MicroZine Digital Issue 2

Volume I (2024)

Aug 31, 2024

With our first digital issue under our belts and organic growth of 100+ subscribers, I’d say we are on a great road. Micro fiction is slowly making its mark within the fiction community and Substack community as a whole and that is through your continued efforts of sharing and contributing to MicroZine.
Thank you for your support. Enjoy these micro fiction stories below and look for our next open window to contribute your own story, tomorrow.
NEW ADDITION: Make sure you read to the very last story! Honorable Mentions are located there. Because of the large number of submissions we received, and that I hope we continue to receive moving forward, the Honorable Mentions area will list everyone who wasn’t featured and should they decide to share their story on their own Substack, we will come back and link to it.
—
Erica Drayton
(EiC)

A 6-WORD STORY

Fruity Irony by
Nic Marna

My room never had a closet.

100-WORD STORIES

Thanks, Dan by
Scott MacLeod

“Thank you, Dan, for winning my case.” Beaming with pride and apparently flush with cash after being hit head-on by a truck, the parade of smiling faces in the commercial claim to have collected a huge windfall. Is it wrong for me to be jealous of resurrected roadkill? But wait, do they really keep all of that free cake or is that jackpot reduced by a blizzard of medical bills and of course noble Dan’s forty percent? Maybe their only real prize for all that pain is being on TV? Is it wrong that makes me want it even more?

There’s a Spill in Aisle 12 by Beth Sherman

Blueberry lavender iced tea on sale at Costco this week. I traverse the store, past a woman in a hair net hawking jackfruit tofu. I’m ravenous. Insatiable. No one recognizes me without my cape. I hide my fangs, try to blend in. Covet every shopper stuffing their cart with saturated fats. Remember the first oaky sip. Sixteen days off the blood. What doesn’t kill you, etc. My thirst makes the morning wobble. I’m weary of the monster. Familiar and relentless. By the paper towels, a blush of throat, tempting a swallow. I quake. Reach for a case of Heineken instead.

500-WORD STORY

The Twitch by
Jack Conlan

It was the twitch that told the tale. It always did. For sixteen years as a deputy with the Roane County Sheriff, Clint Hardeman had paid attention to the twitch with the fervency of the saved. Preached it. Lived by it. Marybelle and the kids gave him a hard time about his fervent devotion, but he knew what he knew. The twitch was undefeated. He always said so.

The late summer sun was blasting down on Highway 70 and the heat was rising from the Tennessee asphalt like the fingertips of the Devil Himself. Sweat burst onto Clint’s neck when he stepped out of his patrol car and approached the rusty pickup truck with the license plate that belonged to a Honda Civic. Confidence and caution in his walk. Over the radio, he had called Don Carlson to back him up on the traffic stop. Don said he was just a couple minutes away. A lot could happen in a couple minutes.

“Got your license and registration handy, sir?”

“I left my wallet at home, officer.” The voice was sheepish. The eyes were wolfish. Long dirty blonde hair, shagged around a pair of cloudy but still darting eyes. The scraggly beard hung from his jawline. A long-healed, jagged scar ran down his left cheek. Clint’s uniform, normally crisp, was almost starting to wilt. Almost.

It was nothing but a slight tremor in the driver’s left eye. A wince of premonition, and quick as a hiccup. If Clint hadn’t been watching for it, he’d have missed it. But he hadn’t missed it. His right hand drifted gently to the butt of his service weapon.

The twitch.

“Can you step out of the car for me, sir?” And where the hell is Don?

“Why I gotta do that?”

“For your safety and mine, sir.”

“I’m safe here in the car, man.”

“I’m not gonna ask you again, sir.”

The driver’s shoulders slunk, he sighed heavily, and leaned towards the handle of the driver’s side door. As if he was going to open it. The barrel of the gun glinted in the summer sun. Clint saw that much before reflexes took over.

The first bullet thudded into his Kevlar vest, lodging there only inches from his badge and his left pulmonary artery. The second one ripped through muscle and sinews under his left collarbone. He didn’t feel either. His training merely responded to end the threat.

The footage from Deputy Hardeman’s body worn camera would be scrutinized by investigators from the D.A.’s office, the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation, the media, and his own department. It would show that Ronnie Lee Gowdy, who had been on the run from a parole violation for the better part of two months, had drawn his .45 caliber pistol and fired before Deputy Hardeman had drawn his service weapon. Clint already knew it would show that. Just as he knew that his camera couldn’t capture what saved his life that day.

The twitch.

The twitch was undefeated.

Also posted on their own Substack, here.

STORIES UNDER 500 WORDS

Magical Mix-Up by
H. A. Titus

[394 words]

It was the third knock on my door this morning.

I sighed and stared at Paisley. Her golden eyes blinked back at me, unfazed. A year ago when I’d first adopted her, this many interruptions to our daily schedule would have had her bolting under my bed, only able to be coaxed out by a crunchy treat.

Ever since Pen had moved in across the street, though, this was just another part of the daily routine.

I sighed and got up from my cross legged position on the floor, going over to the front door, and pulled it open.

A woman in carefully applied makeup, clutching a tall Starbucks cup in one hand and wearing athleisure that screamed “I have money to burn but I want to look like I shop at thrift stores”, blinked at me. She said slowly, “Are you—“

“Penrod Eckleman, professional witch?” I grinned at her. “Whyever would you think that, ma’am?”

Her eyes widened just a fraction, and I knew exactly what she was thinking. Long black dress, black lace cardigan, skull earrings, anhk necklace, studded bracelets, black lipstick...surely I must be the fabled witch.

As if on cue, the front door of the house across the road burst open, and Pen burst out onto his porch, looking very un-witch-like with his perfect angled nose and his pretty-boy pout and the bangs that fell across his face like a Korean pop singer’s—even though he was only one-quarter Korean. He waved to us, the movement making sunlight catch the gold thread woven into his waistcoat.

“Good morning again, Penny!” He shouted. “And—Mrs Ainsbury, isn’t it? I believe you’re my ten o’clock appointment?”

Mrs Ainsbury looked just about like this shock was going to knock her out of her glittery Nike wedge sneakers. She looked back and forth between us, then started drifting across the street.

Penrod met her halfway, smiling like Joel Osteen. “Terribly sorry about that, Google always mixes up our addresses, I’ve put in complaints but...big tech, you know how they are.” As he led her across the road to his house, he glanced over his shoulder at me and mouthed “Thanks, I owe you.”

I held up two fingers.

He nodded.

I went back into my house and shut the door. “Looks like we’ll be getting two dozen snickerdoodles delivered later today, Pais,” I said.

Temptation by
Amy M Stewart

[150 words]

The devil came to me draped in darkness, asking what I would trade for power.

“What kind of power?” I asked, my breath a whisper in the wind.

“Power you can only dream of.”

“Power over my enemies?”

“They will quail before you.”

“Power over my friends?”

“They will always take your side.”

“Power over women?”

“Any you desire shall submit.”

“Power over nations?”

“Armies will come at your command and conquer in your name.”

I thought about it. The darkness pressed in upon me, at once both suffocating and inescapably expansive. I could feel the devil looming there, slung low like the blade of a scythe.

“Power over you?” I asked, tense with sudden understanding.

A creeping smile split and stretched the skin of night.

“That depends.”

“On what?”

“Whether you have power over yourself.”

And I knew the devil had me then, for I could not resist temptation.