Flash Fiction Magazine

By Alice Martin

It’s hot outside. Too hot. Flip-flops-melting-into-asphalt hot. Smells-like-gum-and-gasoline hot. So, we go to the mall.

We start with Auntie Anne’s Pretzels. The air there tastes like sugar-butter, and it’s right by the entrance, so we can stroll by nonchalantly, as if we hadn’t planned anything at all. If we’re lucky, they’ll be giving out free samples in little paper cups. We choose the cups with the biggest pieces of pretzel and suck the bread until it’s nothing but the memory of salt. Then, we say, we’re full now; we don’t need anything else.

[Read more…] about Mall, 2004

By Lori Cramer

Across the booth from me at the coffee shop, Gemma goes on and on about Adam as if he’s the greatest guy ever.

Adam took her to the ballgame.

Adam bought her a stuffed bear.

Adam said she looked fantastic in her favorite pink jeans.

I try to change the subject, but it’s no use. In a matter of moments, she’s back to babbling about Adam.

[Read more…] about Adam Addiction

By Walker James

Henry Smalls owned a diner just south of Beaver Creek, with a simple name in big red letters: EAT. His late brother had owned it until 1987, when Henry bought him out, after his brother’s bloodwork came back positive. It was the only structure for miles in either direction. Highway 52: a long strand of silver hair fallen upon the map like the last evidence of a lover who slipped away in the middle of the night.

For twenty-three years, Henry opened the shop every morning at sunrise and closed down every night at sunset; flipping the switches one by one, stopping to enjoy the half-light, how the pop case glowed like a TV in the darkened diner, a blue miasma of light.

[Read more…] about How We Died

By Keith Hood

Near midnight under a moonless sky, the boy and girl rolled down Main Street in an ancient minivan. It was the conclusion of the strangest date of the girl’s seventeen-year-old life. Her chest tightened, her stomach grumbled, and her evening meal of fried fish in tomato sauce threatened to erupt. He’d picked her up hours ago. Within moments of sliding into the passenger seat, she’d noticed the needle hovering on the big E on the fuel gauge. Her nagging question hovered in that shadowy space, where vocal cords translate thoughts into words. Shouldn’t you get gas?

They’d met that day at an audition for a school production of West Side Story. Both were clad in slim-fitting jeans and pocket tees, he tall and dark, she small and blonde. He was full of questions: How long had she lived in Ann Arbor? Did she like it? Was she auditioning for a specific role? Did she like the gaudiness of the film version? Why were her flip-flops stuffed into her pants pocket and not on her feet? He laughed when she said she liked a “barefoot lifestyle” and laughed again, saying, “Not a lifestyle I’ve heard of.”

[Read more…] about Question and Answer

By Paul Stapleton

He first met her one night after the gym, after locking up for the old man, slamming shut the roll down gate graffitied over with the words El Boxeo and Boxing, then wandering up 149th Street with Edwin, up the long hill to the Grand Concourse. They stopped to talk to some girls outside the community college, then joined them in the pizzeria where all the cops and ambulance drivers ate. She was studying to be a dental hygienist. She was definitely older than Tommy, but their ages never came up. He told her he was a boxer, and when he walked her down into the subway, she agreed to meet him again.

[Read more…] about Sparring Partners

By Karen Mandell

I bring my husband’s plate to the sink. He’s left half his bagel and his lox, the whitefish at $5.99 a pound. I wrap plastic over the plate and put it in the fridge. If he doesn’t eat it later, I’ll have to. He says his appetite is down.

Now he’s in the bedroom putting on his new walking shoes. This is what comes from going to the doctor for a check-up. And it was my idea. But I didn’t think he’d turn into a fanatic just because his blood pressure is high. The doctor says get out, exercise. Otherwise…I hear all this because I march right into the doctor’s office.

[Read more…] about New Shoes