That singing bird whose name was youth
Alas, I don't know when it came, when left

The Reunion

Mina looked at the mirror and sighed. She saw wrinkles, gray hair, and sagging skin. She felt old and tired. She wondered where the time had gone.

She remembered her high school days, when she was young and beautiful. When she had dreams and hopes. When she had friends and lovers. When she was happy and free.

She remembered the letter she had received a few days ago. It was an invitation to her high school reunion. She had not seen her classmates for 30 years. She wondered how they had changed. She wondered if …