'The Rainbow Bridge' by Abida Akram

I am on the rainbow bridge of self-love. I am high and loving the brightness of all the colours. Days and ideas swirl above me like a galaxy of desires.

It was all so easy, making the decision to stop, making all the pressure to succeed at work go away. Yes, maybe I will miss the money but I learnt during the Covid lockdowns that I could survive on very little money. It was great having all those daily temptations suddenly unavailable. 

The bridge to freedom was simply making a decision to honour my dreams. Just one step and I was on a new adventure. Now I am more me, still an independent, strong and assertive adult but a happier more fulfilled woman.

Because I feel so much lighter, I have floated to the high bridge of forgiveness, a light bamboo structure between the two highest mountains in the world. The person I had to forgive the most was actually myself for falling into the trap of the expectations surrounding me for so many years. 

I am lucky that I now breathe the air that angels breathe. All I did was give myself the luxury of time and the freedom to pursue my passion - which I had had since I was a young girl. Now the joy from the flow state as I write creatively is overwhelming. Beats writing dry policies and reports for a living, which no one really enjoyed reading. Now I happily travel far in my head every day and inhabit many different worlds and characters and do not notice the passage of time.

'Free' by Catherine Marina

I’ve been doing this now for 47 years. Got my Black Cab license when I was 20 and never looked back unless it was in the rear view mirror. Never wanted to do anything else.

And you, have the great honour of being the last fare of my last shift.

I’ve taken punters to every life event you can mention. Births (two in the cab), deaths (be careful taking corners if it was a cremation), thousands of holidays, drunk nights out (I’ll fine you if you’re sick in my cab). All the bodily fluids have touched that back seat, as well as quite a bit of kebab meat.

Some people like a chat, others don’t. I put the radio on if they don’t want to talk, see? You’re quite quiet but I suppose I’m doing all the talking, aren’t I!?

I’ve had quite a few death threats. Lost count of the number of knives I’ve seen. One guy pulled out a sawed-off shot gun but he didn’t say anything. Just sat in the back then tipped a tenner. None of my business.

People can be quite racist but I just shrug it off. As long as they pay. I’ve had to drive a few fares to the police station.

They’re not all like that. I’ve got one regular airport lady who insists on bringing me back Turkish Delight from her holidays. Every time. I don’t really like it but I smile and keep it for the missus.

I don’t know if I’ll miss all my customers, but I’ll definitely miss some.

Is this you? Nah you don’t owe me anything mate. Last fare. You’re free.  

'Greybars' by J. Rob Turner

GRAYBARS, gray walls, gray floor. Forty layers of gray paint. Sweat drips, a curse echoes. The prisoner grunted, “Got any smokes?” 

The young appointed lawyer said, “So – tell me now–now! Listen to me! You will, or won’t, plead to negligent homicide, with a 20 cap.”

Bobby Cofield, 26, said, “Nope. Takin’ my chances.”

“You could be out in twelve – maybe. Opening arguments tomorrow. They’re asking the DEATH penalty, OK? God, Bobby.”

“Nah. And nobody ever really gets the needle, anyway. Besides, Charlene and I are gettin’ remarried.”

“What?”

“Wife can’t testify against me, or me against her– law, right?”

“Mm. Look, they can’t make spouses testify against each other. But she can if she wants.”

Bobby said, “She won’t. And she’s got a surprise for the grieving widow.”

“OK, Bobby, you have promises with Charlene, but she’s facing 30 years, and if they offer her a last-minute deal, we won’t know. Ballistics check: your rifle that fired that bullet.”

Bobby snarled, “That’s your job, they don’t know who pulled the trigger, that’s reasonable doubt.”

“Hand of one is the hand of all, remember?”

“I know what we’re doing – you’re a notary: remarry us.”

“Bobby, you gotta think this through better.”

So, Bobby and Charlene remarried that night, the young lawyer pronounced them man and wife “for better or worse” under South Carolina Law as a Notary Public can, and they kissed slow and long between the bars, before the matron pulled her back.

Before the lunch break, the bailiff asked Charlene, “Do you solemnly swear to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, so help you god?”

She touched the Bible on the rail, looked at the jury, and at the judge, and said, loudly, honesty, “I do.” And whispered to the left, “see ya.”

'The Drop' by Scott MacLeod

Ted stood alone on the empty bridge looking down at the churning river below. Had it really come to this. An extreme measure, no? Breakups are hard. But this was so final. No coming back from a plunge like this. He could no longer live in a world with her in it. It was as simple as that.  

She had been with him for almost seven years. Every waking minute. Every meal. He couldn’t take his eyes off her.

She woke him in the morning. He drifted off each night holding her.

 

But she had an answer for everything. Knew it all. 

