Flash Fiction Magazine

By Ilya Tolchinsky

I soak in the primeval chanting as I descend into the sea of spectators. The eight trigrams, my team’s emblem, pulses on my chest in sync with the crowd’s roar. Our notoriety in the Immortals League has uplifted the world in these dark times. All I wish for now is to return into a human body.

Jaie sits in the front row with her arms crossed. I miss her touch. The first time we jacked into the Earth’s energy stream, we were wrapped around each other. Since I entered the League, even her spirit struggles to embrace me. She says it’s like crossing into the abyss.

[Read more…] about Arena of the Immortals

By Charles R. Bucklin

The smell of cannabis wafted across Farmstead High School’s parking lot.

No one was surprised.

Mr. Bacall, my English Teacher, liked to smoke weed several times a day.

Festoons of hemp smoke surrounded his pink tie-dyed bus during lunch, like a nimbus.

He didn’t give a shit.

[Read more…] about Class is in Session

By Phoebe Brueckner

The stork arrived in the morning, bright and early, before Naomi had gotten out of bed. It was, in fact, all his banging around that jolted her awake.

She crept into the kitchen with her curling iron in hand, ready to deal with a different kind of intruder. She did not expect to find an arrestingly handsome stork with black rainbow feathers and a red beak opening and shutting cupboards—searching for a glass (for a drink of water, he explained, and, if possible, a snack). He had come a long way, after all, and with quite a load.

[Read more…] about A Sunday Visit

By EE King

The sun rose with a brilliant flash, for a single instant completely illuminating the world and sky before dimming back to a softer, more conventional dawn.

Mariana turned over in her bed, awakened by the absence beside her, her arms blindly searching for the body that should be there.

“Misty?” she called. There was no answering gallop of feet. No responding bark. No welcoming tongue.

[Read more…] about The Disappearance

By Mark J Russo

Naomi, a recent resident at White Oaks Assisted Living, sits in the hallway bay. She scans the vacant green lawn outside and begins to hum an old country song, trying unsuccessfully to shield against voices that billow from Mat’s room at the end of the hall. 

His door stands wide open so that air flows freely about the room, ushering the musky scent into the hall: a step he took to accommodate three people simultaneously moving about and breathing. He leans against the grey wrought iron bed that his great grandfather bought after arriving in Tennessee from Scotland. Mat, with the exception of his incipient senility, has aged well; stands erect; a thinning mane of salt and pepper hair; slim build; crisp bright brown eyes; and an unforced smile. It’s just that his fingers have begun to curl inward, and he doesn’t think he can make the clear mountain water flow from the banjo like he used to. 

[Read more…] about The Century Plant

By Victoria Mack

I can’t sleep, although I’m exhausted. It’s 2 a.m. in New York and 2 p.m. in Beijing. I sit in the darkness of the plane and listen to the white noise of the piped-in air, the occasional snore lifting above it. My husband sleeps next to me, his head pressed onto the edge of the window. When we land he will have an indentation on his temple that I will try to smooth out with my fingers. I look to my right, across the aisle. There is a young Asian couple, a man and a woman, with a little girl between them. The parents are asleep, but the girl, perhaps five years old, is playing with a doll in a blue dress. Both the girl and the doll have thick, straight black hair with bangs cut straight across the forehead. She is making sounds—boop a-boop—and bouncing the doll on her knees to make her dance. Suddenly she looks straight at me. I start forward awkwardly—I’d thought she wouldn’t notice me watching—and then smile. She looks at me with mild curiosity, not smiling, and then returns to her doll.

[Read more…] about Mae Lin