Flash Stories

A Vote for Change

hamed Jan. 15, 2025, 5:02 p.m.

Maya stood at the edge of the campaign office, eyes darting between the overflowing stack of phone banks and the muted TV in the corner. The results of the 2020 U.S. Presidential Election were coming in, and she could feel the pulse of the nation racing through her veins. Each call she made, each text she sent, was one small thread in the tapestry of history unfolding in real-time.

Her fingers were trembling, not just from the cold of the November night but from the weight of the moment. She’d been a volunteer for months, sacrificing evenings, weekends, everything she could spare, driven by a single belief: this election had to be different. The country had to be different.

Her mother, sitting in the cramped living room of their small apartment in Philly, had watched the news every night since the first primary. She was a fervent supporter of the …

Firewall

hamed Jan. 17, 2025, 2 p.m.

Kai’s fingers flew across the keyboard, the glow of the screen painting their face in pale blue light. The breach had been catastrophic—millions of names, locations, and personal histories leaked from VaultCore, the company that promised unbreakable security for the digital age. Among the stolen data: Kai’s mother’s bank details and her online medical records, now plastered across the dark web.

The official statement blamed "sophisticated cybercriminals," but Kai didn’t buy it. Not after finding the encrypted files buried in VaultCore’s server logs, files that didn’t belong in any legitimate operation.

"Someone left the back door open," Kai muttered, decrypting another file. And it wasn’t hackers. It was VaultCore itself.

The file revealed chilling plans: selling anonymized—yet traceable—user data to private contractors. The breach wasn’t a crime. It was a smokescreen.

A faint sound broke Kai’s concentration—a creak on the stairs.

They froze, ears straining. At this hour, it should’ve …

The Algorithm of the Soul

hamed Jan. 18, 2025, 6:43 p.m.

Leila sat at her desk in the quiet hum of the data center, eyes flickering between lines of code and the endless stream of numbers on her screen. As a senior data analyst at a cutting-edge tech company, her job was to sift through vast amounts of raw data, applying pattern recognition software to find meaningful correlations. It was a task she had mastered over the years—seeing hidden connections, threading together information that seemed disjointed to the untrained eye.

But lately, something strange had been happening.

At first, it was just a hint, a faint shape buried deep in the noise of a complex dataset. A familiar symmetry—circles within squares, triangles within circles. At first, she dismissed it. Maybe it was just a glitch, an anomaly in the software. But when it appeared again, and again, in unrelated sets of numbers, she couldn’t ignore it.

One afternoon, while reviewing a …

The Moonlit Script

hamed Jan. 18, 2025, 7 p.m.

Arash had spent years perfecting his craft. As a calligraphy artist in Tehran, he was well-known for his mastery of the ancient scripts, but something had always eluded him. No matter how carefully he followed the patterns of Persian poetry or history, his work felt incomplete. The ink, the brush, and the paper were all tools, but they lacked the soul he yearned for.

One evening, as the full moon rose high over the city, Arash sat by the window of his small studio, gazing out at the moonlit skyline. He had recently acquired a small vial of rosewater from his grandmother, a precious gift passed down through generations, and decided to use it in his latest project. There was a calmness to the scent of rosewater, a tranquility that seemed to calm his restless mind.

He mixed the rosewater with his traditional ink, filling the room with a soft …

The Gathering

hamed Jan. 15, 2025, 6:30 p.m.

The sun dipped low behind the mountains, casting a golden glow over the valley where the red earth met the tall trees. Mara sat on the edge of the fire pit, her fingers tracing the patterns of the ancestral symbols carved into the stone. Her grandmother’s voice echoed in her mind, as it often did in moments like this.

“Our stories are in the land, in the air, in the rivers. We are the land, and it is us.”

Mara closed her eyes, trying to summon the strength that had been passed down through generations. The fight for recognition, for justice, had been long and weary. But this... this was different. Something had shifted. People were listening now.

For decades, the land that her ancestors had cared for, nurtured, and fought for had been taken from them—first by colonizers, then by corporations, each one extracting resources, desecrating sacred sites, and …

Japan vs Iran

hamed Jan. 19, 2024, 6:27 p.m.