Demanded all of his time.

No more, he thought.

It was a long way down. So far down he never heard the phone splash before he walked away. 

'Not Going By The Book' by Sravanthi Challapalli

The group dispersed after fond farewells. Rini continued lingering in her chair. The still-heavy bag lay in the next chair, only one friend had taken one. Sighing, Rini rose and left without looking back, afraid someone would come rushing to return the bag of books she had left behind.

Rini had too many books. In the last three years, her phone claimed her attention and slashed her reading time. As an antidote, she had joined a book club. Her father would order books frequently and she swiped many of them. She thus collected several books, of which she read very few. Never mind the romance around tsundoku, it was a failure to self-regulate, she decided. The multitudes of the unread and the unfinished were suffocating her. However, she couldn’t stop acquiring them. Actually, she had only about two hundred; what weighed her down was the self-reproach at her lack of discipline.

Maybe if she gave away the unread ones, she could begin afresh? No libraries or schools in her city wanted any. Voluntary organisations wanted only textbooks and educational books. Only a few of her friends wanted any. The longer she waited for a decent solution, the more she accumulated. Should she burn them? No! So she started losing them. On the bus, on the train, at cafes, at a holiday resort, at stores, in a distant park. It often felt like a stealth operation. She deleted the audiobook app without claiming her credits. She deleted the unread books on her e-reader. Over the next year, she felt lighter. Relieved that there was no book to go back home to. Strange, she didn’t even feel like reading now. Had she gone too far? Rini couldn’t tell.

'Beryl' by Emily MacDonald

I tried flattery, charm and witty jokes, but Beryl’s face remained solid, impassive. I never once cracked her grim resolve. Any upward twitch of her lips was quickly arrested and deposited for safe keeping. 

She pursed thoughts deep into her apron pockets, extracted red and black pens to annotate her accounts and bundles of keys to lock away her approval. She’d fold her arms, her skin puckered and thin as the bank notes from the days takings­—elastic snapped, bound and ordered. 

I smarted to learn she laughed behind my back until I realised there’s a difference between winning and earning. 

I stopped trying to gain her approval and realised she liked me so much more. But by then, I found her too mean, too measured, too calculating. I felt richer for stealing her affection and seeing how little it was worth.

'I Dream Of Jeannie' by PL Harris

I just can’t take my eyes off my genie.

“I Dream of Jeannie,” I mean, the 1960 American TV sitcom.

Such a great show.

Beautiful lady.

Handsome man.

The problem of the day easily solved in 30 minutes, commercial breaks included.

With all five seasons on Amazon, I watch one after the other, all day long.

I love the show so much I’ve stopped cooking. Just frozen nuggies for me.

I love the show so much I’ve stopped bill paying. Might be why there’s no water in the apartment.

I love the show so much I can’t sleep, unless I’ve binge watched a whole season.

I love the show so much I dream I’m Jeannie or Tony, clothed in her pink silk or his military uniform.

No one tells me to snap out of it.

I tell myself to snap out of it.

The real world awaits.

My Jeannie or Tony is out there.

But first, I must watch a few – just a few! – episodes of “Love Island.”

'Sunflowers in Nordland' by Birgit K. Gaiser

Velika Ilieva went to the bridge, holding a sunflower. She had been bringing those ever since she was a child, ever since her parents, Zitko and Ivelina, had died.

They had been commemorated, together with all the others, on the bridge, the place where it happened. Nobody had seen the troll after the killing spree, it seemed to have simply walked off.

Velika didn’t fear for her life. Not back then, at the memorial ceremony, and not today. She placed the sunflower on the ground and knelt, using a cheap toothbrush and bottled water to clean the stones her parents’ names were carved into.

“I’m sorry I’ve not been visiting much lately,” she whispered. “I finished my degree. I’m a doctor. Like I said I would be.”

Her parents had laughed at her as she held up a teddy bear covered in plasters. Removing them had cost the poor toy a few patches of fur. She’d switched to using tissues as make-believe bandages after.

She swallowed, then said: “I’m moving away. I got a job. In a big research clinic, in Nordland. I know it’s what you’d want for me. No, that’s a lie. I think it’s what you’d want for me. But I want it.”

Velika got up, wondering when she’d return here. If she’d return. They had sunflowers in Nordland, after all. She could remember her parents there, too.

'Mine By Rights' by Madeleine Armstrong

Before I walked out of that office I handed back my key fob, laptop, phone and company credit card, but as I strode through reception I grabbed my award, Commentator of the Year, which sat on a shelf in pride of place, gleaming chrome and glass; I snatched it like I owned it, which I did really, the least I deserved after all those years in that shithole, the best years of my life, wasted, and if anyone noticed me take it they didn’t say anything.

