The votes have been counted and verified (Well. The poll lets you vote twice but I'm relying on honesty) and the winner is Wait Time by Thom Willis. That is to say me, so here's the next prompt: So there you have it! Submissions to the usual place by the end of Sunday October 11. Plenty of time to write. …

It's been five hours, how many people were ahead of me in the queue? It didn't seem crowded when I arrived. It's just a burn, how long could it take to look at it, dress it maybe prescribe some ointment? Ugh. Relax! I didn't have any plans this evening. Well not as such. But even so, not being able to do nothing on your own terms does feel like an imposition.

Every time we drove through the village on the way out of the county, we did the dogleg through the middle (which was almost like it had been designed to slow people down, but was most likely left over from some ancient boundary) and past a group of houses, nice houses at that, all with red painted doors and window frames.

It's none of your business what your car gets up to when it's out of your sight. If, instead of dormancy in a lane behind the airport, it wants to feel sand beneath its tyres, salt against its grille, wind beyond the boundaries of its usual urban jail - just who are you to deny it that week of small sweet sovereignty?

Look, you sleepless daemons, look down there in the valley. Look now in quiet contemplation from your trees, keepers of the green. Look at the quiet town, the people in their dreams – no lights from the windows but outside the houses the thoroughfares burn under the streetlamps’ harsh, white glare. Those who sleep down there have forgotten you now; forgotten, or for the younger ones, never known.

The poll finished with Helen Carlye's story "Black Hole" in first place, so congratulations to Helen and thank you for providing this week's prompt: Deadline has slightly changed and from now you have until Sunday to get your 100-500 word story in to the usual address. Voting Monday-Wednesday. Then we're back here the following Friday. Good luck out there!

I don't know when I first realised that the whole situation was causing me to feel...a way. I remember a vague sense of pretending it's fine. Especially with friends at dinner. Swatting away the concerned looks on their faces. I also remember the feeling I had when Trey came home from work and I was still in the bath. Hearing the key in the door and the heavy footfall of work boots on the wooden floor - that immediate tensing as you steel your body again.

The half-light of the hall was crowded with dust and memory, ghosts we breathed in. We spoke in shuttered voices of funeral arrangements but nobody was dead. Nobody was dead but everybody was ill. The place reeked of it, illness, of disinfectant and bodies working against themselves. Every exhalation in that place was anticipation, every inhalation a reprieve, just long enough for the next breath.

It’s easy, isn’t it, to yell fat bitch at some kid’s mum from the window of a moving schoolbus, your triumph of opinion dopplering forward into the future from the perspective of thereceiver; even easier to repeat it in the heat of an argument with her child, who then storms offto get Their Mum so you can try to say it to her face; so, so easy to deliver a message twice…

"It sits on a shelf in the dining room of the house, along with other souvenirs and trinkets from the lives being rounded out in this house. It doesn’t look like much, but amongst other things it carries memories of a working life dedicated to making the very worst things that a person can make. It’s a mug, nothing special about that, a mug hand thrown on a potter’s wheel, made from clay from the banks of the Columbia river.

It fell out of her ear at 5.27 on Wednesday. There was a rustling noise, loud and internal, then a brief blare of pain followed by fast liquid warmth and a pop. She caught sight of it falling, surely too big for a human ear to hold - but as soon as it hit the platform it was kicked on by the stride of a man walking past and went flying over the platform edge to be lost on the dark tracks below.

Zachary Levi's deer-in-the-headlights lead performance and a bloated runtime are not the ingredients for a great thriller.

How does this work? You submit a short (ish) prompt for a science-fiction (ish) story. You are then randomly assigned a prompt from someone else to use as the title and basis of your story. You can in...

Everyone remember where they were It’s back and it’s smaller than ever! See the previous post for the general outline, this is just for the prompt. There it is. Sorry it’s so horr…

Everyone remember where they were It's back and it's smaller than ever! See the previous post for the general outline, this is just for the prompt. There it is. Sorry it's so horrible! Now go! Fly! Write 100-500ish words and send them to me by the end of next Friday! We shall reconvene then! Love you, byeeeee!

It’s back – in Pog form! Well, we’ve had some ups and downs over the years, eh? But ultimately microwrites is about writing. Small amounts of writing, for preference. I started th…