The elusive championship secured. Chalamet and 19,000 of his friends file out into the night to light the fuse in earnest. The arena soon empty and darkened. Enter the cleaning crew. The final buzzer for them the crow of a rooster. It's better than after the circus, they think.
“Are you sure?” Rada asked. “It’s been your family’s business for –“
“120-odd years,” Anton finished her sentence. “Time for a change. Mihaelov and Sons sounds like I’m ancient! Mihaelov and Radkova is much better.”
“True,” Rada said, signing her name next to his on the business register.
River on edge. Skylarks thumb the mudmotherbed. The sea’s whalemouth awaits sweetsweet heartrickles. Lose it. Floose it. Goneunder. O dear sweetsalt!
Mudlarking. Larkskying. There—there goes the neverquitegone, brushing my face. Mud for my feet. And you—you wait.
The spores spread like mosquitoes until I zapped them with vinegar. Walls wept mascara in a downpour as I boxed Lego, confronted memories I desired to recall and forget, and vacuumed dust bunnies as big as cats. Remediation demanded an empty room. My voice echoed. Now, I could start anew.
I packed everything he needed into my little Fiat: laptop, spare phone chargers, clothes. I placed my heart in his suitcase, tucked it under T-shirts that still seemed too big for my boy, hoping he’d find it in a quiet moment, when it wouldn’t cause too much embarrassment.
Eggshell fragments between razor-sharp jaws deliver precious lifeblood. Lime-green milkweed plentifully serrated, chomped to nourish. A swollen body expands like a beating heart, shedding the skin of life, darkness into light. The shrouded chrysalis protects like a cloak of armour, endings and beginnings fuse until the butterfly emerges.
“Onward and upward!” cried Montgolfier.
Into the silver rift. Versailles vanished. Their balloon swept across polar deserts and sentient seas, past titan cities and twain-split suns, through lands founded on ingenuity and martyrdom and love.
Louis XVI would brand them madmen. That life was over. They travelled on, pioneering impossibility.
Oh! This silver ring you treasured so. You couldn’t bear to be apart. It was a gift. You couldn’t quite remember where from. It had discoloured over time, since you were gone. I look down at my hand. It shines there now as I give time to you.
Newspapers are insulating on a cool night. Whatever the news, fold a broadsheet in quarters, it fits snuggly across a chest. This evening’s headline reads THE QUEEN IS DEAD. LONG LIVE THE KING. Emotionless faces glow in the light from smartphones. There is so little warmth in this digital age.
The shift from working to not - takes some adjustment. How to fill the hours? Who will I become now?...
Prompt #24: Last Crossing
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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We've reached midnight here in the UK, and the last of this year's Write-In prompts.
Write a microfiction of no more than 50 words about an ending that is also a beginning.
The title does not count toward the word count.
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If you’re submitting
this to us, make sure to note that this is a response to Prompt 24: Last Crossing.
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.
Photograph by Oziel Gómez via pexels.