'Job Search' by Melissa Flores Anderson

The last three times, I am the one to go, when I have reached the end of my usefulness and what had been glowing performance evaluations turn into sour odes to the ways I have fallen short. Despite hours of overtime, hitting every deadline, becoming a confidant for junior members of the team, who turn to me for support. The standards change and every typo or mispelled word in a first draft is scrutinized, pointed out as a fault in my technical ability, used against me as a reason I lack leadership qualities. Insecure managers weed out the strong so they don’t have competition, and I know when it is time to move on. I find new jobs without the benefit of their references.

This time, the boss is going and I am staying. And yet she takes the time to tell me that I will never be promoted to a leadership position at the institution she no longer runs. She tells me she hopes I have learned something from her, and I say I always learn something from everyone I have worked with. I don’t say, even from the worst ones.

'Lattice bridge' by Michael R Evans

is burning down where you guided me one night beneath the canopy of maples and spruces on a study break dare. The popular one and the loner. You remove my glasses to enhance the blackness. All friendship, no faces. We climb over the bridge-closed sign. Holding the oak girder, I clomp surprised onto dilapidated deck planks. We feel our way, scale the crisscross white-painted truss in a spotlight of moonglow.

converse with the September canyon creek below— You interrupt— Have you ever seen a falling star? I laugh at the absurdity. Come on. You lead me through an endless tunnel of thick-barked boughs into what you swear would be a clearing in the daybreak. Thinning tree crowns eclipse the moon. Your hands eclipse my eyes, no peeking. Then you unveil— oh! a myriad sky of placid fireflies at rest

is our Van Gogh viaduct to the infinite, once camouflaged by distant city lights. Under October leaves the colors of flames, all eyes skyward. Still, I weigh this presence against what’s hidden in our well-lit lives: our friends starving students, your research funding ending, spending too much time in the coffee shop where I straighten consignment paintings and wipe counters looking for new customers. Over your shoulder, white-hot, a cinder diving from nowhere into superstition.

reveal the Northern Lights in November that dim the starscape. You say, I love you, but this was never that. I return alone, to confirm the aurora. For a moment, everything is discernible: I was never alone. Not there in the clearing, nor here babbling by the old bridge. Burning, disassembling the latticework. Choking the stars. And you are not here to console me. Through the smoke, I see you through the smoke on the other ledge, flickering incandescent. Tossing down the matches. Walking away.    

'A New Life Without Cats' by Jean Feingold

Celeste Patterson loved cats. She had lived with cats all her life, having three at a time as a child. Her parents loved them, too. 

The only problem was Celeste was terribly allergic to cats. Her eyes were red and running all the time around the cats. She had tried many solutions. She bathed her cats regularly with special soaps and shampoos. She added supplements to their food that were supposed to erase the allergens. She took them to the vet for anti-allergenic shots. She even took pills herself designed to make her immune to cat allergens. All the solutions failed. 

Now Celeste was getting married and moving to a new home. Much as she regretted it, she knew the cats could never visit that home. Her parents were happy to keep them and to have Celeste visit them as much as her allergies could tolerate. Even though living without seeing the cats everyday would make her sad, she also knew it would make her healthier. It was the mature thing to do.

'I ain’t going to work on Maggie’s farm no more' by Margot Wilson

Because I’ve been accepted onto a course to do French Language in London. I don’t know London and found it intimidating when I went for the interview but I know I want to study French.

I have never seen a Cézanne oil painting in real life but my boyfriend gave me a little book of his paintings: it fits into a pocket and I am in love with Cézanne’s blue, his gentle card players and his cubic rocks. I want to go to Provence: about as far away as you can get from this river flowing red with dye from dark Satanic mills. 

And I will go to Paris and I will read Proust. I will learn about De Gaulle. With my French friends, I will be dizzy with colour after visiting the Musée d’Art Moderne. Guided by Elizabeth David, I will make tomato sauce.

I will hear a different melody and rejoice in the sound of the accordion. I shall be entranced by Françoise Hardy. Perhaps I too will become chic.

It’s not that I didn’t like working on Maggie’s farm, it’s just it isn’t in the Auvergne or Brittany. Maggie doesn’t wear a coiffe.   I shall eat fresh fish, caught by a Breton fisherman and yellow mushrooms picked in a forest. There will be the smell of lavender.



I shall miss them all at Maggie’s. I love cows’ eyes and the smell of hay, even if it does bring me out in a rash, but I shall meet new people: students and French people. 

And the poetry? Is there anyone  like Baudelaire who is inviting me on a journey? I am that child in love with maps and prints.

My head is full of ideas. I cannot wait to become who I truly am.

