The Metaworker Literary Magazine
Where great stories are forged.
“For a dog or a squirrel you might hit the brakes, but for something so small, you lift your foot and hope for the best.” – excerpt from Swerve (you’re hit), Flash Fiction by Charles Sutphin #TheMetaworker #ForgeFriday
“Our pond monster is the best. He waits under unruffled water, eyes only visible if you grow too close…” excerpt from micro fiction by Ken Poyner #TheMetaworker
“It is sometime just before we’re meant to go out to party and kiss ourselves drunk on futures.” – excerpt from Suburban Suicides, flash fiction by Arushi Rege #TheMetaworker #MetaworkerMonday
“A cool morning breeze of November blew against my face… We were taking women to see the sea.” – excerpt from Work Trip, fiction by Sayani De #TheMetaworker
Three micro fiction pieces by Jacqueline Goyette #TheMetaworker
“They were little more than a shimmer on the backs of our newborns, translucent like a dragonfly’s.” – excerpt from When Babies Started Being Born With Wings, speculative fiction by David Henson #TheMetaworker
“The swirling tendrils of smoke lifted from the cigarette, manifesting into clouds that hung heavy and low in the troposphere.” – excerpt from Rotten, fiction by Bran Winkler @local__skunk #TheMetaworker
Peonies, micro fiction by Kevin Armor Harris #TheMetaworker
Six-Word Stories by Matthew Kasper #TheMetaworker #microwriting
“The customer ordered the fish and chips, and it all seemed normal until I delivered the fish and chips and he asked for vinegar.” – excerpt from Lunch At Café 86, fiction by Michael Smith #TheMetaworker #MetaworkerMonday
“I let them into the library to steal the books. They say they’re going to digitize everything. In time, we can write our own.” – excerpt from Daylight under the Geofence, speculative fiction by Robin Wyatt Dunn #TheMetaworker #ForgeFriday
“I wish I knew why I didn’t bake Kat those brownies. I only made them once … and she would ask me at least once a year to make them again.” – excerpt from Brownie Points by Jennifer Peaslee #TheMetaworker
microfiction by by Anthony ILacqua #TheMetaworker #ForgeFriday
“Person 1: I’ve been thinking about Mom and the prognosis she’s received. Person 2: Yeah, me too. I’m kind of devastated here.” – excerpt from Exit Stage Left by Bob Gielow
“Life looked ahead long before it could remember. The better we could anticipate the future, the better our chances of survival.” – excerpt from “Triptych” by Tim Love.
“I sit beside [my mother], pull out a bag of chips and open a word puzzle on my phone. She reaches over and places her hand atop mine. I freeze. It’s been years since she’s initiated a touch.” – excerpt from The Memory House, fiction by Maddison Scott #TheMetaworker #MetaworkerMonday
“The typeface begins to rise from the aged paper. …They stretch and coalesce into an undulating vortex, spiraling around my outstretched finger like a tiny tornado.” – excerpt from Unbound, fiction by Maudie Bryant @maudiemichelle #TheMetaworker #literarymagazines
“Mother would stand barefoot in the living room and amuse six million lonely souls from around the world.” – excerpt from “Dancing Like Mother”, fiction by Nadim Silverman #TheMetaworker #MetaworkerMonday #literarymagazines
“The first set of numerals fell silently. They fell slowly and gently, tumbling like autumn leaves.” excerpt from “2575”, short fiction by Tess Hart #TheMetaworker #MetaworkerMonday
“I raise the cup to her and grittily, proudly, intelligently say: ‘this right here is the metaphor for our marriage’.” – excerpt from Fugal Variations of a Marital Theme by Utkarsh Adhrit #TheMetaworker #MetaworkerMonday
“The tantal was there before we were. … It was probably always there, waiting in the sand.” – excerpt from Captive Monsters Sleeping by @BradyMichelleR
#TheMetaworker #MetaworkerMonday
“Your gaze was fixed on something in the front, not on any person or any seat or fixture in the bus, but probably on a ghost that only you could see.” – excerpt from December Rain by Subarna Mohanty #MetaworkerMonday #TheMetaworker
“It is this exact reasoning, and its endpoint, that caused Giles to flee the city for this lonely meadow. Escape other people while there is still time.” – excerpt from Other People by Marco Etheridge #TheMetaworker #MetaworkerMonday
“When I was ten my mother fell in love with someone who was not my father.” – excerpt from Amoral Familism by Sophia Carroll @torpor_chamber
