Flash Fiction Magazine

By Rick Ferris

I have worked hard on this, trying to make something that will last until someone reads it. I have shown it to the instructor from the community college. He has helped me, though each time I have to remind him who I am.
“Oh, you,” he answers, looking away. “Yes, I remember now.”
At first, when I took what I had to him, the words would be gone from the pages before he could read them, as if I had used disappearing ink. But together we have managed, finally, to invent a style that, even though it is mostly mine, stays on the page.

I used to make a decent living at something, though I would have to remind my employer to pay me because payroll kept losing my name. I have since quit the job. I now make my living by appearing on television. You have probably seen me before, but if I told you my name, you would not remember it. No one does, not even the hosts of the television programs on which I appear.
My only remarkable physical quality is that I am unremarkable. I am of average height, with brown hair and hazel eyes. My skin is pale, though not sickly pale. My eyes, nose, mouth, and cheekbones are all placed where they should be placed. I am not handsome, but neither am I ugly. If I were food, I would be plain oatmeal. I say this without bitterness. I have come to accept this as my lot in life.
[Read more…] about The Writer

By Jake Deluca

He was the last of his kind. Wasting the days away nothing more a waiting flame. His brothers all burnt down to their discontinuance— alone he was without them. This kingdom they once shared, exhausted. Expired in confessing all its every mile. A home too known to bear their restless beings. [Read more…] about Waiting Flame

By Eileen Herbert-Goodall

Outside her window, the eucalypt swayed and its crooked-finger branches quivered in the breeze. Watching it, Janice was curious about the duration of its existence. Undoubtedly, the tree would out-live her. She shifted her gaze and surveyed the landscape. A sea of rolling brown hills and grey gums swamped her vision. In the distance, heatwaves shimmered. Those familiar with Stonefield understood the place was a paradox: possessing a sheer visceral beauty, its remote isolation could cut a person’s psyche to the core.

The sun had risen only two hours before, yet her husband was long gone. He would be working with the stockmen, droving the cattle to an area with better feed near the banks of the Gladys River, a waterway cutting through the property fifty kilometres north. The men would take days to reach their destination, but it had been a necessary venture. With livestock losing condition, the drought was stamping its mark.

Moving away from the window, Janice approached the dressing table where a framed photograph caught her eye. The picture had been taken on her wedding day, almost twenty years earlier. She and her husband were standing in front of the eucalypt, surrounded by a gleaming carpet of grey-green leaves. Behind them the sky was a deep, infinite blue.

They’d been happy once. Evidently, things changed. People changed.
[Read more…] about The Decision