Matt Kendrick
Writer | Editor | Teacher
WELKIN MINI SHORTLISTED PIECES 2025
de Ville
by Clyde Liffey
I bought a car from a dead person. I knew him only slightly when he was alive. He was younger than me. Life isn’t fair. Death is the same for everyone. The car was in good condition. The owner didn’t crash it. He died some other way. I took the car to a mechanic to have its fluids replaced and its belts and hoses checked. The dead man didn’t keep maintenance records or if he did no one could find them. The car was registered in another state. It may run better now than it ever did.
Clyde Liffey lives near the water.
Haineko (Grey Cat)
by Linda M. Bayley
The cat flows across your yard like a Japanese brush painting, a single meandering line from fence to fence, grey footprints in white snow, grey splotches on white fur, grey and white blending into the shadows in the corner of the yard where the monsters live, the ones who come when the sun sets the yard goes dark the cat disappears and you can’t hold your eyes open anymore can’t fight them off when they come for you can’t scream when they hold you down and you wish you were a cat, escaping, from grey and white into full colour.
Linda M. Bayley is a writer living on the Canadian Shield. Her work has recently appeared in voidspace zine, Five Minutes, BULL, Short Circuit, FlashFlood Journal, Underbelly Press, Stanchion, Does It Have Pockets, Roi Fainéant, and Tiny Sparks Everywhere, the National Flash Fiction Day 2024 Anthology. Find her on Twitter and Bluesky @lmbayley.
The Heat of Fusion
by Coleman Bigelow
For most, the melting began before they left home. Still, some were en route, mid-commute, when, losing their grip, fingernails slipped and whole hands oozed away. Several dissolved straight into the crosswalks, like that escalator game where the person mimes going down behind the sofa—only, in this case, the person never pops back up and all that’s left is a slick, slippery mess. A few enterprising, unmelted hypothesized how the oily remnants could be reconstituted to solve the energy crisis. But the rest were left to fret that their trickling tears signalled the start of their own impending melts.
Coleman Bigelow's work has appeared recently, or is upcoming, in BULL, Cleaver, Flash Boulevard, Ghost Parachute, Gooseberry Pie and Raw Lit. His first first flash fiction collection: "In Rare Cases & Other Unfortunate Circumstances" is available now. Find more at: www.colemanbigelow.com or follow him on Instagram @cbigswrites and Bluesky @cbigs.bsky.social.
Later, looking back, I was embarrassed I hadn’t realised I was dead
by Daniel Addercouth
But somehow I didn’t find it unusual to be back in that draughty farmhouse where I’d grown up. I should have wondered why the people living there were strangers and didn’t seem to notice me, or why I never felt hungry or tired. But I was too happy to notice. Happy to be home after so many years. Happy that my old bedroom was full of my things. Happy that the apple tree was still there. There was no night in that place either, just a long golden twilight that never ended.
Daniel Addercouth (@RuralUnease) grew up on a remote farm in the north of Scotland but now lives in Berlin, Germany. His work has appeared in New Flash Fiction Review, Trampset and Vestal Review, among other places.
Like a memory, or maybe only a dream
by Laura Besley
At dawn, the girl packs some clothes into a carrier bag and creeps downstairs. In her pocket is a small plastic turtle, its shell thumbed thin and scarred.
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Yesterday, the girl’s social worker – a woman who blinks too often behind frameless glasses – announced another move. ‘A nice family,’ she said.
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She always says that.
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As the girl strikes out on her own, she remembers a fairground, the clatter of toppling tins, a joyous whoop; she remembers a bearded clown passing her a prize; and she remembers her mum’s hand clutching hers, never once letting go.
Laura Besley (she/her) is the author of (Un)Natural Elements, 100neHundred – shortlisted for the Sabateur Awards – and The Almost Mothers. She has a Masters in Creative Writing and in 2023 she was awarded an Arts Council England grant to work on her first full-length collection of short stories. She is an editor with Flash Fiction Magazine and runs The NIFTY Book Club, which meets monthly to discuss novellas-in-flash. Find out more & discover more of her writing on her website: www.laurabesley.com
Mayday
by Jamey Gallagher
I called my old friend Ernie and he pretended he had dementia and didn’t know who I was. It went on so long I wondered if maybe he wasn’t pretending. I loved Ernie the way former soldiers are supposed to love each other, even though the worst thing we’d been through, supposedly, was an alien abduction. He claimed we were abducted in back of a Dunkin’ Donuts in ‘92. “Dale who?” he kept saying. “Dale O’Neil,” I said. “Dale O’Neil.” I said it so often it started to sound like some kind of alarm.
