You can now read my flash piece "Gardening Manual for Soldiers" live on If There's Anyone Left. It's about a school that's bombed repeatedly but keeps reappearing. Endlessly. #flashfiction #literary #horror #magicalrealism #Palestine

My flash piece "Gardening Manual for Soldiers" appears in this issue alongside other spectacular stories by exceptionally talented writers. Grab a copy! All proceeds go to Palestinian causes. It makes the theme of my story all the more relevant. My heartfelt thanks to the editors!!

A couple watches the lifeline of their dead child grow in the coconut orchard where he used to play. It performs the dance of a complex crisscross in the years the child's parents smile as if it were a string around them that made their romantic bonds stronger. #magicalrealsim #vss365

A group of bachelors is declared lost in the neverending corridors of everlasting love. SWAT teams are sent to rescue them from the tangled dreams of a purple safehaven. But inside its labyrinthine contours, the SWATs face these monstrosities called bachelors-turned-masters. #magicalrealism #vss365

Okay, children. One day, the mercury soars above an eagle. Hey bud, are ya looking for rats too? asks Eagle. Nope, there are too many rats. I escaped, says Mercury. We sure live in two very different worlds, Eagle scoffs. Actually, that's exactly why I soared, says Mercury. #magicalrealism #vss365

When a radio jockey returns home, she realises she'd dropped all her conversations somewhere down the way. She retracts her words but can't find a semblance of closure in what she recollects nor chase away the fear of a miscreant picking it up from where she left it off. #magicalrealism #vss365

"Arms and legs. How difficult can arms and legs be? Left arm forward, right leg forward..." If a Lamb Knew How to Play Hopscotch by Ruth Brandt @ruthabrandt.bsky.social #microfiction #flashfiction #flashfictionfebruary. Please follow the link and enjoy fictivedream.com/2025/02/10/i...

A loan shark dyes his hair the shade of yesterday. He dances in the rain, celebrating his liberation from all self-annihilating futures. Accidentally, in his drunken revelry, he unknowingly eliminates the moon from the sky and can't seem to recall the money the stars owe him #magicalrealism #vss365

Hey Blueskyers, floating about in this virtual ether, I've swum with you, and I came across no gods and can't say if one (or more or less) exists, but I can tell you I read Orbital and I know Samantha Harvey exists and she wears the Earth as if it's her trenchcoat. #booksky #literary #EarthCalling

A modest rightward shift of a continent leads it into the gulf of paranoia where placebos have stopped working. A casual bleeding becomes commonplace after people complain their hands have been replaced with knives, their minds with pens, and their dreams with carbon paper. #magicalrealism #vss365

An entire police force has to be disarmed when they start using tear gas to control their own revolutionary thoughts that they say they can no longer tame. Snatching the tear gas away from them brings to light their apathetic selves. Shamed, they start committing suicide. #magicalrealism #vss365

If you're seeing through the eye of a cyclone, you'll notice all the candles left aglow on tables, shelves, and minds. You're a stone's throw away from a burnout. Your whisper is misconstrued as a growl. And every careless bird you ingest is one lifetime and a day of remorse #magicalrealism #vss365

A six-year-old girl can calculate the height of all shadows that long-forgotten pasts leave behind on a thoroughfare. When there's no sun, moon, streetlight or flashbang, her reflective mood casts its own light on her parents' final thoughts before they were shot down. #magicalrealism #vss365

Robbie Arnott's debut novel Flames was a pleasure to read. The metaphors land so well in this largely unexplored Tasmanian setting. Quite a few POVs and some very unusual ones, but it all connects. (Be a little patient in the opening chapters.) The writing hums. #booksky #magicalrealism #Australia

A fortune teller can say precisely how many nexus of eternities it takes to decrypt the riddle named peace. He speaks of the proper alignment of stars in the sky and on Earth for such an event. And all the while he dances on burning charcoal. "The first step," he says. #magicalrealism #vss365

While sitting in his bathtub, a sociologist realizes something so irrefutably obvious he runs out of the door naked to announce the truth to the world. "Humpty Dumpty could've easily been put together again had two kingdoms not fought over which side of the wall he fell." #magicalrealism #vss365

