Flash Fiction Magazine

By Julia Mohn

The day after my ninth birthday, a bird smacked the back window of the car. I saw the fear in his black eyes before he fell backwards, wings no longer able to serve his flight. “Stupid birds,” my father chuckled to himself, and my mother gave him a disapproving look. “Don’t say that in front of the child.” I just stared at the chicory dotting the roadside with its blue petals swaying in the warm breeze.

My mother loved everything dots but the candy. She decorated her cerebellum in clouds, and the rest was spotted. She liked the artificially flavored dots of strawberry in her instant oatmeal, she dutifully swallowed two dots whole each morning with tap water, she lamented each dot on food-stained plates I dared to wipe clean. This appreciation was one of the few things my parents shared, as my father often attended to the dots on her chest.

[Read more…] about Intruding Dots

By Morgan Boyd

I’m driving over the hill in the fast lane in my beat-up blue pickup truck when this douchebag in a white BMW climbs up my ass. I retaliate by taking my foot off the accelerator without hitting the brake, and pace a Silver Prius in the slow lane. The Beemer swerves back and forth behind us, honking and flashing its bright lights. I glance through my rearview mirror and see the driver talking on his cellphone.

My pulse quickens. I’d prefer not to disturb the monster, but the metamorphosis begins. My palms sweat, my eyes go bloodshot, and the most unholy sounds emanate from deep within me. All rationale evaporates. Law and order become incomprehensible.

[Read more…] about The Road Beast

By Ruth Asch

The military-green, tough-scaled lizard is lined with silk. On its soft, white underbelly, a rapid pulse throbs from arrow-jaw towards a tail curled shiny, pale, smooth, and delicate as a shell’s core. Five-toed feet, tender-budded, splayed in tensile vulnerability. We do not see this. It hugs the flat surface; eyes like cracked, burnished beech-nuts spark, at any movement, the skimmer to safety.

I recognize those eyes. They once bulged at us, unblinking, as she craned her head back, short hair spiking behind, scanning the room. Her tailored suit always looked like combat gear.

With our class, she began in eye-rolling patience, like a general with bad recruits. But behaviour degenerated. We did not like commands, and there was something strange, strained, about her.

For me, it was the voice, a high-pitched nasal yowl, which twisted in my gut. I shuddered and steeled myself. Cold-blooded, I doubted she would care.

[Read more…] about The Underside

By Stephen Faulkner

The guru Tao-Ji sat deep in meditation on the high bank of a fast flowing stream. The resonant hum of his chanted mantra harmonized perfectly with the rumbling, rushing sounds that rose from the deep gorge. His concentration was such that the river voice served only as background to the steady, rhythmic patternings of his spirit in its pursuit of (as he often told his students) “understanding.” In the peace of the forest, in the depths of his meditation, he was coming close to that which he sought.

Out of the deep wood a deer approached the guru from behind. Caution was expressed in each hesitant step the animal took. The scent of this seated figure, she understood, was Man and instinct, the collective memory of all animal life in the wild, informed her that this was a creature to be feared. She proceeded slowly, ready to bolt and run at the slightest indication of danger. The man’s thick, sonorous baritone, formed a single, lowing tone that seemed to invite her tenuous advance.

Proceed, come closer. I shall not harm you.

[Read more…] about A Wilderness Meeting

By Carole Glasser Langille

I invite Rhonda to dinner on Saturday. She’s performed the song I’d written and is going to put it on her new album. I want to thank her, but I am a little afraid of her. Recently, she told me she thought she should perform the song in the nude.

I make bean burritos because Rhonda’s vegetarian. I use corn tortillas because she’s off wheat.

Then Kate calls to say she’s flying to our city for a meeting. Could we get together Saturday? Her husband will be here too.

“Come for dinner,” I say. “Rhonda’s coming.”

“Rhonda! That should be interesting.”

Kate gives enthusiastic critiques of my songs. She’s one person I love wholeheartedly. A slender woman in her late forties, she still wears her dark hair long. She’s a voice instructor at McGill. Her husband Minjoon cuts hair. When he washes hair he massages the scalp, his thumbs kneading the back of the neck. Bending on one knee, he snips hair on one side, then the other. Haircuts take an hour, even when minimal hair is cut. Because he’s handsome and because he makes clients look beautiful, he’s adored. They’re both artists.

When I set down the platter of burritos Rhonda says she’s not eating cheese. Did I use cheese?

[Read more…] about Vibrato on High C

By Maddie Woda

I witnessed a great love story of the modern age, wrapped up in fishing wire and sunscreen, narrated to the tune of a hymn.

My sweet, unaware mother, trying to imbue my winter-white skin with a little color, hoping for some kind of athletic prowess or survival instinct to reveal itself, shipped me off to Mennonite summer camp in the heart of the Ohio cornfields each June. She didn’t think about the fact that Mennonite is kissing cousins of Amish and that her daughter took 45 minute showers in scalding hot water each day.

Six girls to a cabin, two counselors in charge. I was eight or nine or ten years old, my counselor usually a fresh eighteen and had no experience with children. Jill had long red hair, so thick I couldn’t French-braid it without fat strands spilling between my fingers, and a face wallpapered in freckles. Our other counselor, Beatrice, had inky hair she dyed herself with henna and hacked almost to her scalp with nail scissors one night in the dining hall outhouse. They were each starkly pale, moon-faced girls who went to Comic Con and read Jane Austen aloud to their cats on Friday nights.

[Read more…] about Counsel