MAN MADE FLASH FICTION

Xitizen RC1803, you violated Zero Carbon Code Orange 2D/xi yesterday by leaving Zone Beta without permission. Your UHI allocation will therefore be reduced for the next seven days. You may submit a defence or appeal statement within twenty-four hours of receiving this transmission.      Closing my device, I drew a deep breath. Like any good xitizen, I'd taken my daily vaccine shot. Then I'd set out to look at the ocean, to see one last time the place where my earliest memories were made.        A fifth-generation female android at reception noted my identifier tag and the code violation reference. Steadying my nerves, I stole a backwards glance at the city street outside where medicated commuters acted out what was for them another ordinary day.      'Thank you for your cooperation. Go to level eighteen, court five. You may use the lift opposite. State your grounds for defence or appeal when called to do so by the clerk.' ...

Squeezed behind a window at the station office a huge man of Afro-Caribbean descent asked, 'Where to, brother?'      'Sheffield, please.'      As if to counter the ticket seller's warmth, a beggar accosted me as I made towards my platform. As if reciting a rehearsed monologue, I said, 'I'm going to see my young son who lives with his mother in a different city. I'm on the dole and have only seventeen pence left to my name. You may have it.'      After a pause, the beggar ran and called out after me to return the worthless change. His demeanour now softened, he said, 'Hey man, I can't take this off you.'          While on the platform waiting on the train to arrive, I recalled the maxim about leaving home without any form of money in order to see how far we get and thereby experience the limits of our freedom.      'Please stop,' I told my brain, 'I don't want to know.'    ...

We sat at a sunny pavement table across from Gare du Nord. A wiry waiter of middle age arrived dressed in blacks.      “Deux tasses de café, noir mais grand s’il vous plait,” I offered in my very best school Francais.      In broad Aberdonian he replied, “You speak very good French.”     © copyright Russell Cavanagh   

One sunny morning at the bus stop below the high flats, nary a tooth between them, a haggard man and woman announced, “We just moved in.”      Pointing up to a distant window, indiscernible from the rest, Missus said, “Our daughter’s up there gagging for it.”      Mister just grinned and nodded. © copyright Russell Cavanagh  

Who It's not just that we exist. It's that we're aware of being, some of us anyway. After all, things which are seen were not made of things which do appear. But then there are those among us who not only know but who thereby exploit. You know who they are? C opyright ©  Russell Cavanagh  

Today - 20 May 2026 - one of my very short stories appeared as the front page on the website Paragraph Planet . Every day it publishes a different 75-word micro-fiction authored by different writers. I love the site's concept, its feel and its look. I am chuffed! 😎

  Ella hit the button and sat back in her throne to wait. She was a social media warrior princess par excellence, dismantling the toxic patriarchy one post at a time. Every response, good or bad, would answer to her digital sword.      Hearing a gentle tap on her bedroom door, she switched tabs back over to the vacancy listings and leant her face closer to the screen.      "Drink, Ella? Want a sandwich?"      "No, but thanks anyway," she mumbled.      "OK. Any jobs yet?"      "No, nothing so far."      She glanced out of her window at the crummy neighbourhood she'd known all her life. Another day of grey rain. Still pondering why everything was so hard, so needlessly difficult, she switched back to the  BlueSky  tab and saw her first like . C opyright ©  Russell Cavanagh   Ecclesiastes 10:18

Neither too pretty nor too bad looking, she caught my eye. Part of a wider company that night, we swapped numbers before she had to split early. The following Saturday I got a text saying she'd found a babysitter and did I want to go out that evening for a drink. I did.      At the bar we drank beer, played pool, and chatted. Afterwards it became clear we'd be walking home in mostly the same direction. As we reached the bridge I had to decide. Lingering a while in the autumn night air we continued to talk. I asked about her kids. She said little other than that she couldn't have any more. That certainly raised my interest, being the man I was back then. But something I couldn't quite place nagged me inside.      Months later I overheard someone talk about her. Apparently she was expecting again, already having five children by three different fathers.     copyright  ©  Russell Cavanagh  Proverbs 5:3-11

Good news earlier this week: The popular poetry website AllPoetry.com picked another of my poems for exposure on its front page. That means three of my submissions have been highlighted on the site over the past month. Each poem attracted great feedback from other contributors to the site. 😎 You can find the three pieces on this link .

"I don't know, and neither do you."           "All the science says it's round."           "No, NASA says it's round, and they need impossibly complex mathematics to try and prove it."           "So you think it's flat then?"           "I told you, I have no idea."           "But all those NASA images ..."           "NASA is a massive money-laundering scam. Everything about it is fake - even the logo is a snake tongue."           "So you don't think we ever went to the Moon then?"           "No."           "But why would they lie?"           "You admit there's a 'they'?"           "Well, you know what I mean."           "Whether or n...

The idea was to beat the rush and get round the isles and back out as fast as possible. But at that time of the morning there was only one till operator on and I hate automated checkouts and their inevitable glitches.           I noticed the old duchess in front of me sway slightly as she loaded the conveyor with bread, processed meat wrapped on trays, a carton of six individual iced cakes, a family tin of assorted shortbread biscuits, a small jar of coffee, a half-litre of semi-skimmed, a share bag of salted peanuts, a one-litre bottle of no-name gin, two one-litre bottles of store-brand tonic, a three-litre box of white wine and a copy of the local weekly rag. She then rummaged in her bag for her purse and loyalty card before extracting ... every ... last ... bit ... of ... small ... change ... she had with which to settle the bill.           "Making you wait mister, aren't I?" she said, slurring her words from behind a trowe...

  My stomach had rumbled steadily over the past hundred or so miles. There was nothing for it, I'd have to find somewhere to pull in and eat. As luck would have it I saw just the place - a little truckers restaurant sat back from the old road.           Inside and out cane seats sat under clean formica tabletops. There were no other customers around, maybe because it was by now way past lunchtime. A coffee machine hissed from the kitchen and a radio played hits from yesteryear. Soon a man wearing an apron appeared and took my order.           As I tucked in to the generous portion of ham and eggs, followed by pancakes drowning in maple syrup and ice cream, the man told me how his family had opened the place the previous century. He said business became tight a few years ago when the local plant, a big employer, relocated south.           "My name's John, by the way," he said, "I hate that it's...

  Whenever possible he would sit with his back to the wall, facing out into the room. His features gaunt, his hair shot through with white, he seemed a man old before his time.           No one really knew what he looked at time and time again on the screen. Though many tried to guess, he himself said nothing.            Rumours started. But that's all they were - rumours. After all wasn't he using shared Wi-Fi in a public library? Hadn't they checked the router logs more than once already?          Until, that is,  the day the librarian, the petite brunette, crept up quietly ... only for her hands to shoot up, her jaw to drop and her eyes to widen.           "Oh my ..." she gasped, struggling for breath, "I, uh ........"           "Well now you know," snarled the surfer, looking at her now gaunt face, at her own sudden shock of ...