Flash Fiction Magazine

By Ryu Ando

There were spots on the leaves of the mikan trees in the grove behind our house. My wife, silent, cut off the head of a red snapper while I told her this. Blood soaked into the cutting board’s criss-cross cuts and nicks. She just shook her head. Fish scales clung to her wet hands. She flicked them away absently with her fingers.

The next day the spots had grown larger, spreading across more leaves and fruit. By the end of the week, I cut down five trees and burned them to their stumps. The container holding the petrol was lighter but still strained my shoulder.

“It’s done,” I said to my wife.

[Read more…] about The Orange Grove

By Chris Ritter

The first boy, a senior, told the dirty joke in the lunchroom, and it was so filthy that even the teacher who eavesdropped, despite the froth of voices, had to laugh, but he, too, like the boys, blushed, as if he were caught in a lurid conspiracy. He chastised them and they apologized, and after he left they rolled their eyes. 

[Read more…] about St. Leo’s Fall

By S.B. Hunter

No one seemed to hear him when he spoke. He’d launch into a sentence, a story, an observation, and often (well, often enough) people would either turn away or, worse, interrupt, begin in on something else, not remotely on the same topic or issue. There didn’t seem to be any pattern to this, but the result was the same. He felt unheard, dismissed. This wasn’t universal, but it happened often enough to be noticeable. He once said to his wife, “I live in a Cosmos of non-sequiturs.” She didn’t understand what he was on about. He often said strange things, but their marriage had gone on long enough for her curiosity to founder quickly. She simply filed his odd pronouncement under: “Man of a Certain Age.” Older men just said things sometimes, grumpy-sounding things. Her own father had done this and she had learned the hard way that it was best to leave things well enough alone. Asking people to explain themselves led, in her experience, to trouble.

[Read more…] about S.E.T.I.

By Chazz Scogna

Marshall stared up into the sky until the curves along the edges sank through. The stars bent around. If she lay there long enough, the light and music from the whole of the universe would drift into her window. Perhaps she would. New understanding.

The purple clouds floated in, a band connecting the trees on either side of the window. Took her view. Restrictive as the band holding her place to the ground. Old humanity.

The clouds wept, shedding acid tears. Some traced purples blazes. Others fell, only highlights. Unknown. Corresponding rungs on a ladder. Further understanding.

[Read more…] about Turntables

By Z. T. Gwynn

She always smelled of fresh herbs and stale soap. We met one night, by instinct or ritual, in the neighborhood through which we used to romp. The occupants of quiet urban houses seemed neither to notice nor mind two figures slinking between street lamps in the twilight haze. Silence and thickening fog accompanied us to a place where we still recognized the street names, but not the frowning eaves of the homes which lay upon them. She sat at the foot of a tree.

[Read more…] about New Old Times

By Suzanne Cottrell

Addie sipped her cup of hot green tea. She asked, “Emeline, did you get your hair done?”

Emeline reached her hand up and fluffed her pewter hair. “No, not recently.” Soft waves framed her pale face. Makeup caked in her crow’s feet. Her cheeks blushed like ripened peaches. Emeline reached for her cup of steaming chamomile tea. Her right hand trembled. She placed her left hand on her right hand to steady it. Clink. Her cup sat askew on the saucer. 

“Are you all right?” asked Addie. She had asked Emeline that question many times over the years. At age twelve, both girls signed up for horseback riding while attending a summer camp in the Pocono Mountains of Pennsylvania. On one trail ride, a shiny piece of aluminum foil at the base of a tree, probably blown there from a nearby campsite, spooked Emeline’s horse. Her horse reared, and she tumbled off. Thud—she hit the dry ground hard. “Are you all right?” asked Addie.

[Read more…] about Tea Time