Flash Fiction Magazine

By Mackenzie Hurlbert

I called them wooly-bears when they got out of hand. Wrapped in my towel and hovering over the sink, I plucked my way across the arc of my brow to the sensitive parts by the bridge of my nose.

My husband walked by the doorway and stopped.

“Good morning,” I said as I grasped one hair and yanked. “You slept late.”

“Yeah,” he sighed, leaning past my naked shoulder to grab his watch from the sink. “Late night.” I turned for a kiss but he was too busy fastening it on to notice. Shifting back to the mirror, I refocused on my wooly-bears.

“That looks like it hurts,” he said.

[Read more…] about Plucked

By Gregory Emilio

And guess what he orders. No, really, just guess. Not wine, no. He orders a freaking PBR! Anyhow, I put his beer down in front of him. He nods. He wants to be left alone; I leave him alone. Time passes. He orders another, and another. Then one more. Finally, he switches to wine. I was beginning to doubt it was even him.

“The heaviest red,” he says.

I pour him a hulking Cab.

“Not bad,” he says.

At this point, a woman sits next to him. “Is this seat taken?” she asks.

He gestures over the empty barstool and the whole bar bends with the sweep of his palm—dude’s smooth. She asks him what he’s having.

“Let me buy you a glass,” he says.

I pour her a glass. I know where this story’s going: a sip and the girl will go gaga, wander off with him into the woods, or to his apartment, or, I dunno, Olympus, and spend the rest of her delirious days gnawing the necks of dead rabbits, blood-singing his songs of praise. But no. Dionysus gets a text. A look of horror on his face, a pond’s water-glass shattered by a jagged gust.

“I’ve got to go,” he says to the woman. Fucker just gets up and leaves.

So I follow, catch him at the door, and say, “Excuse me, sir, but you forgot to pay your tab.”

He smirks. “You know who I am?” he asks. His pupils crawl, revolve around the irises like slow-burning magma.

“Yes,” I say, “but everyone has to pay. Even gods.”

He sighs, pulls out a $100 bill. “You know what,” he says.

“What?” I ask.

“You’re going to die someday.” He winks and walks away.

The woman turns to me and asks, “Damn, what was his problem?”

I shrug. Maybe just having a bad day. I go to put the $100 bill in the register. I hold it up to the light. Man against a god: no chance. Peering into the leaf-like green, it’s clear: a fake.

By Arthur Davis

“Mrs. Anderson, go back in your apartment. C’mon now, get back in,” Julian Meyers said.

“But I think something’s happening on the roof.”

“Nothing’s happening, but I’ll take a look if you want.”

The old woman’s expression radiated pure doubt. Then she pitched around on her walker and disappeared into her apartment.

Julian Meyers continued up the last flight of stairs, set his sixty-eight-year-old shoulder against the roof door, and heaved it open.

The frigid January sky was shrouded in absolute black, sparkling with possibilities.

[Read more…] about Peacock Man

By José Sotolongo

The birdhouse was a Christmas gift from her sister, Jenny, the one out in Wyoming she didn’t talk to much. It was an elaborate, oversized thing, an ostentatious mansion in miniature, with little windows where the birds could fly in and out of. Beatrice didn’t know what to do with it. There was no pole with it, and it was way too big and heavy to attach to a tree.

“It’s beautiful,” Beatrice told her sister on the phone. “Thank you.”

She waited to see if Jenny thanked her for the gift she had sent, a crystal picture frame. Jenny liked to display photos of herself and the dogs. She had never married, which was true for all three sisters. But, of course, no thanks came from Jenny.

“Did you get my gift?” Beatrice asked nevertheless.

“Yes. It got here just fine.”

[Read more…] about The Birdhouse

By Joe Seale

The boy watches his bare feet as he slowly walks toward the clearing where the man had pointed. His feet are brown from the sun, but are gritted red with dirt, grimy yet gleaming in the harsh sunlight. He watches his dirty toes as they bend upward with each lifted foot, as they curl with each planted step. He takes his time crossing the scorched ground. The sun beats down on his bare shoulders, which are already pink.

The man lags several paces behind, deliberately slowing his gait so that the boy will be alone when he sees it.

The man coughs once and spits onto the dry dirt. He has a grimace on his face that almost looks like a wry smile. His heavy boots thump loudly on the hard ground.  His yellowed t-shirt clings to his body with sweat. He shields his eyes with one hand as he moves forward.

[Read more…] about The Boy and the Kill

By Olga Dermott-Bond

I tear the tag off my new pair of leather gloves as I walk out of H&M. They are dark green, the colour of dusty fat olives. Maybe they remind me of a vintage car. Yes. That’s it. I wriggle my fingers into unmapped lanes. Their lining is like cream upholstery. I get in them and drive to see you.

I crawl through the traffic and imagine myself in a convertible, top down, wind in my hair. I imagine myself going far, so far away from now. And here. I’m the opposite of Audrey Hepburn. No lipstick, scarf, sunglasses. I think how you would have liked these silly thoughts, comic diversions, playing like the radio in your sunny kitchen, kettle on, legs tucked under you with cushions, too few days left to need to count them all at once.

[Read more…] about Gloves Off