Flash Fiction Magazine

By Claudia Cottle Hinz

Nurse Shirl McCaffrey told a supervisor that she planned to leave just before 5:00, but at the inquiry, a scrub tech said he saw her on the 5:00 bus, which proved it was closer to 4:45 when she left the hospital. In the court stenographer’s notes, another passenger identified Shirl slumped over her purse, the bracelet she never took off, a slim, silver heart, swinging wildly.
And so what if she left a few minutes early? She had spent her whole life arriving early and staying late and no one ever noticed. At 16:41 Shirl entered her patient notes in the computer, printed copies for the next shift and for supervisor Molly Slope, with special instructions to keep an ear out for room 244, Dr. Doug Bram’s last patient just up from surgery. [Read more…] about Shirl

By Conrad Johnson

Ambered by sprightly light of coffee shop’s counter, Danny Roach strayed one too many times. Danny, a cool kid of the Roach clan, was just trying to score some dried latte cream, or better yet, donut dust off the tatted counter. Shiny antennae scented a shard of chocolate floating on the sea of Capri blue Formica, in front of nervous register.
[Read more…] about Roach Luck

By Paulo Brito

The façade of the 1.2rc2 multi-service company is a real patchwork. Reflection of the survival to three ½ earthquakes, two typhoons, a harpies attack, perhaps the worst occurrence; it has also been the innocent victim, in the octagonal corner on the right side, just after the 1.b update, of the Cerberus bite. It is certainly due to these attacks that the façade doesn’t have a final and updated version.
It is a building that seems to be falling any moment, but which is safer than a Molotov pudding. And it continues to be both a sublime architectural vision to some, and a frightening aberration to others. We must also add that it has, so it is made to believe, two entrance doors and one of them, introduced in the rc1.b update, placed thirty-five meters from the ground. People can say that this upper door is just to exit, but we all know that doors are made first for entering and only then for exiting. And therefore, that door makes the building, rebuilding, and update of the 1.2rc2 multi-service company headquarters even more mysterious.
It was, thus, through the door on the ground floor, in its v1.0 version, that a man of indecipherable age entered the building and walked briskly to the F1 counter to be received by a lady in her thirties, she seems older, but should politely be given the due consideration.
‘I want to order a suicide’ stammered our man with determination. [Read more…] about A Not so Usual Request

By Rick Ferris

I have worked hard on this, trying to make something that will last until someone reads it. I have shown it to the instructor from the community college. He has helped me, though each time I have to remind him who I am.
“Oh, you,” he answers, looking away. “Yes, I remember now.”
At first, when I took what I had to him, the words would be gone from the pages before he could read them, as if I had used disappearing ink. But together we have managed, finally, to invent a style that, even though it is mostly mine, stays on the page.

I used to make a decent living at something, though I would have to remind my employer to pay me because payroll kept losing my name. I have since quit the job. I now make my living by appearing on television. You have probably seen me before, but if I told you my name, you would not remember it. No one does, not even the hosts of the television programs on which I appear.
My only remarkable physical quality is that I am unremarkable. I am of average height, with brown hair and hazel eyes. My skin is pale, though not sickly pale. My eyes, nose, mouth, and cheekbones are all placed where they should be placed. I am not handsome, but neither am I ugly. If I were food, I would be plain oatmeal. I say this without bitterness. I have come to accept this as my lot in life.
[Read more…] about The Writer