Flash Fiction Magazine

By Stephen Duffin

Clarissa kissed me. “I love you,” she said, putting her arm around me. “Promise you’ll be mine forever?”

Six months of passion enslaved my heartstrings. How could I resist?

We got married at dawn. It was her idea, and our secret. No friends were told. Clarissa said it was our special day. “I want you all to myself!”

[Read more…] about Clarissa of Taunbury Hall

By Kristi Witt

Exactness doesn’t interest me. I prefer to use approximations and best guesses whenever possible. I never considered a career as, say, an airline pilot. And if I ever marry, it won’t be to someone who concerns himself with minutia. He won’t pick pepper out of fly shit.

My friend Viviana convinced me to end my dating hiatus, which lasted months following two failed relationships. I lived with an engineer for two years, then an accountant for one (he could tell you the number of days, I’m sure). I realized I’ll no longer date someone who requires specifics. Is it crucial to know precisely how many miles it is from San Francisco to San Luis Obispo? How much ground beef to buy—one and three-quarters pound, or two and one-quarter? When I buy meat, I just ask the guy behind the counter for “around two pounds.” Generalities keep things simpler.

[Read more…] about Not Exactly

By Cedric Tan

Marco was thinking about the massive pair of glass eyes that gave him nightmares. The thought distracted him so much that the ball almost sailed past his head into the goal. When he registered it flying toward him, though, he managed to stick his hand out and slap it away at the last second, prompting a chorus of cheers from his team. He chuckled and shook his head to clear his mind, trying to re-focus on the game in front of him.

[Read more…] about The Urchins

By J. Edward Kruft

Long before Jonestown—before his final earthly order to serve the punch that would kill nearly a thousand of his blindly devoted—Jimmy was a boy of sixteen.

“Where we going?” asked his younger companion, a boy Jimmy knew from church. His name was Archie and he was as blond as Jimmy was raven, and as short as Jimmy was tall. Jimmy walked ahead in the moonlight, toward the outer edges of Lynn, Indiana.

[Read more…] about The Promise of Fancy Cheese

By Helen Maryles Shankman

The fire is unlike anything she has ever seen before, a massive column of heat and light that begins somewhere underground and jets straight up into the sky. The police have blocked off the street, but clots of neighbors peer from their backyards, getting as close as they dare, eyes black with horror.

On TV, she has heard people say fires are loud, but this one sounds like a tornado, or a volcano, or a freight train—no, it’s more like rushing water, like freakin’ Niagara Falls, but that’s not what captures her attention. It’s the sight of her bike, the one she rode around the neighborhood when she was eight, lipstick pink with a hippie-flowered banana seat, hanging from the oak tree next to the garage.

[Read more…] about Everything That Burns Must Rise

By David Lee

Randi ignored the rumbling of her belly for a moment as she leaned down to kiss Wanda’s forehead. Her next kiss went to the three-week-old baby nursing at Wanda’s breast. The soft warmth of the child’s skin was a sharp contrast to the cold pang of hunger and guilt that stabbed deep within Randi’s gut.

She was supposed to be the provider, but she hadn’t done much providin’ recently. Well, today that was going to change.

“Be careful, honey.” Wanda met Randi’s gaze as they separated. “You ‘member what happened to old Clemet.”

“Clemet was a fool.”

[Read more…] about Food Fight