“There are places in the earth that call to you when you’re that age, and you just have to stick your hands into the mud and bring up whatever you can catch.” – excerpt from The Last Tree by Victoria Meyer #TheMetaworker #MetaworkerMonday
“The truth is, after twenty-four years of marriage, six kids and two extramarital affairs, Marilyn had had enough. She decided… she’d run away.” – excerpt from Be Prepared To Modify Your Plan. by Brenda Kilianski #TheMetaworker #MetaworkerMonday
“Mabel brewed the raspberry leaves and you marvelled at how the tea drove away the ache. She smiled and winked before sending you back to bed with a hug and a promise.” – excerpt from by Julia S. Maron @juliasjmaron #TheMetaworker #MetaworkerMonday
“Last year, on an ordinary day in July, at exactly 3:43pm, Dr Antonia Franklin made the worst decision of her life.” – excerpt from “Violet’s Breasts” by Charlie Fish #MetaworkerMonday #TheMetaworker
“I will always return the books you lend me because I know they are important.” – excerpt from Unknown Author, fiction by Paul Rabinowitz #TheMetaworker #ForgeFriday
“I met him at a gas station. He was pumping air into the tires on his Pontiac Sunfire and I was vacuuming the inside of my old Ford van.” – excerpt from Giant Steps, fiction by Neil Jefferies #TheMetaworker #ForgeFriday
“I trace your name in morning shadows.” – excerpt from “Your Scent”, micro fiction by Erin Jamieson @erin_simmer #MetaworkerMonday #TheMetaworker
“Planning took a few days. Meanwhile, Emily hadn’t called back. The longer Helen went without hearing from Emily, the more she wanted to call her mother.” – excerpt from Shallow Water, fiction by Susan Laurencot #TheMetaworker #ForgeFriday
“You want the memory to serve you somehow, to mean something that you can make sense of…” excerpt from Closer to the Sky by Carolyn R. Russell #TheMetaworker #ForgeFriday
“I love the little pink soap in its shiny white wrapper that I place on the gleaming porcelain sink of Room 118.” – excerpt from Motel Soap by Bonnie Brewer-Kraus #TheMetaworker #ForgeFriday
“As you stroll along cliffs that grace the tops of Appalachia’s rolling canopy, you’ll notice that the plot of the book becomes more cohesive.” – excerpt from Recipe for an Unfinished Book by M. R. Lehman Wiens #MetaworkerMonday #TheMetaworker
“She couldn’t believe it. She looked down at her hands, examining them, turning them back to front and back again.” – excerpt from Bananas by Jared Cole #TheMetaworker #ForgeFriday
“He on one end, she on the other, they march with purpose to the orchid show. The children between them are bundled so tightly, they waddle like penguins in the winter glow.” – excerpt from The Bronx Botanical Gardens Orchid Show by Jacqueline S. McCauley #TheMetaworker #ForgeFriday
“Like the Man, she appeared oblivious to the absence of walls. Standing in my usual spot observing the house, I kept willing [the Woman] to look my way.” – excerpt from The Season of Solitude by Jenn Haase Vetter #MetaworkerMonday #TheMetaworker
“There was no such thing as afternoon here; it was always nighttime. Every day it became murkier. Every day Kivotos-4 moved further from the sun.” – excerpt from Memories of Earth by Felix Anker @bananentupper @schundundsyntax #TheMetaworker #MetaworkerMonday
“I’m cursed to know the whereabouts of every small lost thing, even the things I never touch, like your toothbrush.” excerpt from Only a Witch by Steven Hage #MetaworkerMonday #TheMetaworker
Microfiction by F.D. Jackson #MetaworkerMonday #TheMetaworker
“Today was the day – the day I’d make three year’s salary in a single evening. The day I met the Spaniard.” excerpt from Ashmedai and the Hairdresser by Allister Nelson #MetaworkerMondY #TheMetaworker
“Where shall they meet? The deli, let’s say. Maybe she works behind the counter. Maybe he comes in for a sandwich.” – excerpt from Recipe by Annie Borelli #TheMetaworker #MetaworkerMonday
“Cleotis and I were guards at Parchman… He was a single man, a quiet kind of guy, and an exceptionally talented amateur oil painter.” excerpt from “Cleotis, The Secret Portraitist” by T. G. Metcalf #MetaworkerMonday #TheMetaworker
“…she finds her balance again, inside her head, atop the roller skates.” excerpt from Skate Country by Robin Wyatt Dunn #MetaworkerMonday #TheMetaworker
Microfiction by Kathryn Gossow #MetaworkerMonday #TheMetaworker