Every morning, a man walks down the street with a broomstick, sweeping away yesterday's gibberish, collecting them all in a bin. In the afternoons, he sits under an old oak, picking nascent words people had felt but forgotten to define for a personal collage in his bedroom. #magicalrealism #vss365

An irritated boy casts a pebble aiming at the fragile end of the dusk and shatters it into pieces. Only people who'd not forgotten to carry umbrellas are saved from a night that falls sharply and pricks onto everyone's skin like a rain of needles. The iron dome doesn't help. #magicalrealism #vss365

A tiny nation under heavy restrictions develops a rocket that can travel to the falling stars. it returns with ten thousand wishes that its government distributes to its populace for free. They grow up to become doctors dedicated to mending bruised hearts around the globe. #magicalrealism #vss365

“How could he tell her that he added a lot more than this city’s pollution to his chai? That he had also added the honking of the rickshaws, the dingdong of the trams, the clippety-clop of horse-drawn carriages…”

Stuck by an immense sense of sonder in an exact fraction of a second, scientists all over the globe unequivocally agree sadness is the next possible source of cheap sustainable energy that could fuel entire lives and may even spill over to some afterlives. #magicalrealism #vss365

Look who's here storming it up in The Adroit Journal If you weren't purely imaginary I'd say great story @abhisheksg.bsky.social Maybe imagine me saying it instead? Also, you made me cry. theadroitjournal.org/issue-fifty-...

An author keeps her stories on a short leash. They habitually escape the pages, run across the borders, and go dancing with other abandoned stories in shadowy bylanes, beyond which the author can hardly tell her stories apart. She buys them fancy collars, deplaguarizes them. #magicalrealism #vss365

I have a story in The Adroit Journal today, titled "Three is Not a Number." This one's set close to my home and closer to my heart! #Literary #ShortStory #India #WritingCommunity

A transistor catches sea waves from various parts of the ocean. Thereby, it conjures a monster that propagates kindness through its static, infecting the wet dreams of all listeners with compassion. They wake in the middle of the night sweating; their lips refuse to swear. #magicalrealism #vss365

Absolutely honored to have my flash piece nominated by the amazing folks at @theforge.bsky.social for Best Small Fictions 2024! And huge congrats to all my fellow nominees! The piece in question - forgelitmag.com/2024/07/29/a... #flashfiction #writingcommunity #magicalrealism

A brand new virus gnaws at your childhood memories such that your life starts at age sixteen. Children aren't affected by that virus but suffer from a different impediment. They arrange for their imminent deaths at sixteen, beyond which they know they'd stop existing. #magicalrealism #vss365

“Oratress #4” charcoal, conte’ & pencil Available at Ro2 Art in Dallas,TX #charcoaldrawing #contemporarydrawing #magicalrealism #contemporarysurrealism #figurativeart #texasartist

#SeanLanders, The Urgent Necessity of #Narcissism for the Artistic Mind ( #Jaguar), 2014, Oil on linen, 50 x 65 inches (127 x 165 cm). #ContemporaryArt #Narcissus #MagicalRealism #FineArt #Painting #Tartan #Pattern #Realism #Surrealism #ConceptArt

Finally read Piranesi. My reaction: Eh. The house as a world idea is a been-there-done-that thing for me. I hoped the Borgesian elements would wow me; instead, I was following a protag who'd forgotten his past. The cliché of all clichés. The writing is lacklustre, at best. #booksky #magicalrealism

A platypus loses its temper, which was of a cobalt blue shade, mid-performance in The Sydney Opera House. Instead of mouthing its rehearsed lines, it starts spewing venom at the political figureheads, singing, "There are mates and rivals, & then, there are Tasmanian devils." #magicalrealism #vss365

A kidnapper takes a businessman's greed for hostage and demands an unheard-of ransom. The businessman, who no longer understands the worth of money, easily agrees. After the casual exchange is done, the businessman offers to buy the kidnapper's business & launch it globally. #magicalrealism #vss365