Alice: Hi, Sara. Did you watch the football match yesterday?
Sara: Yes, I did. It was hilarious!
Alice: Hilarious? How so?
Sara: Well, you know how Iran was playing against Japan, right?
Alice: Yeah, of course.
Sara: And you know how Japan is famous for their anime, right?
Alice: Yeah, I guess.
Sara: Well, I swear, some of the players looked like they came straight out of an anime. They had spiky hair, big eyes, and exaggerated expressions.
Alice: Really? I didn't notice that.
Sara: Oh, come on. You must have seen the goalkeeper. He looked like Naruto.
Alice: Naruto? The ninja guy?
Sara: Yeah, that one. He had blond hair, blue eyes, and a headband. He even did some ninja moves when he saved the ball.
Alice: Haha, now that you mention it, he did look like Naruto.
Sara: And what about the striker? He looked like Goku.
Alice: Goku? The super saiyan guy?
Sara: Yeah, that one. He had black hair, green eyes, …

The Birthday Card

hamed Jan. 9, 2025, 5:30 p.m.

The birthday card arrived three months late, postmarked from Paris. Rachel's hands trembled as she recognized Lisa's looping handwriting – the same handwriting that had signed witness statements in the fraud investigation that had cost Rachel her company.
Inside was a single line: "I never meant to hurt you."
Below it lay a check for $2.3 million – exactly what Lisa had helped herself to while serving as Rachel's CFO and supposed best friend since college.
Rachel picked up her phone and typed: "Money doesn't fix betrayal. But thanks for funding my new startup's investigation into corporate fraud. You'll be our first case study."
She smiled as she watched the message status change to "Read" and then, moments later, saw Lisa's social media accounts vanish one by one.
Sometimes the best revenge wasn't getting even – it was getting ahead.

Rise Above Them

dehongi Jan. 11, 2024, 5:42 p.m.

Alex had always had a difficult time dealing with his cousin, Billy. Billy was a master of the verbal jab, always ready with a cutting remark or a mocking tone that could send Alex's temper soaring. At family gatherings and parties, Alex would find himself constantly on edge, dreading Billy's next attempt to provoke him.

Alex's frustration reached a boiling point one evening at a family reunion. As usual, Billy was in full form, targeting Alex with a barrage of insults and jokes. Alex tried to ignore him, but Billy's words were like a match to tinder, igniting his anger.

"Hey, look at Alex," Billy sneered, "still as awkward and socially inept as ever."

Alex felt his blood pressure rising. He clenched his fists, his jaw muscles tightening. He wanted nothing more than to punch Billy in the face.

But then, something strange happened. As Alex's anger reached its peak, …

The Empty Shelves

hamed Jan. 15, 2025, 6:28 p.m.

Lena glanced at the row of empty shelves in her small café, the faint hum of the refrigerator the only sound in the otherwise quiet space. The supply truck was supposed to arrive this morning, but she’d already received the call—another delay. The driver was stuck in traffic at the port, and who knew when he’d make it through. Lena sighed, leaning against the counter, her fingers tracing the edge of a cup she hadn’t served in days.

The global supply chain crisis. It wasn’t just news on the television anymore. It was her reality. It was the half-filled pantry and the empty pastry display, the rising cost of ingredients, and the delivery delays that seemed to stretch on forever. In the six months since the world had shifted beneath their feet, the ripple effects had reached every corner of her café, and the regulars who had once filled the …

The Contrast

hamed Jan. 14, 2025, 5:09 p.m.

It was 9:00 a.m. when Olivia’s Zoom screen flickered to life, revealing her well-lit office corner, complete with a potted plant in the background. She smiled, adjusting her headset as she settled into her ergonomic chair. The company’s quarterly meeting was about to begin, and she was ready—after all, this was the kind of work she had dreamed of when she graduated. Remote, flexible, well-compensated. She checked her emails while waiting for the others to join, juggling deadlines for multiple high-paying contracts, all from the comfort of her minimalist apartment in the city.

A ping interrupted her thoughts. It was a reminder about her call with the client in California, the one that had promised to double her rate if she could help them build a marketing campaign for a new AI product. Olivia grinned. Opportunities were endless in this new economy. She had a digital assistant to handle her …