Flash Fiction Magazine

By Laura Yash

Sure, you could buy margarine in the store, but you couldn’t get it coloured. Ike was in the White House and the Monkees were believing in things, but we were still stuck with this grey-white stuff, and if you wanted it yellow you’d have to knead little beads of dye into it yourself. I was never great at that sort of thing, so it would always come out streaky. One time Joe was holding his toast and looking at the yellow-grey marble slathered on it when he just threw it at his plate.

[Read more…] about Don’t Spread on Me

By Nathan Bogart

I could not imagine drinking my morning coffee without the sound of Luigia’s prayers. They became to me as ordinary and routine as the morning news. Somehow, strange to say, they brought a brighter tone to my day. I was never a religious person myself. My parents never attended church. It was simply irrelevant to us. My exposure to faith came largely from the whispers emanating from Luigia’s garden next door. When my parents died, I inherited their house. Which is to say that I witnessed her daily gardening ritual for over three decades. Nothing too out of the ordinary. She’d plant seeds. She’d water the plants. She’d weed. The only odd thing is that she’d have long conversations with a statue of Saint Francis.

[Read more…] about Luigia and Saint Francis

By Marie Lathers

We were in the tan Ford Falcon waiting for our Mom to make a deal with the motel owner for all of us to spend the night in the same room for seven dollars. There were four of us kids: I was the oldest because I’d just turned twelve; Dennis was ten; Troy, six; and Laurie, five. Due to my advanced age, I had the front seat to myself—except for our mother, I guess—and it had been that way since South of the Border, that tourist attraction at the Carolina line. Dennis had been yelling that it wasn’t fair, that he was the oldest boy and didn’t that matter. But Mom said no, it didn’t, so he could just hush up. In actual fact, she’d said, “Keep your mouth shut.” But I’m presenting her in a positive light. Troy and Laurie had fallen asleep at the Border, once they understood we were not stopping for fireworks.

[Read more…] about When the Going Gets Tough

By Margo Daly

I am five today.

“Happy Birthday, big boy,” Mummy says when I crawl into her bed. She pulls me close. She’s wet and sticky. I wriggle away from the stinky milk smell. She gets up and goes to the baby’s room.

I go into the kitchen, stand on my stool to reach the tin of Milo. I hear Mummy’s voice behind me. “How about leave that, and I’ll make special pancakes for breakfast?”

[Read more…] about Big Boy

By Howard Reeves

I get off the subway at 96th Street with twenty-three dollars in my wallet and fifteen minutes left on my cell phone calling card. I trudge up to my building and am greeted by the last of my belongings discarded like refuse on the sidewalk. My landlord is not a very compassionate man. When I couldn’t come up with the past two months’ rent, he leased my apartment to someone else. And he picked today to officially evict me.

[Read more…] about Evicted

By Paul McDonald

He married her despite the spiritualism. He grew to accept it, and her like-minded friends. He drove her to the Spiritualist Church three times a week and came to know the patrons well, and respect them. She hailed from Romany stock, and they were nice, too—didn’t resent him for stealing her away from the travelling life, her and the ‘gift’ she was convinced she had. He never believed in it himself, but didn’t doubt her honesty.

[Read more…] about How It Works