Flash Fiction Magazine

By Kathy Stevenson

They’re everywhere, those lucky pennies. A penny on the ground, shaken loose from a pocket or a purse. The person either didn’t notice, or didn’t want to bother, or had the common sense not to pick it back up off the filthy pavement.

I spotted one just now, glinting brightly on the dull linoleum floor of the English department building. I did not pick it up. My husband Jim used to pick up every errant coin. He had a sixth sense for seeing them, as did I after decades of being married to him. I often spotted coins that I felt sure he would notice, but I purposefully would not draw attention to them. It gave me a small satisfaction to walk by these discarded coins without alerting him. Part of it was his upbringing—a hardscrabble childhood where every penny counted and was accounted for. But part of it was also just his nature. He simply couldn’t not pick up the coins. And ultimately, that’s what killed him.

[Read more…] about Lucky Penny

By Tom Stewart

The morning after Kari’s funeral, Henry told his wife that he was going over to their daughter’s apartment to start boxing things up. He could tell that his wife was grateful to him for taking this on, and for her sake he maintained a business-like air until he was in the car and on the way to the hardware store for boxes. Halfway to the store, he pulled into a quiet neighborhood and parked for several minutes; it had just occurred to him that he had driven through two busy intersections without once glancing at the traffic signals. He drove the rest of the way to the store and on to Kari’s apartment with a care he hadn’t shown since his driver’s ed classes.

He had barely begun to work when a female figure appeared in the door of the apartment, back-lit by the morning sun.

“Hello? Anybody home?” she called. Henry recognized the voice of the apartment manager.

“In here.”

“Oh, good morning. It’s Henry, right? I just saw the door open. Wanted to make sure everything was ok.”

“Yes, ma’am. Just packing up.”

“I’m so sorry for your loss.”

“Thank you.”

“Do you need help with anything here?”

[Read more…] about The Things You Can’t Bury

By Simon Nagel

“There’s only one left.”

“Look again!” cried Frank.

“The captain took two,” said Steve after a gust of wind knocked him off balance.

They looked through the open door of the airplane at the mountains below. They wouldn’t be in the air much longer.

“Why would he do that?” Frank asked. Snow blew into the cabin and answered his question. Warmth, he thought. He’ll use the extra parachute as a blanket.

Steve loosened the strap of the final parachute.

“How much do you weigh?”

“About two-hundred on a good day.”

“We can strap ourselves together and share. Raise your arms.”

The wind caught the strap. It sailed past them and flew out the door. The mountain peaks in the distance grew larger as the plane hurtled onward.

[Read more…] about Volunteer

By Maxwell Ondik

Mist smeared the train window when Shirla woke. The steady rhythm of the train beat in her ears as it rumbled over the tracks. A dim light swung from the ceiling, giving the place a hint of illumination. Except for her, the compartment was vacant.

Shirla hadn’t brought any luggage with her. There was nothing for her to bring. She had no refined dresses or technology like the women in the first-class compartments; not after she had been taken from her home, anyway. Wiping the haze from her eyes, she gazed out the window.

Green pastures shadowed by the overhead clouds bent under the strong wind. In the distance, the pastures rolled into mountains with peaks shrouded in mist.

The low chatter of train passengers surrounding her sounded like metal scraping rocks. Footsteps neared her compartment, and a man walked in.

[Read more…] about Shirla’s Shadows

By Gabriel Schenk

This is how I found him: crumpled up in a tight circle beneath a tree like a sleeping dog, his eyebrows, beard, and eye-lashes thick with frost. At this time of year, a man can stay preserved for months, too frozen even for wolves to eat, and if he dies out in the open, most times the snow will bury him before anyone even knows he’s there.

He can’t have been long-dead on account of his slack limbs. Given a few hours more, and the only way you can move a man is by fixing him up to a horse and dragging him along the snow. Not dignified, but it gets the job done, and better to get him in than leave him out.

I heaved the body onto the back of my horse and took it straight to Dr. Truax in the center of town. The doc sees a lot of corpses in his work, but even so, he took his hat off as a mark of respect, and wiped away the remains of his lunch with his white handkerchief.

“Take him down to the basement,” he said. “We’ll store the body there.”

[Read more…] about The Kevura

By B. N. George

Vivienne Helburn was trying to die. It was as simple as her nightly treks to the fishing pier, where she’d gaze at the gulf waves for an hour and then head home. One morning, she woke with damp hair and the taste of salt on her lips.

Her head ached as she waited the tables of the restaurant that day and forgot orders as quickly as customers placed them. Her condition improved the following afternoon, though she dropped a tray of dishes beside a group of men at their table. Ben Truong had been missing for two days when she overheard them mention him.

She was sent home early that evening. She did not go to the pier.

[Read more…] about Skeleton Pier