If You Were Here
Author: Autumn Bettinger
If you were here, I would tell you how delicate the birth of a star is, not violent like they always told us, but beautiful and pale, like those fireworks we used to set off behind the school. If you were here, I would tell you how I looked for you in the crowd that watched us board the ship. It was so loud. There was so much screaming. Someone threw money at me. Real money. Money we always wanted and never had. Money to trade places. I wish I could have, but that’s not how the lottery works. And money doesn’t matter anymore anyway. If you were here, I would tell you that I knew you wouldn’t be in the crowd, because you would be in our old treehouse, the one that overlooked the base, where we used to watch space probes and satellites launch into the stratosphere. If you were here, I would tell you that earth looked so small when we were swept away in a bath of pressure and preservatives. If you were here, I would tell you that they told us you all died in an instant, that it was painless, just one big rock colliding with another, billions of living things snuffed out like a candle. But I know it wasn’t that way. I know you burned inside out, boiling and peeling away, watching as the ocean evaporated and every single bird fell from the sky.
The Past
365tomorrows launched August 1st, 2005 with the lofty goal of providing a new story every day for a year. We’ve been on the wire ever since. Our stories are a mix of those lovingly hand crafted by a talented pool of staff writers, and select stories received by submission.
The archives are deep, feel free to dive in.
Flash Fiction
"Flash fiction is fiction with its teeth bared and its claws extended, lithe and muscular with no extra fat. It pounces in the first paragraph, and if those claws aren’t embedded in the reader by the start of the second, the story began a paragraph too soon. There is no margin for error. Every word must be essential, and if it isn’t essential, it must be eliminated."
Kathy Kachelries
Founding Member
Submissions
We're open to submissions of original Science or Speculative Fiction of 600 words or less. We are only accepting work which you previously haven't sold or given away the rights to. That means your work must not have been published elsewhere, either in print or on the web. When your story is accepted, you're giving us first electronic publication rights and non-exclusive subsequent publication rights. You retain ownership over your story. We are not a paying market.
Voices of Tomorrow
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