2026 February Flash Fiction Challenge: Day 8
Write a piece of flash fiction each day of February with the February Flash Fiction Challenge. Today’s prompt is to write someone stuck in a memory.
Week two is officially starting! Usually by now, we have most of the crew that will be participating through the month showing up in the comments. I hope that you're finding the community welcoming and fun! Don't forget to comment on each other's stories about what you like most—that is the most fun part of the WD community.
Today's prompt is to write about someone stuck in a memory.
(Note: If your story gets flagged for review, be patient—we will be releasing comments every few hours throughout the weekdays of this challenge. Our system randomly flags comments for review, so just sit tight and wait for us to set it free! If you run into any other issues with posting your story, please just send me an e-mail at mrichard@aimmedia.com with the subject line: Flash Fiction Challenge Commenting Issue.)
Here’s my attempt at a story of someone stuck in a memory:
Before She Was Mom
It took over an hour to get the kids down, and it was late enough that she should be in bed, but there were dirty dishes in the sink, and like her mother, she couldn’t go to bed knowing they were sitting there, waiting for her.
She was trying to scrub some congealed noodles off the inside of the pot when she was suddenly hit with the memory—twenty-two, still interning at her uncle’s business, going out every Thursday night to drink too much and stay up too late. Sweat tacky on her thighs, under her arms, glitter smeared off her eyelids, drinking straight from the faucet since she couldn’t be bothered to wobble up the stairs with a glass. Passing out for a blessed few hours before getting up, hangover be damned, to trudge to the office.
Breathing through the memory, she lets the sponge slip through her fingers. That was another person entirely; that was youth, and she wasn’t old, not by any definition, but she wasn’t young like that anymore. Never would be again. These days, getting the girls together for a night out was a nightmare schedule that kept getting pushed off, living in a fantasy state, and hangovers were bad enough that they took an entire day to recover from, one that the kids couldn’t give her for all their boisterous, outpouring love.
But she used to be that person, once. She used to kiss strangers, and dance with white drunk girl abandon, and pant through a grin that felt like a snarl, a ferality to her that had been tempered into domesticity.
She takes a deep breath. Picks up the sponge. Turns away from the her she can never return to.
