Flash Fiction Magazine

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

By Ruth Crossman

“Hey guess what?”

She’s doing something with the jars again. He’s lost track of how many she has now, but he knows they’re everywhere. On the counter, on top of the fridge, blocking his path to the almond milk. He swears they multiply on their own. He sighs under his breath, looks up from his laptop, and takes his earbuds out.

“What, Babe?”

She’s holding one of them up to her face like she’s looking through it. Pickles? No. What was that thing she was into last week? Sauerkraut?

“It’s ready!” She taps the glass once, grinning at something like a root vegetable, floating in a liquid the color of marmalade.

[Read more…] about The New Batch

By Austin Gragg

Burning books was the last thing the library robot thought he would do, but the rest of the furniture had already been burned or stolen. The quilting books would be the first to go. As Cart rolled over the frost-covered carpet and extended his hands to gather the shelf, he noted the definition of irony.

If these quilting books could not keep the human warm, she would die.

Cart had left Evangeline, the branch manager, curled up in blankets by the fireplace. She was ill, like many after the blast, and barely able to move.

“Good work, Mr. Carter,” she said. “I didn’t think the cold would come so soon. Could you light them?” She gave a weak nod to the fireplace.

[Read more…] about Warm Reboot

By Emma Reid

We were all on our way somewhere when the subway stopped forever. Many of us were headed to work; others were likely on their way to somewhere they actually wanted to be. Some of us wore headphones. Others swore that before the train slammed to a halt, they heard something that sounded off, like the empty rattle of a piece of machinery broken loose.

A moment of chaos ensued, and the train jerked us backwards. Most of us reached instinctively out to grab onto bars, seats, the people next to us. Our hands closed on air that seemed emptier than before.

[Read more…] about Tracks

By Kristina Hutchinson

My father hasn’t been on a date since my mother’s death five years ago. And up until a couple of weeks ago, he’d been spending all his nights and weekends doing rounds at the hospital. But tonight we’re in his candy-apple red sports car on our way to see his new “lady friend.” He’s asked me to come along. I guess you could call me his wingman, or more appropriately, his wing girl. He hasn’t told me much about her, just that her name is Eudora. An unusual name, but I like it.

[Read more…] about Eudora

By Kevin Tasker

The synesthesia implants were my wife Darlene’s idea. After a somewhat blissful year of chowing down on each other’s eye color (her baby blues tasted of mountain sunsets and my forest greens of roasted artichoke) and listening to the taste of our Beef Stroganoff (which sounded weirdly like the War of the Worlds broadcast I found one summer on Culture Harvest), Darlene dumped me for a paleo-vegan bodybuilder she’d met on Veggie Muscle. I won’t lie and say her abandonment was entirely unexpected. Lulled by my new sensation matrix, I’d pretty much let myself go. Still, life without her was painful. A sixty-five-year-old can get pretty depressed when the closest he comes to meaningful human interaction over the course of a whole year is hearing Spalding Gray whenever he eats a danish or tasting his father’s steps in virgin snow whenever he stares at the greying wallpaper.

[Read more…] about The Implants