'Back the Way You Came' by Madeleine Armstrong

Before joining the A75, make a U-turn.

Drive for two miles along Route 69, which seems fresher than you remember, then turn right at that grassy spot, where your grown sons are picnicking with their families.

Carry straight on, past those dating site men who swore they wanted a mature woman, but flinched when they saw your pockmarked thighs.

Take the sliproad onto the M50, ignoring your ex-husband, who’s trying to thumb a ride.

Drive 15 miles, then turn off onto the A40. Suddenly you’re in a different car, not a beaten-up banger, but a dependable family vehicle that you wish you’d appreciated. There’s a younger version of you, hustling along the verge, dragging two kids with one hand and an elderly couple with the other, not even looking up to enjoy the flowers.

Turn left into Middletown, a 30-zone. Your fuel gauge veers into the red – what haven’t you ticked off your checklist? The engine sputters, about to break down...but then you’re in another new car, a deep- throated sporty number.

Take the second exit onto the M25, only it’s miraculously empty and you can go as fast as you like, barely noticing the young you dancing on the hard shoulder in a miniskirt and boots. You wish you could stay on this road forever, but you need to exit onto the A18. Your car becomes a bike, and you’re pedalling as fast as you can as traffic zooms past, people honking and shouting, so you peel off into a field, and you’re in that little pink Barbie car, your fifth birthday present, pushing along with your feet, towards your parents, who look so young, and you get closer and closer, until all you can see is the light that surrounds them.

'To get to where my heart is buried, head toward Costco on the edge of town' by Beth Sherman

Turn off Map Quest, it’s not going to help. (Play sad music in the car. Maybe Lewis Capaldi’s “Someone You Loved” to set the mood). Keep going straight, past Rite Aid and the Broadway Mall that closed last year. When Route 25A forks, bear left, then leave your Jeep at the Park & Ride next to the train station and take the dirt trail at the edge of the lot. Hopefully, you’re wearing comfortable shoes as the path has a tendency to get muddy. (Remember our camping trip to Vermont when you forget to pack hiking boots and it rained and you kept telling me you wanted to break up?) Don’t read the map on the wooden board. (All the landmarks are wrong). The trees are scarred with red paint to help guide you. Not every tree – that would be overkill. Just the ones far enough apart to make it interesting. (In case you forgot why you’re here and thought you were taking a nice walk in the woods). When you get to the big oak, there’s a picnic basket underneath, with lunch inside. (Bacon folded into hearts, broken heart chocolate cake, hot Cheeto mozzarella hearts, candy hearts that say YES PLZ and BAE and KISSES). Consider if you should eat these goodies or if they might contain something unsavory. Proceed to the creek, where you’ll see a shovel. Start digging. It’s a shady spot, with bottled water next to the shovel. (See warning about the heart themed food above.) Keep digging until you touch something pulpy and wet. Fragile. Oxblood red. Lift it out gingerly. Rinse it clean in the water. Try to forget it’s a human heart, still beating, still warm. Try to remember what love tastes like. The best of us. The marvelous. That’s what you’ve lost. 

'The 7:30 Bus to Work' by A.M. Udy

Early mornings in the stone city is always your favourite time of day. The streets around you are lined with Victorian apartment buildings only a few stories high. They wear their age proudly. The stone facades displaying their history with a urban camouflage. A young sun sheepishly casts crude beams on semi-cobbled streets. It dashes away the lingering haze. A cycle, a dance, observed by a very few. You wander about the bus shelter, it’s a Sunday morning and the buses have a lazy schedule. No matter how many times you witnesses it, you are still surprised at the juxtaposition of the quiet found in this densely populated city. 

All around you people take it upon themselves to fill the emptiness of the morning. Brightly clothed joggers make their second pass by you. In the distance you hear the familiar beeps of reversing delivery vehicles, and you see the local grocer through the shop window as they restock shelves. You used to silently rage at the thought of a six a.m. alarm. Now you are proud to be amongst fellow early risers. 

The bus stop sits on a slight hill that overlooks the local park. A football pitch harbours an entire flock of resting white gulls, a few pale grey pigeons, and obsidian black crows dotted in amongst them. Every now and then human activity disturbs the resting birds and they stir at the new opportunities of food. Beyond them sits a pond rimmed with public benches. Waterfowl gather near an elderly man he sees every morning. He sits at the center. Sometimes on a day off you find yourself by the pond as well. By chance you had spoken to the man you now watch from a distance, he claims his was “the best seat in the house.” 

