Flash Fiction Magazine

By David L. Hudacek

It started when I was five, and I mispronounced the word “détente.” My mom took me to a speech therapist in Paterson. The therapist told her there was nothing wrong with me. This was after six months of treatment, enunciating phrases printed on laminated placards, things like “Fast frogs fish for french fries.” The therapist leaned in close to me during our sessions, and his breath smelled like the oversized minty thing in a public urinal, so it was hard to concentrate. Plus, he had this black hairy mole that I swear moved to a different location on his forehead from week to week. I wore thick horn-rimmed glasses back then, which must have magnified my eyes, darting about like two goldfish in their bowls, trying to make sense of this mystery.

[Read more…] about Therapy

By Liz Lavender

The empty space is his comfort—when the desk is clear, he can finally work.

He moves the piles from his desk and reforms them on the table beside it. He doesn’t have time to deal with them right now—the overdue credit card bills; a dirty collection of lint-adorned coins, an antique door handle from his grandmother’s house, those mismatched socks from weeks ago when he didn’t want to get the basket and find their counterparts. He’ll get to it later, he tells himself. He’s just busy right now. He works so much. He has to. For them. That’s more important than a few forgotten things.

[Read more…] about Empty Space

By Aileen Donohue

The sun hasn’t even come up yet, but Jeff and I are making our rounds. He drives the truck while I ride on the back and do the dumping. Jeff always claims he’s too pretty to do the dirty work, to which I reply with equal snark, “Yeah, right. You got a face only a mother could love.”

I sigh after emptying what must be the hundredth garbage can of the morning, and my warm breath forms a cloud in the air. The brutal cold bites at my face like a rabid animal.

[Read more…] about Sissy

By Tim Jones

It surprised Jack when Nora agreed to cut class and go to the beach. Nora was level-headed, with an increasingly annoying habit of summarily dismissing his best fun ideas. The two met at Nora’s dorm to catch the bus out to the state beach, navigating through a throng of kids dropping books and shedding heavy clothes on the college quad.

[Read more…] about Ordinary

By M. J. Bekelian

This Story Won Third Prize in Our Contest

Learn More About Our Contest Here

The soldiers flaunted their green uniforms and paraded the soulless arms of metal strapped to their backs. As our enemy went down the line, all I thought to myself was what was God’s purpose to give us this trial of persecution. The walls of our churches crumbled into dust, and the red blood of my neighbors nourished the soil. All the suffering brought an oppressive weight in my heart when an outcry stretched along the horizon. I prayed to Our Lord for the soldiers to leave us, but I was met with silence.

[Read more…] about Ruin

By Hayley Igarashi

The other mother smells like the candle aisle in a grocery store, a cacophony of clean linen and cedar, mixed, however irrationally, with a hint of peelable cheese and basil.

“Am I holding him correctly?”

“Maybe support his head a little more with your hand,” Lana tells the other mother, making up a suggestion on the spot. “There, that’s better.”

“I’ve never known how to hold babies,” the other mother says.

[Read more…] about Modern Parenting

By E. J. Nash

According to my father, suffering was an essential ingredient to a successful road trip. If everything went hunky-dory, then it wasn’t a life lesson. “No one learns anything when things go well,” he said twenty minutes before we were stranded on the side of the highway. “You only learn when things go to hell.”

“We’re all going to hell anyways,” muttered my mother. She was missing Zumba class for this.

[Read more…] about Highway Wolves