Jamey Gallagher lives in Baltimore and teaches at the Community College of Baltimore County. His stories have been published in many venues, including Punk Noir Magazine, Poverty House, Shotgun Honey, Bull Fiction, and LIT Magazine. Look for his collection, American Animism, published by Cornerstone Press in 2025.
Suki ought to exorcise the spaceship
by Sharon Telfer
The ghosts are playing games again – swish-swooshing the bridge doors, materialising on the teleporter, jamming all channels with made-up maydays. The spectral captain whispers ceaselessly about continuing missions. No sign of the fifth engineer since she (third navigator) had to pull rank. Perhaps she’s the last known lifeform left on board. She’s practised on the holodeck, clutching bell, book and candle, hoping the replicator’s functionality incorporates holiness. Unnumbered lonely stars wink in the observation window. Giggles behind her. She mustn’t swivel that heavy helm chair round. Trouble is, this deep out in space, no one else can hear you laugh.
Sharon Telfer’s flash fiction has won prizes including the Bath Flash Fiction Award (twice) and the Reflex Flash Fiction Prize. Her stories have been selected for Best Small Fictions and Best Microfiction. Her flash fiction collection, The Map Waits, is published by Reflex Press and was longlisted for the 2022 Edgehill Short Story Prize. She lives in the Yorkshire Wolds, in the north of England.
Things I imagined caused the tears of Bragolin’s "The Crying Boy" which hung on the wall in my childhood home
by Sarah Barnett
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He didn’t get any sweets because he’d mentioned the unmentionable, the ‘bitch’ who’d run off with Uncle Terry.
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He’d felt the sharp end of Dad’s belt. Beneath the scarf and coat were welts seared into skin.
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He’d been caught reading Mum’s letters. Dad pierced his cigarette butt into them. But at least it wasn’t flesh that burned this time.
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He saw his future. As Dad hit harder, harder, the pain gave way to numbness; a shell formed, engulfed, wouldn’t crack until the boy was a middle-aged man, breaking down in a therapist’s office, never realising he was worthy of love.
Originally a journalist and sub-editor, Sarah Barnett’s words have been published in Flashflood 2023, Paragraph Planet, Five Minutes, Retreat West, Cranked Anvil, and Free Flash Fiction, among others. She recently won two prizes: Highly Commended in the NFFD microfiction competition, and first prize in WestWord’s monthly micro.
Unreliable Narrators
by Shira Musicant
She plays hooky from school to visit a man she thinks she loves who called in sick at work in order to meet her. Planning.
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No. That’s not what happens. She skips school and goes to Planned Parenthood for a you-know-what because she ignored the possibilities when the you-know-what broke during you-know-what.
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Not true either. The you-know-what didn’t break. It never even saw the light of day, safely ensconced as it was in a little square blue package in his back pocket. Never even had a chance of coming out, though he showed it to her once. Like a promise.
Shira Musicant lives in the foothills of Santa Barbara. She has twice been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Her current and forthcoming stories can be found in Vestal Review, Santa Barbara Literary Journal, Lucent Dreaming, Blue Earth Review, Fourth Genre and Does It Have Pockets. Find her @shiramusicant.bsky.social
We are waiting –
by Susmita Bhattacharya
for the rain to stop
for our favourite song to play on the radio
for the car to go round the bend
for the driver in the approaching car to open his eyes
for him to swerve the car away from ours
for dad to swear, and save us
for the sound of sirens wailing
for dad to be blue-lighted to hospital
for interventions
for decisions
for answers
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for dad to join us on the other side.
Susmita Bhattacharya is an Indian writer living in Winchester, UK. 'The Normal State of Mind' (Parthian) was longlisted at the Mumbai Film Festival, 2018. Her short story collection, 'Table Manners' (Dahlia Publishing) won the Saboteur Award for Best Short Story Collection and was serialised on BBC Radio 4 Extra. She is co-founder of the ACE-funded ‘Write Beyond Borders Mentoring Programme’ and ‘Bridges not Borders’ project. She is a multidisciplinary artist who does several projects in schools and the community in the Solent region and is currently working on her second novel.
You want to peel back your skin
by Suzanne Hicks
and slice off the fatty layers to dig deep into your muscles, carve out the parts that twitch, bore into your spinal cord, swim around in the fluid to find the sinister cells lurking there, take off the top of your skull like a hat and take a bow in front of an exorcist who could cast out whatever’s eating away at the insulation in your brain, pluck out your faulty parts, stuff working ones back in and sew you up like a scarecrow, to live in your new body, because you ache to know if then you’d feel whole.
Suzanne Hicks is a disabled writer living with multiple sclerosis. Her writing appears in matchbook, Bending Genres, Milk Candy Review, and others. Her stories have been selected for Best Microfiction 2024 and the Wigleaf Top 50 Longlist in 2024. Find her on Bluesky @suzannehicks and read more at suzannehickswrites.com