'2732 Hope Avenue' by Debra A Daniel

• Leave your house before anyone is awake.
• Be a little groggy from the toss and turn in the dark overnight.
• Stop at the coffee drive-through and buy a large mocha latte of which you will only drink four sips, the first one burning your tongue.
• Wish you had sugar to melt in your mouth to take away the scald.
• Drive four blocks toward your old neighborhood, the one where you lived until you were six.
• On the first block, notice the lodge where a host of cigarette-smoking men all agreed that the catfish stew your father conjured was the spiciest and most delicious they’d ever tasted.
• Remember that he would walk with you along the sidewalk there under the massive sycamore tree and chatter-answer the squirrels scampering above.
• Remember that you thought he really could talk to them, how he said they wanted to know your name and if you had acorns in your pocket.
• On the second block, catch your breath when you see the place where your oldest sister’s boyfriend got into a fight, right in the middle of the street, how your father said that boy was trouble on a stick. Remember how your sister cried over the boy’s bruised face, swollen lip, scraped knuckles.
• Smile a little when you think about how his golden hair dipped over his brow, how he sometimes brought you cherry licorice, how you wished he’d be your boyfriend someday.
• On the third block slow down almost to a stop. Recognize the place where you stood with your father while he chatted with your mother’s friend who did alterations, how she smelled like peppermint, how her long fingernails were painted a bright spicy orange.
• Idle there while you realize you had never really realized her the way your father had.
• Turn left onto the street where you spent six years not knowing much at all, so busy you were with learning letters, numbers, making sense of words.
• Stop in front of your old house. 2732 Hope Avenue. 
• Find it surprising that you remember the address, the phone number, that there was a cluster of violets under the window of your bedroom. 
• Recall the front porch glider where your sister sat with that boyfriend, the driveway often empty of your father’s car, the way the fireplace never had any warmth, the silent mornings when your mother sat in the gray living room when she thought no one was awake.
• See the for sale sign and imagine what the house looks like from the inside out. 

'To find Old Man River' by Birgit K. Gaiser

To find Old Man River, you must travel to the right time and place.

To speak to him, you must reach him in the first month of harvest season, when the sun has warmed his skin all summer and awoken him from his slumber.*

To receive his favour for your marriage, you must bring a boon worthy of his attention** and convince him of your affection for each other.

To reach him, you must set out from the summer meeting place on the longest day of the year.***

You must walk towards the place where the sun touches the mountain at sunset****, and keep walking in that direction.

You must not eat anything containing fish or nuts for at least one week before you reach him.*****

Your mind must be free of doubts, your heart free of fear, your eyes open wide so he can read your soul.******

We wish you good luck on your journey.*******



*He’s old. Like, really old. And he sleeps a lot. Bit like a reptile, but more extreme. 

**He likes gemstones. A lot.

***Summer solstice, in case it wasn’t clear.

****West, basically.

*****He can smell the fish, even after a week. I don’t know how the old bastard does it. And the nuts, yeah, really don’t. He’s badly allergic. You really don’t want to see that.

******I don’t think he really does that. But you never know.

*******And don’t forget the gemstones!

'How to Go Nowhere Slowly' by Jean Feingold

Take a right at the beginning of your life. Proceed in a straight line until you meet an obstacle. 

Ask for directions from the first person you see. Do the opposite of what they tell you. 

Keep going until you see something interesting. Stop there and spend as much time as you wish exploring it. 

When your curiosity runs out, find a sofa, lie down on it and take a nap. On awakening, try to remember where you were going. If you have become confused, go back to the beginning and start over. 

'Solo Mia ' by Melissa Flores Anderson

1. Wake up.
2. Get out of bed.
3. Or don’t. Stay in bed, wrapped in blankets that are not so warm without another body under them, but still warmer than the shower that takes too long to heat.
4. Add a note in your phone to call the dad you met at that kid’s party who offered to adjust your electric water heater. The one you didn’t call because your husband was worried about electricity. He’s moved out so you can do what you want.
5. Get out of bed for real.
6. Drive into the foothills.
7. Walk the trail beyond the creek that begins to curve into the mountains.
8. Realize you forgot your water bottle and you never liked hiking anyway. It’s one of the things your husband complained about, that you weren’t outdoorsy enough.
9. Drive back down the mountain and park in the center of the driveway because you don’t have to leave room for another car anymore.
10. Run the shower water for 10 minutes until it is just the right temperature. Do your hair and makeup, put on a sundress.
11. Text that dad from the kid’s birthday party.
12. Text your son to tell him you miss him and ask what he had for breakfast. He’s notorious for forgetting to eat until he gets hangry, and you’re worried your husband won’t remember that.
13. Wait for a response.
14. Find a YouTube video and pair of pliers. Clear away the cobwebs around the water heater. Balance the laptop on a cardboard box where you have stored the wedding photos taken off the wall.
15. Read your son’s response that he had Wheaties, and everything is fine, and he’ll be home tomorrow. Send him one more text that says I love you, just to be sure he knows.
16. Remember you will also be fine. Someday.