“Her other big talent was the ability to talk Kit into anything as long as she supplied the courage. That’s how she got him to go into that cave that day.” – excerpt from Big, Blue Watery Eye by Joe Ducato #MetaworkerMonday #TheMetaworker
“Sheep are floating in the ocean, and I’m going to be sick again. Not that those two have much to do with each other.” – excerpt from Porcelain Sheep by Jamie Anthony Louis @jamieanthony187 #TheMetaworker #MetaworkerMonday
“Our Thoughts lurk in the darkened corner of your bedroom while you sleep. Our Thoughts are watching from outside the window while you enter the coffee shop and ask for a large chai latte with almond milk.” – excerpt from “Our Thoughts Are With You” by Sean Monett @nonsensepoetrycomics #TheMetaworker #MetaworkerMonday
“Breathing through his respirator to filter out the steady stream of dust from above, Dimitri passed through murky pools of brown air illuminated by always-on streetlights.” – excerpt from “Astronaut Application” by Andrew Rodgers #TheMetaworker #MetaworkerMonday
“The egg of flesh was placed on the table where my son and I were breakfasting. It was the shape of an ostrich egg, and slightly larger than one, too. Its ‘shell’ would bend to the touch, but it had skin like that of a human.” – excerpt from A Living Stone by Jason Ruiter #MetaworkerMonday #TheMetaworker
“Give it up,” hollered a voice two tombstones down. “Nothing’s spooky to anyone in this damn world of endless light. You’re not scaring anyone.” Excerpt from “Grave Lightning” by Max Zell @ZellWriter #TheMetaworker #MetaworkerMonday
“If my days were like the calcified chambers of a nautilus cell, then my work was the living meat they had arisen to protect. The most human part of me.” @mxwheels #MetaworkerMonday #TheMetaworker
“The blinding light from the Frigidaire beams, a humming blaze fluorescing Lacey’s face as she stands, staring into the refrigerator glow with a vacant gaze.” @coopd88 art by @curiouscerid #TheMetaworker #MetaworkerMonday
“Many thought that the worldwide aphasia outbreak would bring about the end of the world. It certainly put a crimp in all normal day-to-day activities.” #TheMetaworker #MetaworkerMonday
“Our reconditioned 3D printer just made that gun,” said my boss. “The genuine ones were used by real cowboys during famous gunfights.” #MetaworkerMonday #TheMetaworker
“One day, colorful dots specked the sky as if a rainbow exploded.” #TheMetaworker #MetaworkerMonday
“The babies of Borad weren’t sleeping. They lay in their cribs blinking. Then the crying started.” #TheMetaworker #MetaworkerMonday
“The bottom drawer in my father’s room contains his trash. Crumpled Budweiser cans and Marlboro ash, frayed photos from his childhood.” #TheMetaworker #MetaworkerMonday
“I stand at the corner hailing autorickshaws. Many are ferrying schoolchildren, plastic sacks full of produce, five-litre gas cylinders, or the drivers’ wives holding stacked egg-trays bound for grocers.”
#TheMetaworker #MetaworkerMonday
“Good news greets Quibble’s return: his wife has conceived.”
#TheMetaworker #MetaworkerMonday
“My little brother had shown early signs, spitting up fire with his baby food. My parents were
covered in small burns for the first few years but I’d never seen them so happy.”
#TheMetaworker #MetaworkerMonday
“When the desk guard told him to report to medical, Cobb was dressed to go, his flimsy khaki shirt tucked neatly into his khaki pants, his sneakers—the good white ones he ordered from an inmate catalogue—laced, his prisoner ID card already in hand.”
#TheMetaworker #MetaworkerMonday
Nate turns me toward him, my round belly the bumper between us, his brown eyes plead with me. “Everyone has evacuated. We have to go now. Please.”
#TheMetaworker #MetaworkerMonday
“I lived here when the comet struck,” he said, raising his voice, “and I lost my Nellie when the rain of molten gold came down.”
#TheMetaworker #MetaworkerMonday
Microfiction by Sharon Y. Sim
#MetaworkerMonday #TheMetaworker
Three Microfictions by Corey Bryan @pip_prompts #TheMetaworker #MetaworkerMonday
“The river of silence passes through the large classroom trough, its charcoal sides soft and cool to the touch.”
#TheMetaworker #MetaworkerMonday
“Your autumn red curls, wrapped in Nigerian print, crowned your head like royalty. Africa hung from your earlobes, swayed in pride.”
#MetaworkerMonday #TheMetaworker
“He told me how the image of that clear cold gin sliding past my red lips and down my throat had driven him nearly mad with desire.”
#MetaworkerMonday #TheMetaworker
