"For sale: baby shoes, never worn" is the quintessential example of six-word flash fiction, but Ernest Hemingway did not invent it - there is no evidence of it, anyway. It doesn't matter: The concept has inspired interesting, intriguing, moving and funny six-word stories. Many were compiled by Smith Magazine:


Quite undecided, yet hopefully unsatisfied, generally.

I was and now I'm not.

What the hell. Might as well.

My life's a bunch of almosts.

Time to start over again, again.

To make a long story short...

Outcast. Picked last. Surprised them all.

Coulda, shoulda, woulda: a regretful life.

Unfortunately, there was no other way.

Like an angel. The fallen kind.

Used to add. Now I subtract.

Boy, if I had a hammer.