Flash Fiction Magazine

By Grace Keir

In Mexico City, they take me to Coyoacán. They show me where Frida lived, in the blue house. Casa Azul. Frida y Diego vivieron en esta casa. 1929-1954.

In her studio, a wooden wheelchair is pulled up to an easel. There are paints, brushes, pastels, mortars, and pestles. Things her fingers touched. Dried crusts of paint cling to the bristles. There are old textbooks and medical posters. One reads: INTRA-UTERINE LIFE. A fetus grows from nothing, emerging from a dark pink void with its head and neck contorted, its chin bent sharply into its chest. The outdated drawings give it an alien face: a wide head with a sharply pointed chin. I look away.

[Read more…] about Coyoacán

By John Philipp

The Jones house was one of a hundred two-story homes built in the 60s in the “Glenview Estates” subdivision. There were three architectural variations, the Jones’ home identical to thirty-three others, except for the two flowering dogwoods Mr. Jones had planted when they bought the house. The trees were now five feet high and, when spring rolled around, and they presented a splash of pink and white for several weeks, the house radiated an out-of-synch vibe to the neighborhood.

[Read more…] about Upstairs Alien

By Anna Stolley Persky

Do you remember Golda? Maybe you knew her as Mrs. Becker. Remember when, after school, we used to hide in the graveyard, just off the path, you and me, entangled, my legs against your just-turned-scruffy face, scratching me, that picnic blanket we used to bring, red-and-white-checked? But first, we would pass Golda—she was my neighbor’s neighbor’s neighbor—so I probably should have said hello for good manners, but I just threw myself past her and against you. Just the sound of us rustling. (You remember THAT, don’t you?) Golda would sit on that red wooden bench, and not say anything, draped in layers of gray clothes, with a straw hat in the summer, and, when it got cold, a pink wool hat with a white pom-pom on top of her craggles and wrinkles. My mom used to say, isn’t it a shame that Golda’s all alone, even though she has grown kids, but you never see them, do you? My mom would say, so bring Golda the sugar cookies I just baked, but then the years passed, and my parents got divorced, and my mom stopped baking. I hated going to Golda’s house, anyway because she smelled like moldy bread when you got too close to her. My mom used to say that Golda hoarded everything in her house, piles of clothes, newspapers from the 1960s when her life was filled with life, and isn’t that sad because then the kids and Golda got into some sort of endless resentment standoff, and the cockroaches came, but the kids didn’t. Golda kept everything from when her kids were kids—every drawing they’d ever done, all their report cards—along with buying other people’s crap at yard sales, toys for grandchildren she never saw, all shoved into her house to maybe fill it up, so she wouldn’t feel so much quiet. You know how deserted rooms echo, and I threw out that red-and-white blanket but ate two creamy red velvet cakes after you left me that summer after we graduated. And do you remember that one day when we went out to the graveyard, the bench was empty, and the ground was hard, almost frozen, and the next day she still wasn’t there because she had died? My mom told me—this was before my mom died too, obviously—that Golda wasn’t found for days, and then her kids were called, and they came to bury her. They must have figured they would have to stay for weeks to clean out her house from all the crap she’d piled into her hungry void over the years. (We know something about that, don’t we, filling ourselves with T-ball games and anniversaries with other people, not each other, except how come we keep meeting like this, in these middle-of-the-night conversations?) But she fooled them because somewhere in between the rumors and the sitting, she had unloaded everything; who knows how, and all that was left was a bare house, floorboards, not even a bed. She died on the kitchen linoleum. Her kids, hardly kids, they had gray hair, went through the house, room-after-room left empty of their history, except up in the attic: one red suitcase. And when they opened the suitcase, there was nothing inside.

By Lynn Nicholas

Janet bent over the body at the bottom of the stairs. She almost shed a tear. Such a shame. The poor girl was a twisted tangle of limbs. Janet slipped the small, cranial drill into the dead girl’s curled fist.

“I’m so sorry, dear, but you must understand, someone has to take the blame.” Janet sighed. “You were just in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

[Read more…] about Knit One, Purl Two

By Manuela Stoicescu

“Take care, Dave.”

She kisses him on the cheek, and her smile is all the goodbye her lips don’t say.

Take care. The words fall like snowflakes in front of him. For a moment, crystals of pity glint in them, and shame and resentment stir his stomach. But when they melt on the table, in a small puddle, he’s cold and alone, left to “take care,” and he doesn’t know how to do that.

[Read more…] about God of Ramen

By R.B. Schimmel

“Have we met before?” He uttered these words before I could even sit down. I looked up at him, but I was not sure what to say, how to tell him. I struck a pose and beamed, “Yes, we met in elementary school. You didn’t like me much, and I stuck my tongue out at you.”

[Read more…] about Shall We Dance

By Aline Soules

“How many placards have we made over the years?” I ask my protest buddy, Clare, as I rip tape from a roll and piece together our latest. Clare, the artist, writes the words on Bristol board with calligraphic ease. We’re in a production line in the local school gym, along with other mothers and grandmothers, and students.

[Read more…] about Shock