Flash Fiction Exercises

Some of these have been shared on my old blog, some of them have not; all are stories that are under 1,000 words. Enjoy! If you’d like to give me a tip, please do so on Ko-Fi!

If you’d like to play along, post a micro-fiction in the comments!

Horror Writer's Chat Prompt
March 25th, 2026

The Prompt: The glass pulls you into the frame. It sinks underneath your skin. You scream, and the laughter punctures your eardrums. You fuse with the glass, inch by inch. A single image floods your vision. "I stare at my exposed ulna bone. They want me to fashion a key out of it."

The Answer: I stare at my exposed ulna bone. They want me to fashion a key out of it. I can't, my mind screams. It's drowned out by the incessant laughter, until all I can hear is ringing. I can't. I can't. I CAN'T. I CAN'TICAN'TICAN'T -

The thoughts grow into a hellish chant beneath the ringing, even as my fingers grip a piece of glass.

I start to cut.

Horror Writer's Chat Prompt
March 25th, 2026

The Prompt: By the third day of spring, the garden has started asking for names.

The Answer: Dried leaves with the letters etched into the vein patterns. They were vague at first.

John. Mary. Scott.

Then, they got specific. Bella Scarborough. Dierdre Holmes. It was strange, to be sure, but I thought it was a harmless prank. Until I saw the obituaries that morning.

Horror Writer's Chat Prompt
March 11th, 2026

The Prompt: You were once horrified by it, this monster of stitched corpses and a dozen dead eyes. Each step is a rumble through your bones, its gaze puncturing your soul. You light another cigarette. Your eyes glimmer with fury. "I swing my axe. Blood splashes into my eyes."

Continue it.

The Answer: I swing my axe. Blood splashes into my eyes. The abomination roars, one of its heads falling to the ground with a mighty wet thunk. The haze of crimson clears, and I see its arm swing towards me. The cigarette falls in slow motion as I swing the axe again. "Nice try, twelve eyes."

Horror Writer's Chat Prompt
March 4th, 2026

The Prompt: Here we go, Horror writers. Write a tiny story about an animal behaving... wrong.

The Answer: I watched the cat from a break in the blinds, nausea rolling through me as it stood stock still in the road. Staring. Unblinking. It'd been in front of the neighbor's for a week before she wound up dead in the drainage ditch with no known cause. The cat was staring. Waiting.

Watching. When it noticed me watching back, it flicked its tail, just once, then went down on its haunches, creeping closer. I guess it was my turn next.

Horror Writer's Chat Prompt
February 18th, 2026

The Prompt: You finally pry your eyes open. You can't breathe. Burning vines sink deep into your throat and joints. Gilded thorns shear your body open. You weep. The dreams. They beckon you again. "I can't resist any longer. My bloodshot eyes close."

Continue it.

The Answer: I cannot resist any longer. My bloodshot eyes close. When I sink below the inky blackness, I open my eyes to uninspired, dull fluorescent lights. I look around, my surroundings slowly coming clear. Neutral, upbeat music pumped through the speakers, and all of the tan and neutral monotony of business casual surrounded me. "What am I doing at work?"

I shook my head, trying to clear my fogged mind and slow my pounding heart. There were no customers, no sign of other coworkers. Just the cleaning cart and the tagger gun still clenched in my hand. Grabbing my phone from my pocket, I clicked the wake button, and the LED screamed 2:30pm. "Is it so slow that I fell asleep?"

There was no one around to answer. I could still feel the scrape of the vines on my skin; the thorns cutting my throat. Closing my eyes, I tried to conjure the image of the old manor. It was hard to figure out where I felt more trapped.

Horror Writer's Chat Prompt
February 11th, 2026

The Prompt: Write a short piece where a character avoids something as long as possible — a room, an object, a memory, or a person. When they finally face it, the horror is not what they expected.

The Answer: One step was all it would take for me to reach the threshold. One step. I'd been standing in limbo for hours, nearly a day. My stomach was starting to eat itself. My heart was twisting into knots. The state of the world outside was chaos. Insurmountable horror.

One step.

I can do this. A cold sweat broke out across my skin, gooseflesh racing up my arms.

One step. Just one step.

My hand reached for the knob. One step.

My fingers trembled as I started to turn the tarnish bronze. I turned the knob, wrenched open the doors, and — sunlight. Normalcy. Children running in their yards, shouting at each other. Birdsong echoing from the trees. Where was the chaos? The fire? The breaking down of society?

I blinked, crossing the threshold, and let out the breath I'd been holding.

Horror Writer's Chat Prompt
February 4th, 2026

The Prompt: Write a micro scene where your character meets the personification of cancer in your home.

