Daily Flash Fiction Stories
By KB Holzman
On the side of the only road leading into town, a sign propped up by two wood stakes beckoned in white print, “Enjoy a Drive-Thru Marriage Here.”
Leticia leaned back in the passenger seat. Jonathan held onto the steering wheel, white- knuckled. Every time a passing car honked, he jumped.
By A. A. Malina
“Did you know that, in theory, spiders could eat every human on earth in just a year?” Sasha was pulling a frozen pizza out of its box as she said this, oblivious to Kyle’s quizzical expression.
“That sounds made up,” he laughed.
“Nope. Apparently, spiders can consume so much prey in a year that if they decided to eat only humans, they could wipe us all out.”
By John Brantingham
Jack is in the barn when he hears the steam engine pumping through the valley. When he was a boy, there was no train, but he likes the sound cutting through the tule fog. He’s smiling at it in these first moments of twilight when he hears the crack of a rifle, then silence for the longest two seconds he has ever experienced. Then three more shots, one right after the other.
By Debbie Collins
The chalky protein shakes, pink or chocolate, tasted like failure to me. The shakes came in little pint-sized cartons like we had for milk in elementary school. I knew I was too thin but didn’t really care. I sloughed the shakes off on the other patients, bartering an apple for a shake, some carrots for another, and ate in tiny bites, tiny bits. The nurses threatened to take my smokes away if I didn’t eat. I remember you brought me some, not the brand I typically smoked, but I was touched. We sat on my bed to talk on the rough white sheets, institutional and reeking of bleach. They were an affront to me. So clean.
By Kathryn Halkema
Susan needed a present for her step-daughter, but she didn’t know why she had picked this shop. It seemed to have appeared overnight. Inside, it had the features of a good secondhand bookshop: Towers of pulp fiction paperbacks, their covers dog-eared and torn, and the comforting smell of old books rotting in their jackets. The owner looked up and flashed her a toothy grin. His canines were long and sharp and gave him a wolfish look.
I hate golf, usually.
I’m here with my dad. He’s the golfer. Despite his very best efforts, I don’t play. Dad insists that I was a child protégé, that given the time and, if I weren’t such an idle twit, he’d have had me on the pro-circuit by 16. Hell to that, I say. Mum said I didn’t have to go, so I didn’t have to go. That tends to be how custody works.
