'Magnolia' by Emily Devane

The magnolia comes into the room and asks me what I’ve done with her new shoes. 

I shake my head, because no, I haven’t seen the magnolia’s new shoes and just how many shoes does a tree need, and do they have laces or buckles, and is there a specialist shop for that? The questions keep coming until the magnolia scratches her crown and flounces out of the room, trailing petals in her wake. 

I feel bad when that happens, because the magnolia’s blossom is so lovely. Each flower is an elegant pink cup, the shape of a champagne flute, tall and proud, and when they fall, the flowers resemble tears, and the magnolia’s limbs look naked. I follow the trail of petals, picking them up as I go, and I place them in the fruit bowl. I lay them out delicately, so that they resemble a living thing once again, and the magnolia, who is sulking by the kitchen door, acknowledges my effort. 

‘It was silly really, buying shoes,’ she says. 

‘Not at all,’ I reply. ‘Together, we’ll find them. They’re probably in the cupboard under the stairs. Everything ends up there.’ 

The magnolia nods. ‘I can sense the wind,’ she says. ‘My petals are almost gone.’ I discern her mouth and eyes in the twisted bark of her trunk. She smiles sadly. This flowering is short, always too short. I wish I could pause time, somehow, but I know she must leave.

When she goes, the magnolia casts a shadow that stretches across the rest of the afternoon, covering everything. 

Later, I find the shoes were in the garden where the magnolia used to stand. I try them on, but they do not fit.

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Emily Devane is a writer from West Yorkshire. She has won prizes, including the Bath Flash Fiction Award, a Northern Writers' Award and a Word Factory apprenticeship. Emily teaches creative writing and works at The Grove Bookshop in Ilkley, where she runs the writing group and helps with events. 

'Talking About Potatoes' by Ronald J Greig

“Have you tried any British Queens?” asked Da, with no hint of irony.

I sipped a glass of bitter wine. “I’m sure I probably have.”

His knuckles were swollen red as he struggled with the scraper. I offered to peel the potatoes for him. I weighed their cool heaviness in the palm of my hand, their thin skin speckled with the memory of peaty Irish earth.

“That one’s a bit bad.” Da said with disappointment as he supervised my work. Under the creamy shaved skin, a bruise had surfaced. “Throw it out.” 

Later, as we ate, potatoes were discussed and rated. King Edwards. Maris Piper. Anything but Ma’s empty seat. Or worse. 

After dinner and another bottle of wine, I grew brave.

“You know… don’t you? About me.”

“Of course I know.” His eyes wouldn’t meet mine. “We’ll get through Christmas, and then you can go.” He struggled to his feet pressing hands on his knees to lift himself and made for the drink’s cabinet by the tree. “Don’t come back.” 

I blocked his path. “Don’t be daft.” I reached out to embrace him, but he pushed me away.

“Okay, I’ll just leave now then.”

He poured a whiskey, drained it and stared at the empty glass. “I said it without thinking. Take no notice, son.” He looked at me and his eyes were bright blue, glittering with reflected fairy lights. 

“I never did.” 

And then he hugged me, without hesitation. 

I felt gnarly fingers dig into my back and the cool uncertainty of his love.

---

Ronald J Greig grew up in Belfast, Northern Ireland but has spent the last 30 years in London. He has an enduring love for ghost stories, science fiction, and tales of the macabre, especially those with a modern or queer twist. Ronald has had three previous short stories published.

 

'Fingernails' by Gessica Sakamoto Martini

Your mother asks if you feel them in your heart. She repeats the question for years, until you learn to say, “What should I feel?” instead of, “What do I feel?” Your mother answers your question on the last day. “My fingernails,” she says. “I hid them in your heart.” Your mother has scrubbed many floors, but you now realize she has also scrubbed away something else. The hands that made bread are long gone. Her hands smell of bleach, and they brush, brush, brush. A scraping feeling carves its way through your heart. You bring offerings to it; there is nothing else to do. Your heart is gleaming. Your heart is as white as the tiles of the man’s house your mother has worked in her entire life.  

 

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Gessica Sakamoto Martini’s work has been nominated for Best of the Net and appears or is forthcoming in Gulf Coast Journal, Whale Road Review, HAD, DMQ Review, and elsewhere. She holds a PhD in Anthropology from Durham University (UK) and is the Editor-in-Chief of Orion’s Belt magazine.

'I Miss Smoking' by Cath Holland

Cellophane crackle. Pop open packet. Cardboard-paper sigh. Lips wrap around filtered tip. Pink matchstick scratches sandpaper. Zippo click, roar and FIRE. Hot electric orange glow. Smoke tickles back of throat. Flick-flick ash.

A sensual ceremony bonding outcast rebels with a cause to ask ‘anyone got a light?’ Wendy at school nicks your dinner money turns into your bestie at break and short years later your CEO is call me Dave for the length of time it takes to smoke a beautiful white cigarette, the love of all our lives. Still – pack it in eventually or die. You give up everything but dirty yellow fingers. No whiffs. No butts. Grieve for a friend who is no such thing.

But it was good while it lasted, weren’t it. And even after all this time sometimes walking down the street a snifter of ciggie smoke floating tickles tastebuds. Takes all the self-respect you own not to snatch the rollup out of that stranger’s hand. And suck on it. Hard. Cheeks turned inside out. Second hand-me-down smoke. What a drag. Not even your favourite brand. But you’ll take it. Inhale deep. In and out, and again. Taking time. Dreaming. Recalling when all possibilities were eternal, endless. Then you walk on. Leave it. Get on with your day.  

