Flash Fiction Magazine

By Nancy Wade

The grocery store parking lot was a sea of white cars. Seems like I can never find mine since I bought that damn Honda with the platinum white pearl paint. I tried to look nonchalant pushing my cart through the slush and melting snow, hoping to locate the Honda. When a cold breeze whisked through me, I zipped up my coat. Should have worn boots. My feet were getting soaked. Ever since I hit my seventies, whenever I couldn’t find the stupid car, I figured that, like my mom, I was a step closer to the demise of my frazzled brain.

The idea of losing my mind made me sick to my stomach. Then I spotted my car and remembered that I’d intentionally parked on the other side of the lot. I’d been downtown and had come in from the north side instead of the usual south entrance. I headed home, relieved that the end was not quite as in sight as it seemed. And Mom didn’t have signs until well into her eighties—did she?

[Read more…] about Not Yet

By Carol Lewis-Powell

Facing the picture window that overlooked the sodden garden, Jonathan’s focus was not on the rotting leaves and the bare branches, but on the gray apparition of his wife. She flitted around the kitchen, her clogs creating a clunking tattoo of sounds which nudged his burgeoning headache further into existence.

The aura of affluence that she liked to project to neighbors was never more evident than in the kitchen. She drained him on every level, but most notably, his bank account. He knew that upstairs, hanging from the wardrobe door, was a new dress. Another one from the boutique in the village. The dress was beige, bland hessian and looked like a sack-cloth, not that he could describe his wife as a penitent.

[Read more…] about Cheese Board

By Stephen Duffin

I hated cats.

Last week a tabby scratched my arm. Blood everywhere. Scarred for life.

Savage twisted monsters.

And now I had another cat staring right at me.

It’s only a cat. Get over it.

The Persian spat like a psychotic white bundle of fluff with claws.

I willed it to disappear. Why don’t you get lost? Or drop dead?

[Read more…] about Picasso

By Daniel Aceituna

“Why not?” Zeke said, taking another swig. “How much damage could it do?”

It was Zeke’s idea to sneak into the lab where our father had been experimenting with time travel. Dad had been cautiously sending objects back, within a one-month time span, to a shed in the backyard. His intent was to prevent life-changing accidents by giving victims a day or two of early warning.

Now, having first invaded Dad’s liquor cabinet, Zeke wanted to try something bold: send a bowling ball back to 1850. Zeke’s hand was on the switch.

[Read more…] about What Goes Back, Comes Back

By Andrei Sisman

A great shadow wrestled the curtain open. He strained his eyes. No use. It was like trying to divine his reflection in water by candlelight. Through clenched teeth, Georgie whispered, “Who’s there?”

The pain had woken him. He’d been tossing and turning, probing the mattress for a better fit, which was when he first saw it. Now, the shadow was sitting in the chair by his bed. The boy’s fingers clutched the blanket. The chair shone like tinfoil in the moonlight, and Georgie noticed the milky white suit and the cape.

“Snow-Fox!”

[Read more…] about Snow-Fox vs. Leukemia

By Richard Leise

Because we didn’t know his name and he played air guitar outside Family Dollar, we called him Air Guitar Eddy. He had two dogs. We called the pit bull Pitbull, and the other, a terrier, Funky Bitch. Funky Bitch was pregnant, bursting at the seams, and she would flop, belly against the dirt, panting in the shade. Because it was Family Dollar, Air Guitar Eddy, Pitbull, and Funky Bitch didn’t get much in the way of charity.

We played in a punk band called Junk and shared an apartment in a housing complex across from Family Dollar. We got our meth from Sam, who lived one half-mile east. Whenever forced to re-up, which was every other day, two of us would walk to the Sunoco, grab chips and a couple Cokes, spend an hour with Sam, then walk back to our apartment. We’d smoke, check each other’s pockets to make sure we weren’t carrying, then, after looking both ways, cross the highway and get candy, Mountain Dews, and a liter of water. Two of us were nineteen, and two of us were eighteen. We were definitely punk—at least for Endwell.

[Read more…] about Junk