Flash Fiction Magazine

By Colby Vargas

The classified ad went, SPR RM NICE FAM NO SMK CHP. We interviewed the would-be renters in the stale quiet of the foyer, where our name was taped on the mailbox but kept sliding to the floor. These were young men with work smells all over them: sun, sweat, rust, oil. Men seemed to like being in my mother’s presence. Francine gestured widely when she talked, and in an excited state, her fingers might brush the hairs of their forearms. She had played baseball when she was young, the real kind with the boys, was stocky but in no way fat, all hard curves except for the jagged flyaways of her high ponytail and the frayed ends of her cutoffs.

[Read more…] about Theft of Air

By Ian O'Brien

It was parents’ evening that did it. He’d heard the sniggers on the way in and when they’d sat at Miss Flint’s desk, he’d seen that look pass over her face, just briefly, that flash of something between embarrassment and surprise. When he was younger it didn’t seem to be an issue, he thought his Dad looked like everybody else’s. The long hair was like the men he saw on the sleeves of Mum and Dad’s records, the cowboy boots and the waistcoat like the men in the films his Dad had let him stay up to watch; he’d felt grown up then, like it was their club, perched on Dad’s knee, the spaghetti westerns a kind of ritual, a glue that bound them. He would laugh wide-eyed at the saloon fights, the men crashing over tables, taking whiskey bottles with them and his Dad would swig at his own lager and the smell would mix with tobacco and for a minute he would be in the saloon itself. He’d pretend to understand the jokes that his Dad laughed at and didn’t feel embarrassed when the dusky barmaid toyed with the string on her blouse. But here, in the bright sports hall of his new school, with its neat tables and plastic chairs, everything about his Dad stung him—the shoestring necktie with the buffalo skull, the denim shirt with the dog-eared collar, the tassels on the jacket and of course the hair, the greying curtains that he’d twist when he was nervous and bite the ends of, like he did when Miss Flint welcomed us over. His dad looks like Jesus, Finn had whispered, just loud enough to hear, sat with his friends at the next table while the teacher tried to get his mother to look at the red squares on a handout, and the words fluttered in his stomach. He didn’t hear a word Miss Flint said. The room swam with sound, filled until it felt like the room itself was laughing. The chair beneath him felt hot and he hoped Miss Flint couldn’t smell the whiskey on his Dad’s breath, surely she must, and when he reached forward to shake her hand and the shoal of tassels shimmered, he felt his stomach grip and he watched his Dad’s hands, coarse and frayed, the fingers nicotine-yellow, her hand in his, gentle, like a trapped bird.

[Read more…] about Icarus

By J.E.Daniels

Wishes arrive in winged pantechnicons; prayers are delivered by hand. And in each, there are smuggled demands, exhortations, pleas, cries concerning the recognition of hidden talents, threats, the whole banana. The trucks stretch back through clouds and time. That’s before the loaders get a hold of them.

[Read more…] about The Wish Fulfilment Agency

By Heather Teague

Tap. Tap.

Hanging on a sea-foam wall in Savannah’s Southern Boutique was a wooden sign that read: ‘Oh, how well He loves us!’ It occasionally knocked about in the winds of an oscillating fan on the opposite side of the room.

Tap. Tap.

‘Who loves us?’ Tammy wondered. Was it the man outside the shop, waiting for his wife to finish giggling at a joke the young cashier never told? Was it the young cashier, who had the blessing of being pissed at his aunt for making him work in her store on a Saturday?

[Read more…] about The Sign

By Zoë Sparque

Arthur had been very clear. The only way for me to come along was if nobody would ever find out who I was. I had nodded. Of course I had nodded. I looked up to Arthur, even if I was a good six inches taller than him. And older than him, too.

He had come up with the plan when we were in his bedroom one rainy afternoon. He was thinking out loud as he paced up and down the carpet, hands folded behind his back—just like dad always used to do. We would have to establish some ground rules, Arthur said. We could never arrive at practice together. Mom couldn’t know about it, either. And I’d have to wear the suit, so I would be incognito. I didn’t know what that was. I thought he said “in cookie dough,” but that made absolutely no sense either. So I let it slide. Besides, I liked the suit. It was bright green—the color of a Granny Smith apple. My favorite.

[Read more…] about See You Later

By Gail Wallace Bozzano

She doesn’t belong here, in this neighborhood, in this town, where hers is the only yard grown wild. Lured by good schools and green space, she and her husband moved from the city. Six months later, she’s half sorry. Suburban mothers are beautiful and fierce. Her friend-not-friend Roz, with the fox eyes and knife-sharp smile, pretends not to see her at school plays, at the second-grade curriculum night. Roz tosses her straightened hair, turns her back, chats with the chosen ones. Calls Iris a rebel but seeks her out when no one else is watching. Seeks out Iris’s daughter, shy Lily, as a playmate for her Peyton.

[Read more…] about Grown Wild