Flash Fiction Magazine

By Jane-Rebecca Cannarella

All pigeons are feral. Even domesticated birds, like the grandchildren of rock doves, lived on sea cliffs. On a moss-smelling Wednesday morning, I left Sam’s house in South Philadelphia to cross the river home. Pigeons, wild even when they’re not, that roosted outside of his bedroom, were the morning’s soundtrack. Awakened by the noise, I abandoned the bed, leaving an imprint of our bodies. I begrudgingly left to travel towards the other side of Philadelphia. All pigeons are descendants of doves. Fairytale birds who were punctuation marks in romantic moments. I paused outside the house and looked at the birds in the eves and fought the urge to stay. Unsure of how Sam and my story were unfolding, he remained asleep during my departure and would wake to the noise of the animals outside his window. I was jealous of the pigeons’ ability to stay exactly where they were.

[Read more…] about Messenger

By Robert Lee Hecksher

Mama once told me, lies are like the ocean. They drown out the truth of tomorrow, filling your world with salt.

Morning comes. It punches through Katrina’s pall of clouds swirling in the sky. Light is chopped and crammed through ramshackle blinds. Dollar store pieces of shit haphazardly strewn across my window. Woefully, the gleam bounces off flecks of dust idling bored inside my room, teasing me to wake. With a groan, my feet find the floor cold, despite the Louisiana heat already on the rise.

[Read more…] about Monster in the Storm

By Patricia

He was a gentle soul. Much too dependable and settled in his ways for me. I was looking for the adventures I was sure were going to be my life. He would be there, he said, waiting for me to get over this feeling of worldliness, then return, marry him, and begin life on the farm and raise a large family as was the way of his heritage.

[Read more…] about Just in Time

By Holden Arquilevich

A drooping bouquet of lilies, a get-well-soon card, and a little bible. That’s what was on her bedside table. The bible had a yellow Post-it Note on it.

“Where did that come from?” I asked.

She looked up from her crossword, peering at it from over her wire glasses as if it were some curio in an antique shop.

[Read more…] about It’s Rye, Mom

By Julian Harvard

On a hot August night that felt like December, he came across a crippled fox on an empty street. Its back paws had been crushed, and its hind legs were a mush of exposed muscle and blood-matted fur. It gargled there in the crook between curb and road, but it had surely wanted to scream like they do in January when they mate.

[Read more…] about Canine Anatomy

By Imelia

“Be careful of Pointy Long Nose,” my mother used to say. “It eats naughty children.”

Pointy Long Nose. It’s my mother’s favorite character among the many in her arsenal—born from a story that shares the same birthday as my sister. Pointy Long Nose. A terrifying creature that resides underneath the tall, shadowy trees that surround our home, getting its name from its most distinctive facial feature.

[Read more…] about Pointy Long Nose

By Catherine M Schuster

Can you remember what it is like to burst with desire? The desire to experience everything, to feel everything, to know everything right now. My appetite was enormous, and in that particular moment I couldn’t stop talking about To A God Unknown, the early Steinbeck novel about a mystical connection to the land, sacrifice, love, death, and sex. Two weeks later and it might have been Huxley’s Brave New World or Nevil Shute’s On the Beach, and I would have been overwrought by the possibility of nuclear devastation. I was thirteen.

[Read more…] about Peter Blind