'In Water, I Believe' by Willow Woo

After my morning miles, I dunk. There is no counting, just dunking. I dunk as low as I can go. I flip and swim to the bottom of the 12-foot pool and touch the grate. The line between water and air feels so far away. Underwater, I am free. I stay until I need to surface for a breath. On sunny days, the rays refract against the water like crystals as I rise. I go back to dunking until I feel ready, ready to face the world that is so much harder on land than water.

'Mystery of quantum lentils at Tripindi Shraddha Puja Seva kitchen' by Vijayalakshmi Sridhar

When Mukesh Shastri settled the grocery bill at Bawarchi General, his assistant Debu came running, his overweight breasts jiggling under his sweat-soaked t-shirt, gushing,

“The sack…the sack…the lentil sack is moving, a sound…it came from...”

Heart-racing, Shastri cut him short. “What’s moving? What sound?” 

Debu mimicked a deep moan that rattled Shastri further.

“You mean the sound came from the lentil sack?”

Shastri asked again and Debu nodded like a temple bull. Lentils could moan? “Why not? Arey. When parrots, penguins, even plants can talk, why can’t lentils moan?” Bawarchi who overheard Shastri’s quandary and of course his mind voice jangled Shastri’s nerves more.  

“But could it be a raccoon?”

“A Raccoon? Do they moan?” Bawarchi pushed, smirking-winking at Debu and Shastri caught it just in time. 

Everyone in the village was jealous of Shastri’s business success, especially after someone reviewed his Seva Service on the Internet. Was this a deliberate attempt to trip him? 

He killed the Chetak exactly at the mouth of his abode, marched straight to the double-door almirah in his dingy kitchen. 

The two lentil sacks were in the corner, away from the rice and rest of the puja stuff, tie loosened, their mouths open haphazardly. Shastri was still under the impression that it was only the handiwork of the man-sized-nocturnal-wanderers aka raccoons, until he heard it- not exactly a moan but a low hum. It sounded like the fading tone of the temple bell; eyes-closed, it made him feel underwater, back in his mother’s womb. On a whim, Shastri put his hand into the sack and a low-frequency, ebbing vibration pulsed through. 

As he sat rubbing his hand contemplating what to do with this in-the-face-bizarreness, the neighbours filed in- courtesy of Debu, the number more than when Shastri’s wife Lakshmi passed five years back.

 

 

'Royal Flush' by C.G. Thompson

A toilet was not supposed to be in the side yard. Or in any part of the yard. Any self-respecting commode would be inside.

This one had situated itself between her Japanese maple and garden hose, its seat up, yawning.

The nerve.

Her hands shook unexpectedly as she edged down the brick steps to study it.

She glanced around, knowing Duncan must be nearby. Who else would use a home appliance -- no, a plumbing fixture -- as a calling card?

He'd explained the difference while unclogging the finicky toilet in her first apartment years ago. "You don't plug it in or turn it on."

He'd driven ponding roads at 1 a.m. to help her. He stood and pressed the handle with authority. "Madam, I present the royal flush from the porcelain throne. I also give you this scepter," handing her his plumber's helper.

"A treasure." She'd laughed but kept it through ten years of various jobs, apartments, and now a home.

Duncan hadn't fared as well. Senior year of college, he'd been injured in a car accident then become addicted to opioids. Ashamed, he'd broken off contact. "A story for the crapper," he'd judged.

"I'm not going to start asking you for money," he texted, attempting a final joke: "You won't be privy to my problems."

"In loo of that, let's stay in touch," she'd tried

Instead he changed his phone number, moved, disappeared.

Now a toilet faced her boldly, making some kind of point.

A car door slammed in the summer heat.

Looking much the same as when she last saw him, Duncan stood at the foot of her driveway. She froze, too happy to speak.

"I've heard of toilets running ..." he called.

'Celebrations' By Melissa Flores Anderson

The morning is foggy and their families complain that they made the trek to San Diego hoping for warm weather. Lilly promises the gray skies will turn and the sun will come out. And they didn’t travel all this way for a beach day. Jack runs down the stairs in a collared shirt and dark pants, without a tie, because like his father, he does not like formal wear. Mick has a collared shirt on, too, for the dual celebration.

In the parking lot of the high school football stadium, Lilly helps Jack into his robe and evens the honors stole he wears over the blue gown, signifying his academic achievement. 

“This is only the first of more graduations to come,” Lilly says. “College, then graduate school, and maybe even a doctorate. Dr. Jack O’Connell.”

“Or maybe he’s heading to the 2036 Olympics, but no pressure,” Mick says, and squeezes his son’s shoulder.