The Answer: It stood in front of me, too thin to stand on its own two feet. Despite their gaunt frame, they had extra appendages growing and writhing from them, constantly changing shape. Its breath was ragged, raw and putrid and inches from my face. "Why are you doing this?" I whispered.

There was no answer.

Horror Writer's Chat Prompt
January 28th, 2026

The Prompt: Gnarled hands grasp the thrumming earth around you. Void-colored eyes behold you. "Embrace me, and my power, you shall have."

You grasp the dagger in the skull. You do not waver. "They have killed your kindness," your darkness whispered. "And now, all you have is me."

Continue it.

The Answer: "I don't need your power," My voice was flat, face stony as I pulled the dagger from its bony resting place and thrust it into the emaciated chest. The skin gave way, and a reedy gasp fell from parched lips. "I have my own."

Stab after stab, the void fell back. Silence crept in.

Horror Writer's Chat Prompt
January 21st, 2026

The Prompt: Micro fiction challenge - It's officially national hugging day. Participation is mandatory. Your character has already failed once.

The Answer: It wasn't their fault that their target's knife slipped last time. Maybe it was a bad idea to try to hug someone who was cutting onions. Regardless, they would try to honor the mandatory participation when they weren't in an industrial kitchen.

Horror Writer's Chat Prompt
December 31st, 2025

The Prompt: It is New Year's Eve. The year is ending, and your character is standing at a threshold — a doorway, a bridge, a moment they cannot remain inside. They are told: "You may cross, but you cannot take everything with you." Something they assumed was a part of them is refused passage. Midnight is approaching.

Continue the story.

The Answer: Something they assumed was a part of them is refused passage. Left at the threshold is their heart, still beating with a desperate rhythm, trying to reach the core of the person that left it behind.

Horror Writer's Chat Prompt
December 17th, 2025

The Prompt: It towers over you. The blue walls blacken with its shadow. Consequence undulates inside it. It's you. The real you. Who you've always been. A thought claws and gnashes into your min. "My sins take shape. My sins gain sight. They run towards me."

Finish it.

The Answer: White starts to appear in thin, perfect lines across the doppelganger's face, further marring the pocked surface of ice. It's scratching through the layers. Your heart speeds in a hummingbird rhythm, but you can't move, frozen as you stare into your own eyes. A loud crack echoes.

Writing
November 7th, 2025

The darkness whispered tantalizingly from the mist clinging to the trees outside of Veronica’s window. The oil lamp beside her elbow was the only spot of warmth in the hazy dawn, and the cold clung to her bones, tired and hungry for her vitality. She adjusted the maroon scarf around her neck to cover the tip of her nose as she dipped her brush into the cap of a waiting inkwell. So much for a gentle, cozy fall, she thought, peering through the haze outside. The weather feels like a funeral.

The tip of her wet brush flexed into the blackness, and she tore her eyes from the window to focus on happier things. The letter beneath her sleeve was nearly finished. Not many people wrote longform in ink anymore, but she found the practice held a lingering joy that even the malaise outside couldn’t siphon away. The room, while dark, was in stark contrast to the early November morning. The stack of letters to her left would be secreted away into a blue post box by the end of the week, traveling to her pen pals through rain or shine.

This last one was to her brother. He hadn’t written to her in a week, and her heart twisted when she thought about him. There were plenty of reasons for his silence, both through text and through calls alike, but she didn’t want to think about it. Couldn’t think about it. If the weather was an omen, then it was a stupid one that needed to take its heedings somewhere else. She had festivities to prepare for, and even the great banshees of the moors wouldn’t take her away from the oncoming holidays.

Your dearest sister, with everlasting love, Veronica, she finished the letter. Her name was signed in a flourish, a small flower replacing the dot of the I. He can’t stay mad at me forever, she thought, but it left her restless. She sat the brush aside, leaned back in the chair, and stared at the rolling mist as her stomach matched the motion.

Doors
November 7th, 2025

They say that life is a series of open doors. Things you pass through, things you leave behind. There is something about moving forward that prevents you from stepping back, but you always have the other rooms behind you. What are we moving towards? Where are we going? Nothing is ever clear, but each step feels like both unknown experiences and a series of repetitions. When I get to the end of the hallway, will there be people waiting for me? Will there be an opening, showing something greater?

I’m not sure. No one is.

Thinking about it for too long opens a pit of dread, heavy and deep inside of my stomach. It leaves me reeling, confused and lost; turning round and round until I don’t know which way is up. The world can be so beautiful; technicolor, full of beauty and flowers and the promise of laughter if you just keep going. It can also be drab; dull, and gray, and devoid of anything but the cycle of the sun rising and falling. The world has teeth. It can gnash you to pieces before it spits you on the floor of the universe, broken and bleeding. And then, the resulting pause of leaning against a doorway, ignoring anything but the path that stretches for eternity behind.

