Flash Fiction Magazine

By Brian Maycock

I see you everywhere.

The bar, where our first date ended so badly when you told me you had started seeing your ex again. And how lovely I was, and how our friendship meant so much to you.

Turned out it wasn’t even a date, I realized, as I returned to the small apartment which never felt so drained of life as it did that night.

The park, where a few months later you rested your head on my shoulder, and my skin burnt and I wanted to put my arm around you, but held back.

The street where you live. Walking down it at 3 a.m., my heart beating like crazy.

I see you, and it is impossible to see anything else.

~

[Read more…] about Love Never Dies

By Karlie Hall

You meet me in the rain. I share my red umbrella. You tell me you like the black polka dots. They remind you of ladybugs in a kinder season—a splash of warmth and dryness in the cold. We share a street and the space of a walk, and then you meet me for coffee in the shop across the way.

Cinnamon-dusted lips; a dot of whipped cream on your finger. A first kiss and a last kiss all at once. Don’t we all imagine our last first kiss? Even though it rarely turns out that way in the end, because a lifetime is a long time, after all. Cracked vinyl under my jeans and your elbows on the table, faces close, voices touching. I watch you leave and discover your number written on the napkin underneath my empty cup.

[Read more…] about Divergence

By Katherine Gleason

Helen holds the bottle between her elbow and waist, tips forward, and sends a stream of fizzy liquid into her waiting cup. From across the room, I squint, trying to make out the label. Jake’s hand snakes out. He grounds the cup, the sort employed at keg parties, on the splintering table. Helen nods to her brother, picks up the drink with both hands, lowers her face to sip, and sneezes. Is she really drinking more diet-cola poison? I step toward them, dodging cousins and awkward well-wishers from the college. Sunday school posters glare down from the room’s basement walls. The overhead lights buzz and shudder. By the time I reach the other side, Helen is gone. Jake remains planted by the thicket of soda bottles.

[Read more…] about Final Disposition

By Christopher Bruce

He lived alone, and he rode his bike. That is all we knew. He wore a bike helmet and dark sunglasses, through wind and rain. Phantom-like, he was a person you thought of only after he had ridden by. You’d scratch your head and think, “Wasn’t that our neighbor from upstairs?”

It had been a long time since we had seen him. You might say too long. Not that we missed him. He lived above us and never spoke to anyone. It was quiet up there, except for an occasional flushing toilet in the middle of the night. Even that was like you’d just had a dream about plumbing.

[Read more…] about The Man on the Bike

By Richard Risemberg

They had lit a campfire, though it was a warm day and it wasn’t time to cook yet. It was a ritual. Ranger had built a ring out of the least-broken cinder blocks he could find. He’d done what he could to level it so the old grill he’d found by the railroad embankment would sit more or less straight. He was proud of his work. It had been important to do something for the encampment, too.

[Read more…] about The Return

By Kyle Wagner

The sun is rising as Lorna makes a left onto Camino Yerbajo, the blinker still flashing even after she finishes the turn. Her aging truck heaves and chugs as it negotiates the steep, twisting inclines of this hillside neighborhood. She pats the dash with an open palm, urging on her trusty steed.

A few minutes later, the blinker finally decides to give up.

Most of Lorna’s clients are pleasant people, but she’s hated Tuesdays ever since she started working with the Tagnellos. When she complained last week, her boyfriend told her, “Don’t be so sensitive, it’s just business.” Yet he constantly gripes about lost commissions when customers return the clothes he sold them.

[Read more…] about Sandalwood

By Mattia Ravasi

At the close of the ninth century, Alfred the Great, King of Wessex, commissioned a series of very small jewels from the goldsmiths of his realm. The jewels were shaped somewhat like turtles, with an ovoid body and a long neck with a hollow at the end, designed to accommodate an aestel—a wooden rod to be used as a pointer when following the words on a manuscript.

Alfred loved books. He would have rather spent his life reading than slaying Danes.

The Alfred Jewels were sent to every bishopric in the land, with the instruction that they should never be separated from the church of their destination.

[Read more…] about The Alfred Jewels