Flash Fiction Magazine

Bedbugs

July 10, 2014 Leave a Comment

By John Gorman

M scrubs the floor with a wet t-shirt, eyes peeled for bedbugs. She’d been bitten all night and ignored my comment that she has sweet blood. She has zero tolerance for jerkiness and shoves aside my pile of record albums and grabs the Windex. She squirts a spiral galaxy into the chafed pine floor then balls up the t-shirt and punches into every sneaky crevice.
“Dump some of this crap,” she says.
I pick up a handful of albums and shuffle through them. Aerosmith, The Eagles, Cannonball Adderley, and stop at Thelonious Monk’s Brilliant Corners slipping the thirty-three out of its sleeve and blow a sprig of lint off the vinyl. I’ve been collecting albums for years and once in a while like to listen to the scratchy tunes warbling on my turntable. Neil Young too has a great affinity for Analog over Digital. I’m aware of its shortcomings, they’re human. I’m not one who goes around coveting mint condition. I yearn for imperfections. [Read more…] about Bedbugs

So Far Away

July 9, 2014 2 Comments

By Harry J. Bentham

As he seated himself at the glossy black coffee table, reflecting the infinite depths of the looming constellations through the large window of the Officer’s Lounge, Captain Sannox felt wistful. Beyond the hardened pane of transparent alloy waited everything, and yet nothing. When he gazed there, space itself seemed to stare back ominously.

In truth, there was no course. Nearly a thousand people under his command were being taken further and further from their home with every passing day, and each day the chances of them ever returning to Earth became more and more astronomical. Their destination: nowhere.
[Read more…] about So Far Away

Comfort Food

July 8, 2014 Leave a Comment

By Tim Wilson

My mother always makes sure I’ve packed an apple before I leave home. Always red, always firm and juicy its my link to my safe place of comfort, a place where she is busy with her daily tasks, preparing those treats and the familiar smell of her food. It’s my reminder that I have a place to go back to after school, somebody waiting for me. The smell of her cooking wafting down the street, the smell of home. No matter who attempts her recipes, its never the same. My mother with her portly frame and rosey smiling face, always happy and interested, always makes sure I have my apple.
[Read more…] about Comfort Food

A Killer Interview. Case #2

July 7, 2014 Leave a Comment

By Rachael A Payne

“I wanted him dead, so I shot him.” Sally sat back in her chair, proud of her confession. She took a drag of her cigarette.
The Doctor smiled at such an easy admission, despite the fact that he had not asked her any questions.
Here she sat, this middle aged, scraggly looking woman with greying hair tangled around her taught face. To look at she was weak, thin, with large developing wrinkles on her face and arms, probably due to too much smoking and alcohol abuse, and yet she was dangerous.
“You say your husband beat you?”
“He beat me every chance he got and not just with his fists. It was chair legs, leather belts. One time he up and smacked me in the head with a tyre iron. A tyre iron, can you believe that?” She shook her head and spoke to herself, “I hated him.”
“Is that true Sally?”
“Are you calling me a liar!?” [Read more…] about A Killer Interview. Case #2

Lunch at Booth’s

July 4, 2014 4 Comments

By Di Hancock

Leaning heavily on his sticks, he waddled and rolled to the seat accompanied by a grey haired woman – presumably his wife – who pulled the chair out further from the table for him.
His legs were like tree trunks encased in fawn, stretchy jogging bottoms with bulging thighs, swollen knees and ankles ending in splayed, tiny feet over which his belly hung, enveloped in a faded, misshapen, orange sweater. Pudgy, swollen fingers protruded at the sleeve ends and above the thick rings of folded flesh that was his neck, a pale, freckled, fat, face topped by greying, greasy, red hair hissed breathlessly to his hapless companion—

“ I’ve ‘ad breakfast so see if they are doin’ the menu –if not I’ll ‘ave the Xmas dinner special– whichever’s the quickest”.
[Read more…] about Lunch at Booth’s

Waiting by the Door

July 3, 2014 Leave a Comment

By S.A. Goulding

My favorite place is the living room of the old house. When I was there, I felt happy and safe. I remember Papa would start a fire in the fireplace and find a music channel on the radio. Then he would sit down in the middle of the floor on the big rug. He would pat his hand in front of him, signaling me to come and sit down.

He taught me how to sit Indian style when I was little. We would sit face to face and he would ask me questions. How did I feel? What did I do that was fun today? Did I make any new friends?

Then it was my turn for questions. How tall will I be? Will I be rich? I asked if I would be brave. I remember him answering so many times, “We will have to wait and see.”
[Read more…] about Waiting by the Door

One Way Traffic

July 2, 2014 Leave a Comment

By Brian Anderson

His thumb hesitated over the contact
on the screen of the phone,
Should he call?
What would he say?
He looked up and exhaled slowly. His breath bloomed in the January air, which reminded him of all those years he’d smoked cigarettes and he felt a faint yearning to start again.
He looked at the bungalows on the opposite side of the road. They seemed to return his gaze, the particular slope of their roofs lending them a sympathetic air as he stood
on the driveway. He looked down to the phone again and realised that his thumb was still hovering in the same position.
Should he call? [Read more…] about One Way Traffic