Flash Fiction Magazine

By Wes Melville

Some nights, it feels like we’re being watched over.

There’s a certain comfort when the valley floor shines bright, illuminated by the moon with the surrounding mountains cast as silhouettes. From my porch I see the fine symmetry of the farm and the livestock easing into the evening. Across the open pasture, smoke lifts from the neighbors’ chimneys. They too came here for the isolation and perceived safety.

On those nights, when the moon shines brightest, the valley reminds me of our salvation. We traversed these mountains and dropped far down into this valley to start anew, escaping the lumber town and its saloons and vices. Before they were pushed out, the Cherokee guarded this valley. They called it Cataloochee, an ode to the “waves upon waves of mountains” that surround these fertile pastures. To them, it was a sanctuary. While we till this land for sustenance, they left it seemingly untouched.

[Read more…] about Once in the Valley

By John Van Kirk

For Ted

I love a quality shirt. I’m tall, so I can’t buy off the rack, except at the Big and Tall Man’s store, and they don’t usually have the kinds of shirts I like. If I could afford it, I’d have all my shirts custom made. I could talk to you about fine shirtings and thread counts, pleats and plackets, collars and yokes. Polished cotton is my favorite—you don’t see it too much anymore. You can get 100s, two-ply poplin now through the mail, or on the internet, which is nice; it’s smooth, and if you iron it just right, it has a bit of a sheen.

[Read more…] about Audition Piece

By Hillary Wentworth

She first noticed her children acting strangely after the flood receded. It wasn’t so much their large movements, but the smaller ones. At the dinner table, when she asked for the butter, they tilted their heads slightly toward her voice, as if pulled on a string. Out in the yard, throwing stones against the house and trying to catch them as they fell—a regular pastime—Jeshua flicked his wrist as if tossing a dead mouse over the fence, in a way that made her take notice. And when she kissed Ethan goodnight, he looked at her closely, as though measuring the distance between her face and his. She could have been imagining it, though she didn’t think so. The floodwaters left much behind, and not just the bodies. Electrical cords, pulp, shards of glass. Detritus that mildewed and foamed and seeped inside the survivors. What blackened orange, what sulfuric root, what toxic vinegar? No matter. It simply was.

[Read more…] about Sea Glass

By Kathryn Kulpa

This Story Won Second Prize in Our Contest

Learn More About Our Contest Here

I taught myself to read from old Reader’s Digests in Grandma’s house, where we came whenever things got bad at home. Sometimes, I didn’t know we’d left until I woke up in the back seat, bundled in my bedspread. We didn’t always get away clean. The story you liked to tell was that time you gave Daddy four flat tires, how you yelled out the window, Eat tacks, sucker!

The other times, nights you’d send me into a 7-Eleven for cups of ice to hold to your cheek: those never made it into your stories.

[Read more…] about How I Learned to Read

By Ai Jiang

On the eve of the Year of the Niu, the animals of The Great Race—organized by the sky ruler, Yuhuang, thousands of years ago—and their descendants gathered for a night of festivities. The two-headed ox always felt an unspoken foreignness.

The descendants were scattered across the world, but always returned to the starting line of The Great Race before New Year. With Grandmother Niu, the two-headed ox stumbled towards the crowd dancing by the river. Tails and heads all swayed. Laughter, in different depths and tones, echoed, but was drowned out once it reached the rippling waters of the river. The two-headed ox wanted to join the dance but found her legs unfamiliar with the traditional steps.

[Read more…] about The Year of the Niu

By Charline Poirier

By the age of four, Gilly had stuck her fingers into many things. She had discovered that slippery, gooey, slimy was what she liked best.

Fishing with her dad was her favorite game. He let her crush worms against the hooks until they flattened into ragged outlines. When the fish dropped onto the bottom boards of the rowboat, she rubbed her naked soles over them as they juddered, and laughed at the tickly sensation. Then, when they went still, she caressed their eyes, shiny black marbles, with an index finger. Back at the dock, she carried them to shore flat against her chest, two at a time, the coolness of their bodies seeped through her swimsuit, the smell of lake water filled her nostrils. Sand stuck to the slippery mucus under her feet and squished between her toes, turning her feet into moon boots.

[Read more…] about Gilly at the Chinese Garden of Friendship

By Emma Phillips

He left his heart in Kowloon. She’d asked him to stay, but his wages were paid by the British, who had given him a bonus and transferred him to Dubai. She looked for his heart on the Star Ferry, felt the butterfly wings of its beat in her footsteps, held out her hands in Temple Street Market, hoping a vendor might drop it in them. A heart is slippery, like lychees.

[Read more…] about All The Things They Couldn’t Hand Back