Flash Fiction Magazine

By Bradathon Nu

The boy yawned as he planted himself onto the ground all at once. It had been a long day, and so he decided it would be best to take a rest. He could have slept inside but preferred the calm of nature. Even though he couldn’t sleep out there, the calm of being out amongst the trees was even better than the feeling of slumber. At least to him, it was. He lay back and let his head rest against the soil. His mother would be upset at him for getting his hair dirty. It would be okay, though. In tiresome moments like these, it would all be okay. So long as he could rest out there and stare up at the bright sun. The bright sun shone through the winding twigs and leaves of the wood. As long as he could lie out there in that sun within those woods, he would be okay.

[Read more…] about The Boy Who Sat Next to an Ant Hill

By Tim Hawkins

We were having a nice meal, a few drinks and talking about the latest.

“You just like to have a nice meal and a few drinks and talk about the latest, don’t you?” Helen asked, somewhat rhetorically.

“Well,” I paused, not sure what answer was required. “Not, ‘just.’”

Things were finally coming to a head. I had known for a while.

[Read more…] about The End of Something

By Leo

Nadine waits as he goes to the bathroom. She crosses and uncrosses her legs, unsure how to best position herself. She wonders if it looks more natural to sit, or to lie on her side, or to prop herself up against the pillow. Just one pillow, of course, because she has never known any male specimen under the age of twenty-five to have more than a singular, worn out pillow. She folds her arms in front of her chest. Nadine is always fidgety, but sitting there with only a thin sheet to cover her goosebump-lined skin exacerbates her incessant need to remain in motion.

[Read more…] about Didn’t Mix Well

By EJ White

When Stacy emailed you the link for “Arizona’s most celebrated” psychic, you conjured a groan so extended, the lungs of a weaker individual may damn well have collapsed. But here you are, amongst the rainbow shawls, the rumpled pineapple-bun hair, the great many crystals in the hotel lobby. You’re surprised the hotel is so bourgeois, so Scottsdale, with the golden yellow chandeliers, the dark marble floors, and superfluous water structures, as if to wag a big middle finger at the surrounding desert; all this for a man who calls himself psychic. Your colleagues at the University would not approve.

[Read more…] about No Man’s Land

By Christopher Moore

The place looks like a tomb.

It’s a strange thing to think about a building. Let alone a house. But it’s true. Sitting vacant, dormant, at the end of a street in this half-empty estate, with the majority of street lights long-since stopped working, no sign of life or light from any of its windows…it looks like a place the dead might go to sleep.

[Read more…] about The Attic

By Jim Bates

The huge iron ore freighter was thirty miles out when Jerry Jorgenson saw on the horizon, barely visible, a tiny spec. He used his binoculars to watch as the ship slowly made its way toward where he was standing, close to the shipping canal between Lake Superior and the Port of Duluth. They say that death and taxes were what you could always count on. Well, to that you could add the Mesabi Miner, thought Jerry, as he watched the huge vessel’s slow but steady progress. The freighter had been carrying iron ore back and forth, across the great lakes, for seventy-three years, Jerry’s entire life. It was as dependable as the day was long, was how he looked at it.

[Read more…] about The Mesabi Miner