Flash Fiction Magazine

By Jeffrey Weill

A white mist floated north on Bay View Road, which ran alongside the bulrushes adjacent to Mussels Bay. Droplets formed upon a telephone wire. One dewdrop grew heavy and lengthened along the wire until it touched a second drop, and they drew together—two stars sucked into each other’s orbit. The conjoined drop stretched further and absorbed a third. The big dewdrop slid down along the side of the narrow wire and, like an old slug, hung over the street. A rust-eaten pickup truck lumbered past and a fog horn blew. The dewdrop, loosed from the wire, descended through the mist.

[Read more…] about The Dewdrop

By S.G. Smith

My world has been pink for three weeks. Bubblegum pink skies with cotton candy clouds. Punch buildings and fuchsia cars. My own clothes blush, and the sidewalk I sit upon magenta. The faces passing by shades of salmon and coral, their hair ranging from rosewood to flamingo.

This isn’t the first time the world has gone pink. It happened much more in my childhood since the girl’s orphanage wasn’t too keen on physical affection. I once had a classmate whose favorite color was pink. Shocked, I asked her how she could love the color which often consumes the world. She stared back blankly.

[Read more…] about Pink

By Aeryn Rudel

Linda sat on the porch, sipping coffee and listening to her husband bump and rattle around the house behind her. Harlan hadn’t come down for his morning cup, and that meant he was up to something. She had a pretty good idea what.

She took another sip of the fancy brew their daughter sometimes brought from Seattle. She’d resisted at first but had to admit those folks knew their way around a cup of Joe.

Harlan continued his ruckus, which was now joined by soft curses. “Where’re my goddamn shells? I know I left ‘em in that drawer . . .”

[Read more…] about Fair Pay

By Melisa Gregorio

My freckles fell off this morning. I washed my face and as it dried, one by one, my brown spots drifted away and freckled my sink instead. No matter how much I cleaned, the spots wouldn’t wash off. I gave up and went to work.

With my newly naked face, I got the biggest piece of my boss’s birthday cake, and there was a phone number (not mine) on my coffee cup from Blendz.

[Read more…] about Unfreckled

By Logan Murphy

Hu Yan’s father Dai had started keeping his collection of jade bi stacked in his bathtub, an old ovoid washing basin of hardwood boards banded together with pig iron. Hu Yan had come by on her way home from work, and had brought her daughter Chen Chen, who sat in the living room still wearing her uniform from Jianshan No. 2 Middle School. The window in the bathroom looked out over the bay, with a view of the thunderclouds rolling in from the South China Sea. What diminishing light filtered through the curtains captured the facets of the carved disks in the tub, motifs of dragons and carp, which made symmetrical revolutions around the hole in the center of each disk. There were bi the size of a ring that could fit around Chen Chen’s little finger, and ones so large that they were leaned upright against the back of the tub, a meter across their center and nearly five centimeters thick.

[Read more…] about Jade Disks of the Monsoon Season

By Charles R. Bucklin

The dug well had a monster in it.

And Becky Lee was afraid it was going to eat her.

How and when the monster got into the well was beyond the girl’s recollection.

It just appeared one day, shortly after her Pa had gotten hitched again to his new wife, Alice.

And much to Becky’s anxiety, it didn’t always appear when she lowered the bucket into the well.

The creature usually waited.

[Read more…] about Fetching Water