Flash Fiction Magazine

By John Bonanni

She enters my mind by accident.

I recall the summer we spent together in a Pennsylvania playhouse nearly twenty years ago. In a moment of fancy, I surf the web and bravely look her up. I discover, on a news website, that she did not survive an automobile crash.

Taken, along with her daughter, leaving a grieving husband. A family I never met.

[Read more…] about Belated Eulogy

By Anita G. Gorman

Torvald the Tomte had some time on his hands, so he left the farm one day and walked into town. No one seemed to notice him, and he wondered whether he was invisible to the townsfolk, or whether the Swedes were so used to tomtar that they paid him no mind.

Tomtar (the official plural) are gnomes that take care of farm animals—and assist with Christmas festivities if they are jultomtar—but sometimes they do not have a great deal to do. That was Torvald’s situation on that November day. It was after the harvest and before Christmas, and Torvald was looking for a productive activity. So he walked into the little town of Tomteholm to see if he could find a hobby.

[Read more…] about Torvald the Tomte Learns to Knit

By Luann Lewis

Emily realized there was a good reason the poets call it a “sea of faces.” Standing here in Union Station at rush hour, it truly felt like a sea. There were actual waves of people. Heads of all types bobbed and mingled, pushing past each other, a virtual tsunami and she was, as always, afraid to step into it, feeling as if she’d be swept away. This time of day always overwhelmed her; how could she fully comprehend that each of these heads belonged to a human being just as real and strong and profound as herself? Emily tried to make out features in the faces, but they blurred together in the bustle and noise. The exhaust from the trains and the roar of the engines added to the chaos. Hats stood out with their color and logos: Cubs, Miller, Baja…but the faces were like a sheet of postage stamps, or like quickly flipping through a magazine. They blended into nothingness, into a mass of blank heads. Feeling isolated, she shook off the feeling that she was the only real human here. And just as she cared nothing for any of these strangers, she knew they cared nothing for her.

[Read more…] about Station

By Kip Knott

Last month’s withered wreath slides across the backseat of the car when Jack turns left out of the cemetery. As they turn onto Home Road, Jenny reaches to pull the wreath up front with her and lays it carefully on her lap.

“I told you to just let me hold onto it,” she mumbles.

Jack pretends not to hear, but every word out of her mouth pinches like a bee sting.

[Read more…] about Spring Snow

By Amy Rogers

Mom sleeps funny. She falls asleep sitting up, chin sagging to her chest, and sometimes a thin line of drool dangles from the corner of her mouth. A cigarette burned to the filter is still clutched between her fingertips. It’s because she is sick and has to take a lot of pills. The medicine makes her sleepy. She can fall asleep anywhere: in the car at a red light, or standing up cooking dinner. Once, Mom fell asleep at my school conference, and I was so embarrassed I thought I would die.

[Read more…] about School Day

By Melissa Elliotte

Daniel woke up to screaming, his heart thumping out of his little chest. It always felt like midnight in the yellow house with the wraparound porch at the end of Taylor Lane, the one with the chipped paint and the rusted toucan weathervane in the yard. He soothed himself by poking his fingers through holes in an old baby blanket, which he kept hidden under the pillow. (Although he would rather die than admit it, he was eight years old after all.) Soon, he realized the awful sound was only Mrs. Smitty’s screeching laugh.

[Read more…] about It’s the Tequila That Got Her