At home, Jack has a letterman’s jacket for his athletic achievements and he’s earned a scholarship to run track and field in college. They send Jack off to line up with his friends, a last hurrah before they head into the graduation ceremony.

As she watches Jack leave, Lilly holds Mick’s hand. In the bleachers, they sit, with his parents on one side, hers on the other, Jack’s cousins and her sister and brother-in-law in the row in front. Today Jack graduates high school, but Lilly and Mick are also celebrating their 20th anniversary. There was a time when Jack was small that Lilly was sure they wouldn’t make it, but now as she watches him cross the stage, the past is a blip and the future stretches out before them, full of possibility.

'Surgery' by Birgit K. Gaiser

 
“But Auntie, I don’t want to!” Velika squealed. “I want to be a doctor, not a seamstress.”

“And how do you think the doctors took out your appendix last year and put you back together? Or give someone a new heart?”

“They can do it because they’re smart.”

“And because they know how to make a little hole inside a person and then sew it back up again.”

“But I don’t want to hurt Bruno.” Velika’s voice had gotten small, revealing the real source of her resistance.

“It won’t hurt him,” Auntie Milena said, patting Bruno’s head. “We’ll give him a sleeping pill first. He won’t feel a thing.”

“Do you promise?” Velika asked.

“I promise.” Auntie Milena picked up Velika’s ragged-looking bear and took him to the medicine cupboard, making a show of opening a bottle of sleeping pills and feeding a pill to the toy.

“Bruno says they taste awful,” Velika said helpfully.

“That may be so,” her auntie laughed. “But bears eat all kinds of things. He’ll get over it. Look, he’s already asleep!”

Following her auntie’s instructions, Velika picked up a pair of short, sharp scissors, carefully opening the seam at Bruno’s back. When the gap was wide enough, she added new stuffing until Bruno was as plump as he had been when she first got him. Closing the seam stitches as tiny as she could make them, she didn’t cry when she stabbed her finger once, than twice. A doctor had to keep her focus, after all.

“Well done,” Auntie Milena praised her when she was finished. “How about we wake Bruno up and then we can all have peppermint tea with honey, Doctor Velika?”

“Oh yes! Bruno loves honey!” Velika beamed, stabbed fingers already forgotten.

'The Happiest Moment of Her Life' by Sravanthi Challapalli

Vini sighed. Her fourth experiment with baking bread had failed. She had done just as that cookbook, a relic from the Fifties, had prescribed – mixed some sugar and dry yeast in hot water and added it to the dough after a while, to no avail. What was wrong? The book assumed its readers knew how to cook, but Vini, an upwardly mobile young Indian woman of the Nineties, had no such life skills, only a couple of degrees and a PhD course to join.

Till then, she wanted to do something besides reading. The cookbook and her aunt’s oven, forgotten and missing a wire, were excavated when they moved last month. Vini’s father repaired it. But the dough would not rise outside the oven or inside it.

Copious amounts of flour had gone to waste. In Vini’s small home town, hardly anyone baked or had ovens. Even finding the yeast was a trial. Who could give her advice?

The next week, as he packed the bread, samosas and Swiss rolls Vini had bought, the bakery owner, whose children had been in school with her, asked her how she was spending her holidays.

“Baking,” said Vini, “and failing.”

“Why?”

“I’m doing something wrong with the yeast. It seems stagnant.”

“Aren’t you using warm water?”

“Yes, I’m using hot water.”

“No, warm. Heat kills.”

Once home, Vini heated some water, waited for it to cool a little, added some sugar and yeast. Soon enough, there was an unpleasant smell and it looked as if a light khaki-coloured fungus had rippled through and muddied the water. The yeast was working! And that, dear reader, has been the most joyful ending in Vini’s life, even thirty-five years on.

'Robert Bakes' by Julia Goodlet

Robert was excited as he struggled into the kitchen with the bag laden with baking ingredients. He had saved up his pocket money for weeks to make the cake including that important decoration.

“Right then mischief, what we doing?” his dad asked after all the ingredients were laid out on the counter, as if ready to sacrifice to the gods of baking.

“Silly Daddy!” Robert giggled, his rocket themed baker's hat askew already, “I can’t bake if I can’t reach anything.”

His dad had barely pulled over the red toddler steps when Robert jumped up and over enthusiastically opened up the flour, sending large plumes of white dust over the kitchen.

“Don’t you need a recipe wee man?” his dad asked, looking around for the baking books.

“Don’t be silly Daddy. I can’t read but I know my numbers. Mummy showed me how.” To prove his point he dragged the large mixing bowl onto the scales and decanted the flour and sugar into it, sending more material flying across the kitchen.