Keep moving forward. The journey is both hard and soft, both cruel and kind. The lessons leave scars, and yet, they can leave the ghost of a smile. They can leave feather-light touches across your skin. They can leave aches, vast and deep, that threaten to break your entire foundations with a mighty crack.

But, there is always the next door. There are always the silhouettes at the end of the tunnel. And, above all, there is always the promise of something more, just beyond the next frame.

Solstice Sunrise
June 21st, 2025

Light everlasting while the shadows depart

The solstice sunrise whispers truths to our hearts.

Blood red on the horizon whispers secrets of demise,

Wind promises burning, birds cry surprise

The sunlight isn't truth, the darkness not lies,

Beware the light; it may melt your eyes.

Void and Cotton
February 2nd, 2025

The first sensation that breaks through the black is the pain. Wonderful, glorious, bright and debilitating pain, setting off nerve endings like fireworks, tugging her soul from behind the blanket of void even as it tries to hide from the sensation. Next is the distinct feeling of swimming out of the black and into a sea of crackling, itchy cotton. With that, consciousness. Adrienne’s steel and storm eyes twitched back and forth behind her eyelids, her mind screaming -- wake up wake up wake UP WAKE UP WAKEUPWAKEUPWAKEUP -- interrupted only by the strange sound of sirens from far away.

Everything simultaneously felt like it was on fire and beneath a foot of water. There was a beat of gentle, carefree floating, before she began to question why everything felt so far away. What was I doing? The sounds, distant and slowed, distinctly reminded her of a record being played at half speed. What’s happening?

One of the oddest feelings in the world is continuing on when you’re expecting to be dead. The strange numbness that accompanies consciousness, when you want to divorce yourself of it. Static filling your senses, accompanying the steady quiet overwhelm of everything being too much because it’s not nothing -- the silence, sweet embrace of the blackness you crave. All of this was playing on a feedback loop in Adrienne’s mind, harmonizing with the tinnitus echoing through her ears.

It slowly dawned on her why she was feeling this way. The bus had skidded on black ice, careening off of the road, through the guardrail and demolishing several trees before skidding to a stop. The trees that it rested against were groaning and crackling with the weight, a whispered promise of letting it go to fall down the rest of the cliffs, uninterrupted. Ah. That’s why I’m surprised I’m not dead, she thought, trying to focus through the heavy pull of the void. Her lips began to tingle, slow and intense. Did teeth have nerve endings? She would have bet all of her life’s savings on the thought that they did. The tinnitus lessened, and the sirens grew impossibly loud. Okay. Fingers? Check. Toes? Check.

She slowly went through the checklist of what she could sense. A headache bloomed into her consciousness, nearly imperceptible at first, but thudding steadily into a throbbing, hellish roar that bounced in her skull. Adrienne’s shoulders ached, and there was a steady column of numbness that made the base of her head and the column of her shoulders feel like two separate pieces. She couldn’t think about that yet. Okay. First thing’s first, can I open my eyes?

Her eyelids were weighed down with cinder blocks; at least, it felt like they were. She could feel her eyelashes fluttering, tickling her cheeks with the gargantuan effort. A soft noise fell from her lips as the world suddenly and violently blazed into life, her eyelids finally lifting. The lights inside of the bus were flickering, and her headache sang the discordant tune of agony. The more she became aware of her body, the more she regretted pushing for it. She was covered in a hot, sticky wetness, her knee throbbing.

Adrienne’s eyes slowly adjusted to the cold, unfeeling light. Red and blue flashed from all sides of the bus. The colors fought in a terrible surreal kaleidoscope, leaving her head in a spin. With a groan, she tipped to the side, letting her eyelids slip shut once more. The bus groaned with a mighty creak, and her stomach lurched. “Help…”

Her voice was watery and weak. The distinct crunching of glass beneath heavy boot tread overtook the ringing in her ears as she started to fall back into the itchy cotton. As the void began to rise up, she felt her body begin to rise, as well. The last dredges of her consciousness began to fade away just as a soft voice murmured, “Don’t worry. We’ll get you out of here.”

The Dangers of a Cat On Board
January 20th, 2025

This flash fiction was written based on this prompt — “Science fiction and cats”. I also made a short animation where I narrated this, so if you’d like to listen instead of read, the short is here.

Sharp green eyes reflected the glow of various LEDs off of the ship's dashboard, darting back and forth curiously as the small ginger feline debated which one to pounce. The pilot was nowhere in sight. Instead, the ship flew at light speed through the vacuum of space on autopilot. She lowered her stance, her tail flicking and butt wiggling as she calibrated her jump -- the target a bright red button marked AIR LOCK.