Flash Fiction Magazine

By Austin Bolton

I’m eleven, sitting in the Sister Danos Convent on my class’s field trip to Fort Wayne. We are in the chapel, lying on the floor. There’s PB&J in my belly and Miami Heat flip flops cushioning my toes. Soft music plays, as though distant, the gentle lolling of sea waves and the call of ocean birds in the background. My eyes are closed. I breathe in, deep, the way Sister Kate instructs us. Hold. Three seconds, four, five. Sister Kate’s old, smooth voice: “Now let it out.”

I’m fifteen, waiting for mom to pick me up from the station. I don’t know what time it is. My head swims. There is alcohol on my breath. My sister, Sarah, sits beside me. She is sober: arms crossed, eyes that refuse to look my way. It was not my fault.

[Read more…] about Inhale, Hold

By Stephen Young

I park the truck at Williamsgate Assisted Living and replace the elastic of my face mask around the back of my head and over my ears. I hump a bag of meal deliveries to the 17th floor where the hallway is poorly lit and the cinder-block walls too narrow to allow a woman to pass me without difficulty.

I look back. Her calf is a rumbled backside, and a bandaid has fallen half off revealing a nasty sore. The blood stain waves hello as she makes progress past the elevator door. Her round figure disappears without a turn right or left.

[Read more…] about The Stairs Down

By Frederik Appel Olsen

It’s their third car in two years: a Toyota Auris, eleven years old, faded red. There’s rust on the undercarriage here and there, a couple of dents that can’t be buffed out, a bent windshield wiper, but they got the car for way less than their last one, a Škoda Octavia that ended up quitting completely at the end of winter.

They picked up the Toyota just outside of Copenhagen, and on the test drive they agreed that it ran way better than the Škoda did. They might be able, they speculate, to drive all the way up to Stockholm, like they did in their first car—a miniscule silver Suzuki—a couple of summers ago on their first vacation together, without too much trouble.

[Read more…] about Used Cars

By L.A. Pontes

The mist that formed behind the house was a strange, suspicious thing. Nothing about the weather suggested mist, nor was there morning rain. Reed sniffed the air warily. Wasn’t smoke, either. Besides, the mist had a way of moving that just didn’t fit. Too fast, too straightforward. The dusky pall whirled out of the house, crept through the backyard, and swallowed the fence.

With a shiver, Reed slipped from behind the fence and followed. That was a stupid thing to do, probably, but he couldn’t help himself. He was in the prime of his youth. Not even Ricky, the strongest guy in school, could take him in a wrestling match or beat his panther sprint when they raced across the thickets. Besides, the mist wasn’t the first creepy thing to show up in town lately.

[Read more…] about Freak Season

By Anna Nunan

Sofia had been taking me for smokes since we were fifteen, to an old tractor tyre lodged somehow in a nearby gully. It sat just above the surface of a stream, the trees on the gully walls giving us so much cover the sky appeared only in palm-sized patches.

She’d take us in twos or threes, single file along the desired path carved into the bank, one by one onto the tyre. I sat with both feet on the bead. Sofia straddled the sidewall, the sole of each shoe skimming the water. She’d hand out cigarettes, lighting each one in her mouth, leaving the filter slightly wet.

[Read more…] about Strolling

By Jihoon Park

The piano has been drinking. It stumbles onto the stage at Rosie’s Jazz Bar with a CLUNK CLUNK CLUNK, every step making a key-smashing thud of all its strings. It smells like sweet tea and bourbon.

“Gonna start off with a classic for all you fine folk—HIC—sure all y’all recognize, here’s ‘Summertime’ by Billie Holiday.”

But nobody in the crowd recognizes the tune. The people that know the song don’t come to jazz bars anymore. They’re away in retirement homes or in graveyards and crematoriums. The regulars are long gone. The crowd at Rosie’s today mostly ignore the piano and continue their conversations and drinks. They take pictures of the grimy walls and old Dixieland posters:

[Read more…] about The Piano Has Been Drinking