Best Microfiction 2026
Congratulations to Frances Gapper for the selection of her story, "Goodbye, goodbye."
 

Goodbye, goodbye
 

At the bus stop, a pillowy woman like a soft toy tells me another woman once stood where I’m standing now, between glassed advertisement and stony kerb. I used to see her every day but now she’s gone. Loud whisper: I hope she’s not dead. Yes, that’ll be me—flighty, wearing my whimsical feathered hat. Dial C for Change, another roll of the life dice, one last purple pleasure. I’m highly migratory like the bluefin tuna although permanently disloyal to my spawning ground of Fog Lane, Stockport, Greater Manchester, which I scrutinise on Google Maps. Friends who beseeched me to stay—you’d be crazy to move again. Just as we’ve got you nicely settled. You know what happened last time—have given up on me. Well this is our last goodbye, our final warning. You’ll be dead to us, dead.

 

Frances Gapper’s work has appeared in Pangyrus, Flash the Court, Your Impossible Voice, Atlas and Alice, trampset, Splonk, Wigleaf, New Flash Fiction Review, Fictive Dream, Forge, Switch, Gooseberry Pie, Literary Namjooning, Trash Cat and elsewhere.