If there had been carnage in the kitchen before, it reached new heights once Robert grabbed the eggs and butter but it was worth it to hear the joy in his son’s voice and his wife would, hopefully, like the gesture — if not the mess.

“Ok, Daddy, you put it in. Mummy says too hot for me.” Robert stood back as the thick concoction was loaded into the oven and clapped his hands with joy when the ding went off 25 minutes later.

The cake would never win awards but it was the first Robert had made without his mum.

There was just enough time to add the ‘Happy Mother’s Day’ candle before his mum walked in.

“Surprise!” Robert shouted with glee, the cake wobbling on the plate.

'My Father Brings Home the Roots and Bark from a Sassafras Tree' by Debra A Daniel

“We’ll make tea,” he says, “like my grandmother did.” He’s cleaning off the dirt. “Sassafras tea tastes like root beer.”

“Beer makes you drunk,” I say. “Girls aren’t supposed to be drunk. I could get arrested and thrown into the clinker.”

“That won’t happen. The clinker is for hardened criminals,” my grandmother says.

“Ladies don’t call it the clinker,” my mother says. “Ladies call it the correctional facility.”

My grandmother huffs. “The clinker is more refined than hoosegow or slammer.”

“Or joint.” My father’s voice sounds like a movie bad guy.

My grandmother almost laughs. My mother flares her nostrils. 

“We’ll make sassafras tea like fancy English people,” my father says. 

“Sassafras tea will poison you,” my grandmother says. “You’ll die frothing from the mouth, gargling on spit.”

“Ladies don’t spit,” my mother says, “and they only gargle in private. Refined people never die that way.”

My father puts the roots and bark into boiling water. “Now everything simmers,” he says.

The water bubbles. It smells spicy and woody.

“Let it seep,” my father says. I wait to drink danger.

“I won’t witness the imbibing of impolite liquids,” my mother says and leaves. My grandmother wrings her hands.

Finally the tea is ready. He pours two cups, adds honey, stirs. 

My father and I take the tiniest of sips. Then we twinkle-eye each other. We both grab our throats, plunge backwards, crumple to the floor, and lie still like we’re dead from tea.

My grandmother leans over us like a vulture. She wants to be mad with both of us fake-dying right in front of her eyes, but she isn’t. Now we’re laughing, my father and I. Even my grandmother. We forget to finish the tea which didn’t taste that good anyway.

'Redundant/laid off' by PL Harris

I’m the happiest redundant/laid-off-person anyone has ever seen.

It all starts inauspiciously.

I’m late to work, again.

Shoving my bike into an empty stall, I felt a buzz in my back pocket.

Text message.

My boss’s boss.

Am I coming to the meeting?

What meeting?

Where’s the meeting? I text back.

He describes the room. I recognize it. No windows. Three chairs. Enough for him, the Human Resources lady and me.

He comes out to meet me and I have the biggest smile on my face.

“Please tell me I’m getting laid off today!”

Caught him off guard.

I’m grinning like a fool.

Don’t get me wrong. I loved my job, my colleagues, my office.

Could not ask for better, anywhere in the whole world.

It’s just after being cooped up in an office for decades, I want to be free.

They have the severance agreement.

I ask for a pen.

Slow down, the HR lady says, go home, read it over.

But I’m ready to sign the severance agreement, pronto.

Severance from this life, on to the next, is all I can think about.

After we meet, I hop back onto my bike and cycle to my best friend’s house. And then I cycle on, the long way home, trying a new route, on a new bridge up and over an interstate, down to the San Francisco Bay Trail, past egrets and herons, past glassy inlets and ponds mirroring mountains in the distance, past sailboats and golfers, past a reconstituted mastodon skeleton found in a nearby river bank, back home.

No. Not back.

Forward! Forward to whatever my new life might bring.

NFFD 2026 Prompt #23: Bridge Over Troubled Waters

 

Prompt #23: Bridge Over Troubled Waters

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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Anyone who has ever read for a journal, contest or write-in knows that often the queue contains a lot of darkness.  As we're moving toward the end of the day, we'd love to see some light in our inbox.

For this prompt, write a joyful flash with a genuinely happy ending. What counts as happy is entirely up to you, but it should feel earned.  

If you're struggling, we encourage you to persevere; this is a challenging ask.  It can be much harder to write joy than misery, but we know you can do it!   

We'll be back at midnight with the final prompt for 2026.... 

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If you’re submitting this to us, make sure to note that this is a response to Prompt 23: Bridge Over Troubled Waters

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 Olivier Piquer via Unsplash.