Flash Fiction Magazine

By Aaron Murray

Gary had to swerve across two lanes of traffic to stop for the hitchhiker. He whirred down the window as thick, Indiana summer warred with the easy chill of his AC and a semi blared its horn. The man at the side of the road could have been aged anywhere between seventeen and thirty-five. He carried a pair of ragged backpacks and wore a three-day stubble and a t-shirt that proclaimed Worrm 1987 Tour in a font that told Gary this was some kind of band he would change the station to avoid.

[Read more…] about The Hitchhiker

By Ann Russell

“Do you remember our babysitter, Hazel Williams?” I asked my younger brother as I poured the tea at a new Chinese restaurant. In my mid-thirties, I frequently came back to Chicago to attend conferences and visit my parents, still together somehow. “Why do you think Mom got rid of her so suddenly?” A light came into my brother’s pond-like irises.

At six and seven years old, Freddy and I didn’t like it that our parents had so many places to go without us. What places? When I asked, Mom would always say, “The Latin Quarter.” We became adept at driving away babysitters who didn’t read to us and fell asleep before we did.

[Read more…] about The Babysitter

By Beth Stillman Blaha

Of course I get the Warrens as neighbors, the ones who host those foster children. I mean, I guess kids should have a place to go when they need it, but do they have to be so close to my property?

Neighbors come and go, and that’s fine with me. These Warren people just can’t expect me to keep my chickens quiet or in my own yard is all. But now with their delinquents moving in and out, clutching a garbage bag of their stuff, I need to put up a fence.

[Read more…] about Caught in the Act

By Michael Michailidis

Abraham rose with the sun and the light of day in his eyes. He cleaved the wood and took his son, Isaac the first-born, by the hand and went. The road opening ahead was long, it could require years to travel. But Abraham was patient. He had already lived through many years, some say even centuries. And for centuries he had waited, until finally, God had blessed him with a son, and took the shame from Sarah, his faithful wife.

[Read more…] about The Old Man and the Young

By Chella Courington

She believes she’s a descendant of Annie Oakley. A first cousin, removed so many times that her branch doesn’t show up in the family tree. But Anne doesn’t need genealogical proof. She’s blessed with intuition, direct knowledge flowing through her veins since she predicted her mama’s death three years before she died from a snake bite. Anne’s her age now—forty. But she’s healthy and robust, never misses a chance to show how she can handle the rifle her papa gave her at fourteen.

[Read more…] about Under the Spell

By Anita G. Gorman

Stealing can be quite lucrative, but it can also be a pain in the ass. Such a pain springs to mind when reading about the theft of a golden toilet from a posh New York mansion. Not only was the toilet made of expensive material, but it was a work of art, commissioned by the owner of the mansion as a toilet that one could admire and appreciate both close up and from afar in an immense bathroom.

The owner, nicknamed Goldie, liked having gold items in his mansion and considered the golden toilet as a piece de resistance in his grandiose abode. So proud was he of the newly fashioned toilet that Goldie and his golden commode were featured in an elegant magazine devoted to elegant possessions owned by supposedly elegant people.

[Read more…] about The Golden Toilet