Flash Fiction Magazine

By Jennifer Paquette

His stale breath clung to my pajama top. His hands reeked of endless cigarettes, dirty fingers stained with nicotine. The weight of him at the end of my bed would always send me sliding towards him. I wiggled back up to my pillow, my fists pressing down to keep me in place. I studied his dark green pants and big work boots. Tonight, they were untied.

“How’s Grandpa’s favorite girl?” he asked, reaching for my knees that I clamped shut, his hand hanging over them.

[Read more…] about Sixteen

By Harri Crisp

They were both sitting on the sofa. In the background, the clock ticked, a gentle reminder that time was actually moving, and a few cicadas called out as if to prove life still went on without them.

It was day twelve—perhaps already thirteen—of self-isolation, and the initial novelty of cooking and cleaning and pretending to be a veritable housewife had worn off.

[Read more…] about Love in the Time of Corona

By John Young

So here I am in the airport departure hall at the end of another holiday—another holiday by myself. This time, I am glad—really glad—to be going home. It’s not that the holiday was bad. Well, no worse than usual, just doing the sort of thing that I do at home—eating out in restaurants a lot, walking about. Not that I was doing much walking recently. I guess I’m not as fit as I used to be.

I don’t quite feel myself. I hate doctors, I really do, but I think I should get myself checked out when I get home. At least the pain in my chest has gone. I wonder what caused that?

[Read more…] about Departure Procedure

By Mitch James

She fell a long time in the black, the crooked roots of the world’s trees woven around her, silhouettes slithering, jackknifing, a central nervous system burnt out. She fell until she could no longer feel the falling in her guts, then fell more. There was a bird. She could just make it out. It flew with her, around her, then below her until gone. She fell until the tips of the world’s roots were palsied fingers pointing down at her, then stopped. It was not abrupt, not jarring. It was nothing at all. She hovered. Then, the bird returned from above, placed mud from its beak onto her chest, then flew away. It came back and deposited more. She didn’t know why but felt she must not intervene, so she laid sprawled in the rooted dark, the bird leaving and returning with mud. Then, ducks arrived with mud. They loved it, spit it out and wallowed in it, spread it across her body. Then more birds. The mud piled high. Then came the beavers. They gnawed at the roots and used the carnage of wood to assemble structures atop her. Suddenly, she realized it was too much, but it didn’t matter—too much but there was nothing she could do. All she saw was earth. Still, the animals built, up and up, until their labor touched the roots. She could feel them, burrowing into everything, her body beneath it all.

[Read more…] about Woman, the Turtle

By Jo-Anne Rosen

Anna is uneasy about her long-planned vacation. She’s not been to France in over three decades. Air travel’s so complicated now.

For humans, anyway—that hummingbird in the eucalyptus outside her bedroom window could easily soar thousands of miles, she reads online. To her delight, she learns the small gray creature is called Anna’s Hummingbird.

She looks for it every morning on waking. Often the bird is two floors below, nipping into the bougainvillea in the courtyard. Sometimes, a second tiny bird with iridescent-red crown feathers hovers manically near the nest.

[Read more…] about Anna’s Hummingbird

By Kai Harris

I know it’s her before I even see the stick-on name tag attached to her shirt. In the beginning, he refused to tell me her name. He said he didn’t like talking about her because he didn’t want to think about her when he was with me. But I suspected he didn’t want me to know her name because, deep down, he worried that one day, I’d go looking for her. His perfect wife.

Joy.

[Read more…] about No Joy