Flash Fiction Magazine

By Rohit Sawant

Stopping near her mother’s elbow, Susie thrust the drawing in her face.

“Oh, that’s great honey!” her mommy said, looking at the drawing and held it out to her daddy so he could appreciate it, too.

Her daddy praised it similarly, but Susie didn’t hear. Her gaze was fixed on the glossy black sheet on the table over which they’d been hunched, talking in whispers, when she came in. It was the size of her drawing paper. She asked what it was.

“That,” her daddy said, “is a special picture of mommy the doctor took to find out what’s making her sick.”

[Read more…] about Peek-A-Boo

By Andrew Paul

Janine woke up late, stretched, yawned, and flung her legs over the side of the bed. She ruffled her hands through her short cut hair and took a deep breath. Outside, a light wind rustled golden brown autumn leaves. The sunlight streamed in through the bedroom window, but there was no heat in it. The air was cold outside. The house was cold, too, and she knew the first thing to do was stack and light the open wood fireplace. The house would take some warming up today. She took time out to glance in the lounge room mirror to see a tired but happy face with slightly bloodshot blue eyes looking back at her. She shrugged. Next was breakfast, then, although she didn’t really feel like it. There were things to be done; she was going to be busy for some time.

As the morning wore on, the fire provided a pleasant warmth to the house, and Janine was gradually getting the place cleaned and tidy again. [Read more…] about Spider

By Janice Gable Bashman

Thirsty. So thirsty.

Day after day. Night after night. Sun streaming on my withered arms, burning my browned and crinkled leaves. Moonlight shooting shadows across me, reaching toward me as if trying to clutch me forever in its embrace.

I watch Cathy lying there, barely moving, only rising to go to the bathroom or pick at that PB&J sandwich she’s forced down every day for the past week since he left. Each time she takes a sip of water, that cool liquid sliding down her throat, I am so jealous, desperate to ease the pain, the slow death I feel each second without it, aching for just one gulp, a sip, a drop, and helpless to get it.

[Read more…] about Thirsty

By Miglena Sternadori

Alma was standing at the kitchen door in the middle of the night, looking through the window at the dark. She did not remember rising and walking down the stairs. But here she was, chills running down her shoulders as her hair touched them lightly. She pressed her pale upturned nose against the glass and stared out into the night.

A perfectly round body, darker than the sky, rose above the branches, hovering. Another round body emerged, and the two touched.

Ping. Pong. It reminded her of the lovemaking of cells in old biology books. She watched the spectacle with an aimless, fearless curiosity, an observer waiting to see what happened next. Then, as the cells fused, a blitzing realization emerged. What she was observing wasn’t random. It was a prelude.

A new round body was born in an implosion and flew toward Alma, a ping-pong ball so white it blinded her.

[Read more…] about Empathy

By David Galef

Before taking off on schedule from the sunny tarmac at Heathrow on flight AF109, Hap bought inexpensive yet appropriate presents for his wife and daughter—a knitted blue scarf, a carved wooden doll—leaving him no annoying change that he couldn’t turn back into dollars. He was a mid­level executive at Biscom, just significant enough to warrant a business trip once a year. In the last decade, he’d been fired and rehired, promoted and sidewaysed slightly downward. He’d had a rare eight hours’ sleep before the trip and was sitting in an aisle seat, E21, with no one else beside him. For Hap, who believed in a zero-sum pattern of luck, these fortuitous events betokened a bad patch ahead. As the plane taxied down the runway, he leaned back and shut his eyes tightly.

Within minutes of being airborne, the Boeing 747 developed engine trouble and had to head back.

[Read more…] about Hap

By Cherryl Chow

“Oh pardon me, thou bleeding piece of earth,” Jade quipped, as she nearly tripped sidestepping her husband’s bleeding body sprawled on the kitchen floor. She felt spasms in her legs, but she told herself that a bit of a wobble was nothing to be alarmed about, given her programming.

Her lips turned up in a sneer as she surveyed the room: the cupboard doors unhinged, the cat flap at the rear entry only half way installed, the partially painted kitchen stool by the counter top island. He had always dragged his feet before completing any project—if he finished it at all.

And now, she would drag his feet out the door and dispose of the corpse. Hallelujah! But not just yet.

[Read more…] about The Deed is Done