Flash Fiction Magazine

By Natascha Graham

It started with Mrs. Weaver’s cat. A mackerel tabby called Mrs. Winstanley, who sits on the wall of No.18 between half-past six and half-past seven every morning, licking her paws clean of the cream that she’s pinched from No. 20’s milk bottles. I see her on my walk to school most days.

It was odd because Mrs. Weaver’s cat was never usually about late on a Thursday night, but then again, neither was I. She was following me up the alleyway towards home.

[Read more…] about Revenge of the Holy Mackerel

By Chris Eno McMahon

My husband, Judd, brings home a taxidermy porcupine and tells me the quills are sharp.

“Did you touch the quills, to be sure?” I ask.

“Jesus Christ, no.” Judd says. “Why would I do that?” He goes upstairs for a nap, and the quills beckon, black and glistening.

[Read more…] about Porcupine

By Marissa Meche

I can feel the rain inside my chest before it falls. It hasn’t always been this way—only since Momma locked me out on the night of the historic Fairview Grove Flood of ‘64. Almost died that night, almost died the two weeks following. Up and down with bouts of pneumonia from my time shivering in muddy water, hiding beneath an old sheet of tin Poppa had thrown at the house when he caught Momma writing poetry about the milkman.

[Read more…] about The Rain in My Chest

By Jeanine Skowronski

At the school lock-in, Ally Salerno pretends she’s high on Fun Dip and tells Michael McQueen, in an outside voice, that she doesn’t love him, not one bit, not at all; that she’s decided instead to love his brother Darius, because he looks like a vampire, one of those Lost Boys, with the pale skin and the shiny eyes and the white-blonde hair, except, you know, for real.

[Read more…] about 1995

By Rob McIvor

“Short back and sides, leave some weight on the top and front,” says the customer.

Tony nods but cuts the man’s hair exactly as he cuts every customer’s hair. Tony has been the only barber on the island for thirty-seven years, and he knows how a man ought to wear his hair. He works quickly; he needs to leave at noon, and it’s a quarter to already.

“You taking the boat today?” says Gracie. She’s wiping the tables outside her café as Tony locks up.

[Read more…] about A Saturday on the Mainland

By John Philipp

Just outside Calais, the overnight darkness dissipated faster than fog on a midsummer morning. It revealed the lonely figure of a middle-aged woman with last Wednesday’s newspaper held atop her head to protect herself from the constant drizzle. She inhaled the crisp, clear air—a gift from the departed storm. The woman trudged down a narrow road that followed a wall of abandoned warehouses, splashing through the buildings’ reflections on the puddles around the rain-spattered cobblestones.

[Read more…] about Revenge Delayed

By V. S. Mukund

My brother always had too much self-respect for his own good, and it killed him.

“This is our home,” he’d said that night. “This is where we’ve always been, where we belong. And yet, they treat us like we’re the intruders. Like we’re the criminals. Like somehow we deserve death just for existing. Well, I can’t take it anymore. I can’t take the notion that I can’t walk ten steps in broad daylight in my own fucking home.”

[Read more…] about A Home to Call Our Own