Flash Fiction Magazine

By Roy Dorman

Jake,
It’s so unfair. I love you so much. You were the first boy I kissed and now they’re making me move away from you. Please promise to meet me at the second bridge on June 10th, ten years from now. We’ll both be 25 and we can see how we turned out.
Love you,
Cassie

Bill read the note for the umpteenth time since Jake had given it to him. He had agreed to meet this girl, actually a woman since she would be twenty-five now, and he was as nervous as bridegroom. Not that he’d ever been a bridegroom.

“What if she doesn’t show?” he thought. “What if she gets mad at me that Jake sent me and didn’t come himself? What if she’s really cool and we hit it off and..….., no, don’t start that fantasy stuff; remember, you’re just the messenger here. Jake’s a friend but he sure ropes me into some weird stuff sometimes.”
[Read more…] about Accept No Substitutes

By Stephen Mander

I saw a dead man last night. He was on the side of the road, laid flat, blood in a pool around his head: he’d come off his motorbike. His helmet was fifteen feet or so further down the road, and his bike lay on the pavement away from him. It was the loneliest sight I think I’ve ever seen.

When I got home I took my shoes off and put my bag on the kitchen table. I didn’t have any food in the fridge, so I went to the drawer beside the sink and looked through some delivery menus before settling on a curry. I phoned and ordered, and they gave me a rough delivery time. Then I poured myself a beer, flicked the TV on, and sat down on the couch.
[Read more…] about Necklaces

By David McVey

Ever since the Marriage (Banning) Act of 2035, which annulled every existing marriage and outlawed the celebration of weddings, successive governments have striven to rid society of this feudal, sexist, homophobic institution. At first there was public resistance to the move and so the Weddings Prevention Squad (WPS) was set up to patrol the streets and break up subversive weddings.

During the 2050s, local councils were privatised and most registry offices sold off; religion was outlawed and all churches and mosques demolished. These bold measures should finally have killed off marriage but in fact it was merely driven underground. Weddings were held in woodland glades, disused warehouses and far corners of multi-storey car parks. The WPS grew into a massive organisation with listening stations monitoring telecommunications and social media, and armed vehicles driven by crack troops for stamping out illegal weddings.
[Read more…] about Government Press Release, October 2075

By Feyisayo Anjorin

This city is not called the city of gold for nothing. It’s all about gold here. In the beginning it was some machinery in the depths, breaking rocks and tunnelling through it. You will be amazed how far human beings would go in the drive for gold.

Now it is gold with many faces, sought in different places in the city; as it is now, you either get the gold or have something golden.

The golden doesn’t have to be under the soil, but it could be. Gold doesn’t have to be that thing that makes you sweat and makes you dirty like mineworkers.
You could do an elephant-size work and get an ant-sized reward, you could learn from the miners and the perils of the dark depths, you could learn from those who sit in the air conditioned offices and wait for the gold.

This city makes you dream, which is a good thing because dreams come true; this is also a city where your dreams could turn nightmares.
You could one day take a stock of your life and wonder why the hell you left your village. Maybe you would have been better in Qunu, or KwaKwa, or Bushbuckridge, or wherever your village is.
[Read more…] about in Johannesburg

By Kerry White

In 1936, after a last unsuccessful séance… [Bess Houdini] put out the candle that she had kept burning … since his death… Bess said that ‘ten years is long enough to wait for any man.‘ ” – “The Secret Life of Houdini”

Harry couldn’t be sure when he became aware or, for that matter, where he was.
He was more than happy to be free of the pain and the fatigue that had preceded his death…I am dead. I remember dying, my last breath, my promise to Bess–to contact her.
He struggled to see his surroundings, there was nothing, just darkness…no, wait, not darkness…nothingness. Harry had spent more than enough time in enclosed, dark places to know that this was not lack of light where you could still “feel” your surroundings and experience the physicality of it. Here, he had nothing, no sensation of containment, a lack of complete anything physical around him.
It made him afraid. [Read more…] about Magic Act