Flash Fiction Magazine

By Shawn Yoshida

The girl first appeared from the waves near the edge of the now ruined pier, on a day when the sea stood still for the first time in weeks. As people of the storm-battered fishing village caught sight of her approaching figure, they muttered to one another, some pretending to be examining the morning’s catch, others not bothering to hide their stares. The headman, Mr. Ito, rang a large iron bell, and the villagers gathered by the marketplace between the abandoned cliffside shrine and the worn town center, where the thirty-odd villagers convened once a month to do head counts, resolve neighborly disputes, and the like.

[Read more…] about The Girl from the Calm of the Sea

By Michael Michailidis

The warm wind blowing from the sea brought with it an odor of algae together with the tourists who chased it uphill, through the winding streets of our town, where food-stands gave way to shops until I was old enough to remember things, and the first thing I remember was the colored flag hanging above the bar and under the tin roof that protected it from the occasional rains. I was too young to recognize the flag or to be served drinks at the bar, but I remember how the owner would look up and smile as he cleaned the stools, occasionally shouting orders at the porters. But as they barely understood our language, and as anger is more universal than words, he would throw his towel and yell, “That’s it! I’m coming down.” He would fix in minutes what would otherwise have taken them years.

[Read more…] about For at Least One Lifetime

By Meredith Wadley

Eva and Rob noticed the smell, something like messy puppy spiked with a shot of sawdust, but they didn’t notice the cage or hear the occasional back-of-the-room thumps. Without knowing why, she thought of Bambi, and figured the closed room simply stank of bureaucratic funk and armpit.

Even as the pair exchanged raised eyebrows over the number of applicants standing in line waiting for a ticket and those seated and holding one, they failed to notice a second line of applicants at the back of the crowded room. Had Eva and Rob noticed how each applicant left the counter looking puzzled, how each headed glumly to that second line, they would have recalled the warning colleagues and friends had given them—not to bother with the bureau, their application, their naïve enthusiasm.

[Read more…] about You Can Give It to the Rabbits (Swiss-German: Das Chönnt Sie De Haase Gäh)

By Deborah Burke Henderson

Market days in the square bustle with activity: street vendors, bakers and spice traders, colorful tarps strewn over the dirt stocked with baskets of grains, small teapots, jugs, cooking pots, and other essential utensils. Locals in their burnooses sell eggs, others hawk hand-woven rugs, baknoogs, and blankets.

The souk is my favorite place in Medenine.

Sundays are extra special as Arabian stallions, camels, goats, and other livestock are assembled for viewing. Bartering goes on forever before a sale is made. Conversations carry on over small glasses of hot, syrupy-sweet green tea, poured at arm’s length from a tiny blue metal teapot sitting atop a cylindrical, stunted clay stove.

[Read more…] about In the Corps

By Kathryn Silver-Hajo

After two and a half weeks of obligatory separation, we were itching for a get together. Yet even though we are as conscientious and careful as they come, we couldn’t escape the disquieting sense that we were somehow tempting fate.

We are the three families on our dead end. The Harridans, The Introverts, and The Lonelyhearts. Not our true names, of course, but the ‘stage names’ we gave each other one drunken night when we’d been singing sentimental songs from the seventies.

[Read more…] about Current Circumstances

By Chloe Vaughan

By March, we all thought Ted was going to kill himself. Can you blame us? All the signs were there. Poor old boy had just gone through the wringer with divorce number two, ex-wives had full custody, lived in a barebones condo by the airport, languishing as a low-level drone at a mid-level company, and buying lottery tickets and frozen dinners with any pennies he managed to scrape together. Hell, I would have killed myself too, if I were Ted. But I wasn’t Ted, so when Steve in sales and Marissa in accounting asked me if I wanted in on the little bet they had going, I said sure, I’ll throw some money down.

[Read more…] about Office Pool