Flash Fiction Magazine

By Jerry Kuznik

I received the message. Friday, April 19, 7:30 am. I clicked the link, and it showed me a map. I saved the address, then called Sean to have him pick up my car.

“You tell your wife?” he asks as machinery hums in the background.

“No,” I inform him. “Don’t know if I should.”

[Read more…] about Softkill

By Donna Obeid

This was how we often passed the time during those years of variants and wars, for what else could any of us do?

She called in the dog, locked the door, blew the trumpet, and began. She wore a purple cape, rainbow wig, and silver crown. I wore the sparkly gown. Upon her bed was a blue feather, a deck of cards, a rose quartz stone, and tiny corked bottles. Quickly, she turned a penny into a peony and two spoons into sword lilies.

[Read more…] about Light is Like Love

By Steven Perry

On a rainy autumn night, Hazel bounced on the bed with the stuffed, three-legged pink hippopotamus. The room was delicate, feminine, and child-like. There was pink and softness everywhere—on the stuffed animals, in the decorations on the walls, on the clothes inside the closet. The room was decorated like the bedroom she had when she met him, before she’d left with him, and the pink and softness vanished like a wisp of smoke, and her stuffed animals danced to the beat of a child’s heart. She squeezed the pink hippopotamus to her chest, and inhaled the sweet scent of jasmine, her favorite. This new place made her feel right again, not because it reminded her of him, but because she survived and was far away from him.

[Read more…] about Three-Legged Pink Hippopotamus

By Deborah Thompson

My name is Meadow. Mum wanted to call me Jane, but Gran got her way.

I have a photo of Gran when she was young. The shiny paper is faded, but you can see how beautiful she is, with her long hair and floaty clothes and gigantic eyes. There’s a circle of flowers around her head. She’s sitting in the Meadow, before the mall was built there, and it’s full of red and blue and white flowers, the same kind as the crown she’s wearing.

[Read more…] about Meadow

By Molly Andrea-Ryan

I hover around the coffee maker, pacing in and out of the kitchen as if a moment’s disappearance would fill the pot the rest of the way—three quarters, one half, one quarter—and finally pour myself a cup before it’s finished brewing. Brown liquid sizzles against the warming plate, releasing the smell of burning, of impatience, of things in places they should not be.

[Read more…] about Another Place

By Hannah Sears

The cat slunk behind the wheelie bin, the last of my caramelized onion sausages clenched in its jaws. The little rat had been ruining our family BBQs all summer, ever since the new neighbors moved in. Putting a leash on the beast would only be common courtesy. I shouldn’t have to open the door for the morning paper and find my front step smeared with mouse entrails.

[Read more…] about Keep off the Grass

By Frances Koziar

It is a warm spring day, and the sun speckles the earth through the bright green leaves above. That is the same.

That, and the fear.

My young, non-binary child and I were only walking that day, five years ago. I had been looking over my shoulder at something—what?—when they had torn themselves from my grasp and run out into the road. A split second later, a wet violent sound shuddered through my body. The car had sped off, leaving my beloved, beautiful child beside the turtle they had run out into the road to save.

[Read more…] about Back Again