 

 

'When None of Us Spoke to Ella Wiseman' by Emma Phillips

Macey says she’s Batgirl, the wisest, the boss of our pack. None of us question this because Macey can shrink you with a look, scrunch you into a ball of paper and toss you in the trash like she did to Ella Wiseman. Ella sits in front of Miss and puts her hand up so often we call her the Fuhrer, but nobody cares if you are smart because Macey made her invisible. 

Macey and I were born in the same hospital, besties since birth. Macey’s mom hung out with mine before they hooked up with our dads and Macey says Some friends go so far back, they’re family, though I can’t imagine Macey’s manicured toes under our table. She wouldn’t unsee Mom’s grey roots, my brother’s awkward chewing as he tries not to let food catch in his braces. Macey wants to be an influencer when she’s older but Mom thinks we should be whoever we like, as long as we’re still kind. 

That makes me think of Ella Wiseman again, how Macey crushed her faster than a can in a dumpster. Ella is the only person I ever met who didn’t want to bathe in Macey’s light so I guess that is why she got left in the shadows. Macey talks a lot of bull and I’ve spent my whole life nodding like a dashboard dog or chasing my own tail to please her, even though I know Macey takes things too far, that she feeds on the pack, that she’d chew up anyone who dared to challenge her and spit them out like meat.

At recess, I ask Ella if the empty chairs either side of her are free, slip into the space she creates in her pause and lower myself in, without waiting for the splash.

'Dropped Weight' by Sarah Oakes

On the bank of the River Ness, I cast my sight into the water. It drops, like a stone, vision falling into the depths.

I know now I don't need it. The world is so much more wonderful without it, filled with songs and stories, kindness and joy, deep connection and sensual pleasure. And this place proves it, more than most, made of senses that sing and people who are happy to help, sacred spaces felt more than seen and acceptance that hums underfoot.

It sinks to the bottom, a votive offering to old gods and ancient sea creatures. As it does, I feel lighter, happier, freer. I don't have to struggle with what I can't see, grapple with old ghosts, or worry about fogged futures. Instead, I can just be me, and know it's more than enough.

A weight lifts from my heart, and heals old wounds. Because I know that life can be lived without sight, and can be lived well.

 

And as I walk away from the river, I pave a new path, footsteps springing with wonder as my long cane swishes from side to side.

'Sinclair’s Escape' by Julia Goodlet

As the train pulled out of the station Sinclair felt his breathing steady, his racing heart slow and a tension release. This was it, his big adventure and the world lay waiting for him. He had scrimped and saved for the whole year, crappy jobs and no nights out with mates. Every penny he could put aside was locked in his bank account — out of sight and out of mind.

One goal in mind, to escape the city, the degree, his lovely family. And they were lovely, genuinely so but he needed to soar, to reach his own heights. He wasn’t going to know who he was or what he stood for if he didn’t take that plunge. There was comfort and security at home, a safety net that kept him second guessing his intuition, his own ability to stand on his own.

Two weeks ago he walked into the travel agent and bought a ticket to travel the world, then hugged his tearful mother and jumped on the plane. The hours left alone on the flight were the worst, he began to question his decisions, replaying his mum’s face in his mind, as he walked through security, the black streaks running down her cheeks.

Was he a bad son?

Collecting his bags from the filthy conveyor belt he wondered, until he wandered out into the concourse and it was like a whole new world. The smell of cinnamon, and cardamom, nutmeg and garlic all fusing together around him, a sensory overload that made his eyes water and his stomach grumble.

Then he knew. He really knew, that he was right where he needed to be.

The universe was calling.

NFFD 2026 Prompt #19: Burning Bridges

 

 Prompt #19: Burning Bridges

Welcome to The Write-In!  This year, we're celebrating the 2026 National Flash Fiction Day Anthology theme of Bridges. Throughout National Flash Fiction Day, we'll be posting one prompt every hours from 00:00 until midnight (BST), for a total of 25 prompts in all.  You have until 23:59 BST on Sunday to submit your responses for possible publication here at the Write-In over the course of the next week.

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 Write a story about a character intentionally severing a tie with someone or something, but frame it as a positive, freeing, or necessary act rather than a tragedy. 

To make this extra challenging, avoid the themes of leaving a romantic relationship, an abusive relationship, or parents/relatives/partners who don't understand or approve of the narrator.  Also, avoid using the words 'goodbye', 'leave', 'fire', or 'finally'.

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If you’re submitting this to us, make sure to note that this is a response to Prompt 19: Burning Bridges

You can submit responses until 23:59 BST on Sunday, 14 June 2026 for a chance to be published here at The Write-In.

You can claim the badge for this prompt by visiting our badges page.

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Photograph by Jayden Lynch via Unsplash.