Flash Fiction Magazine

By Rory Say

The first time he’s pushed to the ground by one of his peers, he doesn’t even realize what’s happened. He thinks he’s finally been included in a game until he tries to get up but isn’t allowed to, and the sudden squeal that comes from him, as well as the tears that follow, causes laughter and hurtful words. Nicknames that stick.

When his parents ask about how he gets along with the other boys, he tells them fine, and they believe him because why wouldn’t they. Because to them, what others see as his imperfections are the very things that make him who he is, which is perfect.

[Read more…] about The Awful Tale of a Harmless Boy

By Haley L. Daniels

There were so many streetlights standing tall in a row like an army, each sent a pool of light onto the pavement in perfect six-feet circles. She took slightly longer steps every so often to skip the shadows between them. It had just started snowing—she correctly estimated how cold it would be but failed to prepare, and now she clutched her coat tightly (the zipper had broken) and chanted the number of steps as her boots hit the ground, one hundred seven-tee nine, one hundred eight-tee. She reached the apartment building, perched on an incline on a very clean street, and was relieved not only to be somewhere warm but somewhere nice. She rang the bell and was buzzed in immediately.

[Read more…] about Locations

By Thomas Hill

Even as I led my friend Anne into the large extra room in the back of my house, I could hear the voice in the back of my head. “This is ridiculous. You’re playing into every stereotype of the nouveau riche, the newly rich—they’re crass, showy, desperate to seem refined. Stop this now.”

I ignored the voice and turned to Anne, making a sweeping gesture with my hand to take in the sight she’d come in here to see. She grinned at me. “You did it,” she said.

[Read more…] about Painting No. 91

By Dominick Vogus

I squinted up at the sign and waited for parental instinct to kick in and tell me exactly what to tell him.

Dad?

Yea?

You didn’t answer my question.

Everything shimmered in the sweltering heat. My mind was lethargic, like a fat fly in the heat. All I could come up with was: The town put the sign up.

[Read more…] about Street Sign

By John Young

Five minutes! That’s all it took. As she saw the police officers, two of them, male and female, make their way to her front door, Lisa glanced at the clock on the living room wall, and then again while they announced with practised sympathy that her husband had been killed by a truck while crossing a street. I’m supposed to feel something, she thought, but it all felt so ordinary, just another episode in a day filled with events and tasks, all laid out like a path in front of her, first this then that.

[Read more…] about Shoes

By Peter J. Manos

One day, the color of our kitchen sink began to change from porcelain white to hot pink, on its way, I feared, to fire engine red.

A nearby (relatively speaking) supernova, being sucked into a black hole, was emitting a beam of highly energetic gamma rays which were being focused through the gravitational lens of a double star system to pass through our kitchen sink. Since the sink was radiating only light, there was little danger unless one used the sink, which I immediately cordoned off.

[Read more…] about Gamma Rays and the Kitchen Sink