Another journal

Storytelling Collective does a yearly challenge for flash fic, with prompts and a nice community format. Every year I complete a run I pick my ten favourites and collect them into what is basically a zine. This is my fifth year doing it!! Check out the zine for 2026’s flash fiction here, and then enjoy a favourite from 2025’s collection.

There were probably better ways to spend a time loop than a job interview. Luz had done them. Made a lot of memories. Great stuff.

She’d been making one of her morning idea lists however many “days” back, realising she’d learned most of the skills, done most of the things, visited most of the places she’d ever wanted. There didn’t seem to be much left to conquer. Which was a couple of levels of depressing in a way she didn’t want to look at directly.

Then she’d remembered.

The actual first day. The true day zero. She’d had a job interview. It had gone pretty terribly, for several reasons. And she’d been that mix of despondent and angry that you get when that sort of thing happens, and the rest of the afternoon and evening had happened and then she’d woken up and had gone through it again. And again.

It had taken Luz about two weeks to really figure out she was in a time loop for real—partly because there was a little Catholic bit still inside her who felt like this was probably a deserved level of hell, partly because there was a little bit of a chemical imbalance in her brain that made her not always sure of how real things were.

Each day of those two weeks she’d done the interview and it had gone badly, in various different ways. Once she’d caught the drift of real-reality it was the first thing to go. Then years or aeons or whatever had passed and now she was back at go.

Well, she’d been back at go for a while now. Her goal was to get them to offer her the job right there, at the interview. And, even all these skills and life lessons and whatever since the time loop began and she was still “not a great fit for the role.” Luz had tried a department store’s worth of various business attire. She’d memorised the interview questions, the HR lady’s answers, she’d learned how to make the horrible blonde HR lady laugh. She’d displayed knowledge of skills not listed on her resume (Luz realised she would have a hell of a resume update when the time loop ended, actually), she’d shown a preternaturally intuitive understanding of the business thanks to doing a month’s worth of research on it.

And yet!

Luz was pretty sure at this point that the answer to getting the job was skin lighteners and hair dye. Being more “naturally femme,” even though she was girly as hell, actually. It wasn’t Luz that was the problem, it was something she couldn’t fix in an infinite number of days. She was feeding the pigeons, who Luz suspected also were aware of the time loop, when she thought of a new angle.

It took several days of preparation, which was fine, she had nothing but days. But one morning that was as gorgeous as every morning because it was every morning, she was waiting for her drink at the same coffee shop as the blonde HR lady.

Deploying a combination of skills built up over a seemingly infinite number of loops, that was assisted by her naturally clumsy demeanour, Luz deftly fumbled her drink when she went to pick it up and simultaneously added a little something extra to the blonde HR lady’s cup. Luz knew that her face was now seared into the woman’s mind, which was fine. Luz’s drink was also hopefully as permanently embedded in her sweater set.

With her interview still a couple hours away, Luz got herself cleaned up, wearing the clothes she thought were nice but normal. No more business costumes, just regular office clothes.

Her heart felt light as she was sent up the elevator and guided by some baby of an office assistant to the small conference room. It soared when the door opened and a stranger entered, apologising while fumbling a folder of papers. Their colleague had gone home with a stomach bug, so sorry, so they’d be doing the interview. Luz smiled graciously. That was absolutely fine with her, she was looking forward to it.