Flash Fiction Magazine

By Isabelle B.L

It survived a run-in with the power nozzle by clinging to the bristles, narrowly escaping the drain. So stubborn.

After its separation from the old, blue bath towel, I couldn’t discard the long, blue thread. I folded the towel, stashed it away at the bottom of the bathroom cabinet, and let the long, blue thread linger around the house. The thread camouflaged with the tiles, stuck to the striped curtains, hid in crevices until I pulled it out. Such a tease.

[Read more…] about Threadbare

By B.L. Makiefsky

You were trying to quit. I just got started. I reached into your front pocket where you kept the loose cigarettes we had bought at Woodward’s. You wore a flannel shirt and no bra. The same flannel shirt you usually wore. The same no-bra. What if you had told me not to touch you? That you weren’t ready? But you didn’t. Not then. Not before. They sold a lot of things at that general store. Milk, chicken feed, cowboy boots, saddles. We walked past the lit and deserted fairgrounds, the empty stables, up the hill that overlooks town and shared the first cigarette on an outcropping where we sat. Took off our shoes, dangled our feet over the edge of the cliff. Kicking, barefoot, into the unknown. Your thin, but muscular calves, like sticks of chalk. All of town sparkled in the valley below us. All the stars of the desert night above. A man could make a lot of wishes on those stars.

[Read more…] about The Right Touch

By Stephanie Grella

Early darkness spilled into the streets as the wind whipped our faces like a premature lashing of what was to come.

“This way,” Ty said, gesturing us up the side steps of the church.

Liv nudged me with her elbow.

“You sure about this?” She asked, her eyes small and apprehensive.

I shrugged. “Are we ever sure about anything we do?”

A golden glow of light sifted through the church, while the familiar scent of bible and oak blanketed the air like perfume.

[Read more…] about A Saint of Sorts

By Malcolm Carmichael

Milly sprawled on the brown leather sofa watching a Law & Order rerun. She stretched her feet beyond the edge of her long, fleece robe and wiggled her toes, buffed turquoise earlier that morning. Her husband Howard appeared in the doorway of the pine-paneled den, buck naked except for blue Tommy Bahama flip-flops.

She glanced at him. “No clothes?”

“It’s Friday night, remember?”

[Read more…] about Body Painter

By Kay Lesley Reeves

“There are no pockets in a shroud” is a common saying. “You can’t take it with you when you go.” I’d always believed that to be true, so I was surprised when the black-robed figure of Death handed me a small suitcase.

[Read more…] about No Pockets in a Shroud

By Peter F. Stine

One warm summer’s eve, the stars in the heavens overhead strayed from their dome. And where the sky encroached on the world below, they mingled and merged their burning glow with the fireflies that strafed a pond buzzing with life. The moon lit the Earth with a brilliance befitting love and adventure. Altogether, an ideal setting for the well-rounded frog who sat on a muddy bank looking up. A figure stood over him in pink taffeta and tulle, topped with a bejeweled tiara. A storybook brand of magic hung thick in the air.

[Read more…] about Kiss Kiss

By Michael Harper

Fifty yards above me, a ring of spinning lights hovers stoically. It radiates an ocular gravity, its significance weighing as much as a planet. All my senses are sucked into its orbit. The spinning ship makes a gentle hum like a well-maintained washing machine. The lights make me remember small things from my childhood. A fallen apple being devoured by bees. The smell of lilacs through my bedroom window in spring. Memories from before I possessed language to describe the daily miracles of discovering a fresh world.

[Read more…] about Something in the Sky over Central Park