A news outlet celebrating the achievements of their country in the past decade with special news coverage on the streets is forced to use loud music to drown out the incessant screaming of invisible children, mostly hungry, abandoned, and dead in the background. #magicalrealism #vss365

After a recent geology survey reveals that the earth is saltier in tropical regions owing to the sweat of diligent workers, MNCs queue to set up sweatshops out there. Breaks are banned to maximise perspiration, and vampires are hired to oversee bloodletting. #magicalrealism #vss365

Review! Summit – Abi Wye’s Poignant Magical Realism Comic Has a Touching Yet Funny Quality. www.brokenfrontier.com/summit-abi-w...

A skilled artisan creates a clay model representing the entire Danube River to adorn his windowsill. The understated ceramic piece gains unexpected fame as subtle irony starts flowing through the terracotta, spilling onto the street below, flooding it with abject sarcasm. #magicalrealism #vss365

Isabel Allende is one of my favorite authors. I read this book over the holidays and it was a stunning blend of historical fiction and magical realism. Timely, as it follows two refugees - a Kristallnacht survivor & an El Mozote Massacre survivor. #literature #realismomagico #immigrantswelcome

Do you like mermaids and/or mythology? Please check out my flash fiction "Sirens Don't Sing Underwater." www.moonlitgetaway.com/short-fictio... #FlashFiction #mythology #SpeculativeFiction #ShortStory

Finished The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse by Louise Erdrich. Another book that sings on a sentence level. You could dive into any random paragraph and swim through its hypnotic charm. It also touches on an important theme & tells an amazing story! #booksky #magicalrealism #gender

One fall morning, a father shows his teenage daughter how truth had bloomed on the tree he'd been watering for years. "Hard work pays," he says. The daughter refuses to step into its shadow, says, "A sensible person doesn't stand under the shade of a naked truth in Autumn." #magicalrealism #vss365

An old man living in the largest and costliest madhouse on a certain planet uses his used conspiracy theories as bookmarks. Then, before he dies, he uses all his accumulated wealth to buy random books he'll never read to provide all his precious bookmarks cozy homes. #magicalrealism #vss365

The Magical Realism of Myriam Wares #Science #Culture #Art #MagicalRealism

Rumours of alcoholism, dementia, and bird flu spread in a town when a 500-year-old grandpa tree dies by itself despite being preserved by trained botanists and law alike. However, an autopsy claims the leading cause was censorship spreading its roots deeper into the ground. #magicalrealism #vss365

An index finger defeats a thumb in the elections. Then, a little finger walks down the streets with Cinderella slippers. Any feet that don't fit are wiped off with an eraser. Afterwards, the middle finger teaches all mouths the elusive art of swallowing one's own tongue. #magicalrealism #vss365

One road leads to the second. The second to the minute. The minute to the massive. The massive to the one. And there, my little ones, we have a perfect square. Now, if I bury it beside your bodies, we'll have a square root to everything. Easy peasy! Hang in there. I'm coming #magicalrealism #vss365

The dial tone of a phone is two alternating silences. The rest is a humming of various absences stolen from the homes of the forcefully disappeared. If you're listening closely, you'll hear, sandwiched between the two competing silences, the crisp sound of breaking bones. #magicalrealism #vss365

A composer writes music for the deaf. Each song in the vinyl record she releases is an aroma, and they could variously make you dance, cry, miss a certain butterfly, crave first rain, mourn for world peace, and laugh out loud at a broken record that screams altercations. #magicalrealism #vss365

On a year mired by droughts, wars, and alien invasions, a queen crops her hair to satiate the hunger of an entire kingdom. She relaxes all taxes on hugging in public places so people can bid adieu to uncertainty. Children are allowed to ride unicorns until conscripted. #magicalrealism #vss365

When Alzheimer's takes over, an elderly lady's shadow starts losing prominence, until it fully disappears along with her receding memories. She begins avoiding light to remember she's alive. Yet, when mornings turn her into a daily ghost, she decides to switch off the sun. #magicalrealism #vss365