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Cath Holland is a writer of fiction and fact based on Merseyside, published by Mslexia, Deak Ink Books, Fictive Dream, Arachne Press.

 

'A Brief History of Atomic Time' by Fiona McKay

In the staffroom, Kate plugs in a fan which swings from side to side, moving the stale air around. Beside her, a physics textbook is open, and she reads – An atomic second is defined as 9,192,631,770 oscillations of a caesium-133 atom. There is an orange on her desk and she peels it, inhales the bright, sweet scent. She reads about the transition between two hyperfine levels of the ground state of this atom. She is in transition between breaktime supervision and her final year French students. This atom must be at rest, at zero degrees Kelvin. Her foot taps as she refreshes her email; refreshes again.

There are sixty seconds in one earth minute. Sixty of those in an hour. Twenty four hours in a full spin of the globe. One hundred and sixty eight (she imagines this in the voice of a darts commentator) hours in the space between one weekend and the next. Between an interview, and a possibility. The orange drips juice and her fingers are sticky on her phone as she calculates the number of seconds in a week. The app refuses to multiply the 604,800 seconds by the oscillations she’d read in the textbook. She agrees. Whatever it is, it’s too many to contemplate.

She feels every single oscillation. Balances the needs of her students, and her desire for a promotion. Other factors: what her ex will have to say about it; are her children happy; does she need to worry about her pension or will the world have ended? She goes back and forth.

The effect of waiting on the passage of time should be studied. Maybe it has been, she doesn’t know. Maybe it becomes quantum time. An oscillation of a caesium-133 atom, under observation, approaches infinity. She checks her email again.

---

Fiona McKay is the author of the novellas-in-flash, The Lives of the Dead and The Top Road, and the collection Drawn and Quartered. Her flash fiction is in The Forge, Gone Lawn, Ghost Parachute, trampset, Peatsmoke, Fractured Lit and others. She lives in Dublin.

 

'Mr Shem' by Jude Mason

Rosalie was the oldest of seven sisters, and got the prettiest name. She got the prettiest face too, but she turned down all the men who came asking. She said they were all too independent-minded to be good husbands. Finally, when all her sisters were married and Rosalie still wasn’t, she said she’d make a husband for herself.

Next day, Mister Shem came to call. Mr Shem was tall and well-built and a nice sort of red-earth colour, and he wore a carnation on his lapel and had his hair down almost over his eyes. Rosalie took him in to meet her daddy and said this is Mister Shem, and he’s new in town and he’s a good worker and he wants to marry me. Isn’t that right, Mister Shem?

Rosalie’s daddy knew what was what, and he said you tell me Rosalie, is this man here a golem, and did you make him yourself? Rosalie frowned and her daddy said, babygirl, you can’t just make a person, that’s not right. And Mister Shem, how do you feel about all of this? But Mister Shem only blinked and looked at him, and Rosalie said I want a man who’ll do what he’s told, and what I’m telling you both is we’re going to get married this weekend. So that was that.

There weren’t any children, of course, but they had a big old house and a nice garden. Mister Shem did everything Rosalie said, and maybe they were happy together, and maybe they weren’t. When she died, everyone thought Mister Shem would crumble. But instead he left town in the middle of the night, and was last seen by Alberto Rosencrantz boarding a train to San Francisco, with a light in his eyes like no-one had ever seen.

 

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Jude Mason is a Yorkshire-based writer who is convinced most problems can be solved by spending more time talking to cats. 

'How to Prevent a Breakdown' by Katherine Garrison

Barrelling down I-80 on the way to pick up your sister, you’re wondering if she’s going to give you shit about how you got arrested for punching a guy a few months ago. Her life always looks seamless. You don’t often get to see behind the facade until on this visit you make a spontaneous midnight McDonald’s run where she kicks your tires and says, they’re bald. 

In the parking lot, shovelling fries into your mouths, you tell her I think the man I’m dating might be the one. 

She likes how he treats you with respect. For a while she worried that she’d have to come home one year and prise you from the grasp of some asshole. You’d probably be able to punch someone like that out yourself, though. 

You’re simultaneously offended and flattered. 

She tells you, I’ve been worried about my sister-in-law dying and leaving behind her kids. The ‘all clear’ felt like deflation—in a good way.

Why didn’t you tell me?

She smiles faintly. What could you have done from 3000 miles away? 

She’s right, the only time you’ve directly dealt with death was your grandma when you were ten. There’s nothing you could have done except listen. Obviously, she has other people that fulfil that need for her. You can’t help feeling a little jealous. You’ve always wanted to be closer. But maybe this, right here, right now, is closeness. Your strange brand of it. 

We’ll get them changed tomorrow. You both laugh at how baldness of all things causes potential danger. Some kind of living on the edge. But you agree, and it prevents you from having any sort of breakdown, car or otherwise, on the side of I-80. 

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Katherine Garrison writes short fiction and poetry often exploring themes through nature, food, and the weird. Her work has appeared in foofaraw, Elegant Literature, Baubles from Bones, Superlative Literary Journal, Variety Pack, Wordfire Press, and January House Literary Journal. She was nominated for Best Microfiction 2026. Bluesky: @katherinegarrison.bsky.social