'Bay Bridge' by Michele Catalano

She didn’t know how to drive in this weather; it rarely rained in Sacramento this time of year and she rarely drove at all. She fumbled with the rental car’s wipers, first turning on the hazards by mistake, then the blinker. By the time she found how to turn the wipers off, the rain had become intermittent. There was no way she was figuring out the delay mechanism.

She was driving over the Bay Bridge, trying to put distance between herself and everything that happened in Sacramento. She didn’t need to look in the rearview to know that the gap between then and now was widening. Then had heartache, sadness. Now it was the rage she felt toward him that propelled her down I-80.

She wanted to be over the bridge, out of this storm, away from the elephants on the road with her, this pack of Escalades ready to push her into the water below. She was dependent on this bridge, as if the road would close up after she crossed the threshold into the Bay area, out of shouting range. The rain kept coming, the traffic never moving, the image of him kissing someone else playing in front of her between swipes of the wipers.

She turned the radio up to drown out the ka-chunk of the wipers and the rain splattering against the windows. Ben Folds crooned about an abortion while she calculated the distance between the middle and the end of the bridge. Ahead of her, a sea of red tail lights; behind her, everything she ever knew. 

She would not let the bridge – the thing that was supposed to deliver her to safety –  defeat her. She pressed on, humming softly to the music. Ninety miles gone, who knows how many more ahead.

'I Have a Lot of Water' by Heain Joung

I want to find the way to who I am.

I wonder if you have ever heard about the Four Pillars of the Destiny Calendar. But don’t worry, I am not going to talk about your calendar which I can’t even read. But when it is something to do with me, my life, and my body, I can’t just ignore it, can I? I found my four pillars by giving my birth year, month, day and hour. So now I know I have a lot of water and relatively little wood there. The chart shows me that I have; wood (7%), fire (20%), earth (27%), metal (20%) and water (76%). Now I am really confused. What does that mean? I have a lot of water. Water seems a big deal for me and my life. But where is that large amount of water? Where on earth can I find it? 

'Turn Right at the Crossroads' by Bronwen Griffiths

‘You will turn right at the crossroads.’

‘Will?’ I repeat, irritation creeping into my voice.

‘There is no other way to turn.’

‘A crossroads has four ways. I could go back on myself, straight on, left or, as you insist, to the right.’

‘You must never go back on yourself.’

‘Even if I were to re-tread the path, it will not be the same. The sun will be behind me, my shadow will be long.’

‘You must turn to the right.’

‘My politics are left.’

‘This has nothing to do with politics. You ask me the way, and I give you information. Why ask if you do not wish to know the answer?’

‘What if I should turn left?’

‘That way leads nowhere.’

‘It must lead somewhere.’

The man coughs and fiddles with the silver fastening on his cloak. I wish now I had not stopped and spoken to him. ‘That roads leads to Nowhere. A barren place. Without dwellings or water.’

‘And if I continue straight?’

He peers at me. His eyes are so dark I feel I am being sucked into a vortex. I focus on the silver fastening. A cross is etched on its surface. 

‘Is this what you want from life, the straight and narrow?’ 

‘Does the right turn lead me to where I wish to go?’

‘Of course. It is right. Therefore correct.’

‘Why this bias against the left? Is that way sinister?’

‘Do as you wish,’ he says.

At the nearby crossroads I hesitate, feeling his eyes on me. There is no signpost. To the right an empty, treeless and dusty track.  Ahead distant mountains, jagged as bad teeth. Behind, the life I have walked away from. I turn left, walk briskly. A bird sings from a pine tree. I sing back to it. 

NFFD 2026 Prompt #4: A Bridge to Nowhere?

 

 Prompt #4: A Bridge to Nowhere?

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 flash in the form of directions from one place to another. The destination may be real, emotional, impossible, long-lost, underwater, fictional, or not a place at all.  

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If you’re submitting this to us, make sure to note that this is a response to Prompt 4: A Bridge to Nowhere?

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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Photo of Golden Gate Bridge by Stephen Leonardi via pexels.