Flash Fiction Magazine

Daily Flash Fiction Stories

Renovation

3 Comments

By Val Margolius

The walls used to be blue. Despite other, bigger differences, that was what Daphne noticed first. When she left this house twenty years ago, the ground floor had two fewer bedrooms; there was no fountain in the backyard, and the walls had been blue. 

Posters had lined every inch of her sister’s bedroom, hearts etched into the oak doors on either side of their Jack and Jill bathroom, and the faint stench of sweet manure had wafted in through the cracked windows. Now, the nearby farm was a cul-de-sac, all the doors were sleek black wood, and the walls were bare like a newborn baby.

[Read more…] about Renovation

The Time You Brought a Rock Star Home

4 Comments

By Jamie Holland

It’s eighth grade and everyone’s talking about Melissa King’s boy-girl party tomorrow night, which you haven’t been invited to yet. It’s winter in the Midwest and the heat in your room has stopped working. At night the phone rings and rings. Everyone says, “Hello, is Debbie there?” Debbie’s your older sister who now hates you. 

~

In Geometry, Melissa and her friends sit in front of you, rolling strawberry gloss over their lips.

“Let’s go to the mall after school,” she says to them before turning to you with a folded-up piece of paper. Come to my party! it will scream. 

“Pass that to Kyle,” she says, blonde lashes blinking. 

You hand it to him and he glances at it before shoving it in his backpack.

[Read more…] about The Time You Brought a Rock Star Home

The Last Knock at Ibare Road

6 Comments

By Whiskers

Rain needles the corrugated roofs of Ibare Road as Chike Okonjo stands before the crumbling compound—shoulders hunched, breath shallow, like a man poised between confession and crime. The gate hangs crooked, one hinge screaming softly whenever the wind nudges it. No one has lived here in twenty-two years, not since the night his little sister, Amara, vanished without a trace, and the house learned how to wait.

The town has never truly released that night. It survives in whispers, in pauses that stretch too long when old neighbors speak of harmattan evenings. They say doors were bolted early. Lanterns snuffed without prayer. And somewhere between dusk and midnight, a knock moved through Ibare Road, three sharp taps, precise and patient, before a child disappeared. No one ever admitted hearing it first. No one ever claimed they opened a door.

[Read more…] about The Last Knock at Ibare Road

King of Fears

1 Comment

By Daneryl Weber

“I think you know why I called you here today, Emily.” 

Emily focused on the gold lettering of the plaque on the desk, trying not to squirm. Dr. G. Ronald Darling, Headmaster, Crucifix Christian Boarding School. The school her parents had sent her to because they wanted to keep her safe. 

Keep her pure, Emily amended.  

She squinted at the gold letters until they went out of focus. Whatever. Dr. D. was so not darling. 

“Emily?”

She glanced up, shaking her head. 

Dr. Darling cleared his throat. “This is going to be awkward. So I’ll just be frank. Have you…are you in trouble?”

Trouble? The word buzzed in the pit of her stomach. He couldn’t know what she had done. Of course not. 

“Nope. No trouble at all.” She tried for a bright smile. 

He was watching her steadily behind the thick lenses of his glasses. 

“Something has come to my attention…” He paused. “Has anything happened lately that, well, should not have? Anything that has made you…upset? Unhappy?”

Emily’s stomach churned, as it was doing a lot lately, a queasy boat on an uneasy sea. How could he know? 

[Read more…] about King of Fears

Under a Blanket

5 Comments

By Laura Heaton

Melanie tosses beer cans in the recycle bin then rinses coffee grinds and caked instant oatmeal from dishes left in the sink. She hears her father’s breathing rattle as he takes a noon nap when she passes his room with her laundry basket. She moves his T-shirts and pants from the washer into the dryer. Before throwing her jeans into the washing machine, she pulls a folded pink envelope from the pocket. She thinks of the girls on the bus yesterday talking up Susie’s thirteenth birthday party.  

“I can’t come. I have plans,” she’d told Susie. “My dad is…is taking me to a game…baseball… the Yankees. We’re big fans.” It wasn’t exactly a lie. 

Now she considers showing up at Susie’s party. She could say her dad got sick, another half-truth, and their plans were canceled. Let her father cook his own food and wonder where she went.  

“Melanie, are you home?” he calls from his room, his words nearly engulfed by phlegmy coughs.  

[Read more…] about Under a Blanket

Thread

6 Comments

By Miriam Mandel Levi

The thread dangles from the cuff of Will’s dress shirt, swinging as he speaks, dipping now and again into the hot sauce on the rim of his plate.

Sharon would’ve caught it. She’d have snipped it with a pair of sewing scissors before they left the house. But Sharon is dead: pancreatic cancer, a year now.

If there’d been a child at home old enough to notice, they’d have pointed it out. It was the kind of oversight that would embarrass a teenager, or rouse pity in a young adult. But Will’s daughter is dead too: suicide, three years ago. And his son lives too far away to notice that his father is unravelling.

[Read more…] about Thread