Flash Fiction Magazine

By Christopher Keast

Sasha and I snap selfies after school.

“Let’s post one to Defame,” she says.

I haven’t used the new app much. It was the latest thing. “How does it work again?”

“You make a post then find someone to flick. The app transfers their face onto yours. Then everyone thinks it’s them.”

“But they’ll know it’s not.”

Sasha shrugs and nods, holding up her smartphone.

[Read more…] about Viralpocalypse

By H. A. Eugene

One by one, they left.

My daughter took Lizzy to run errands. And Alan—he had some business in town, so his teenage son, David, went with him to help carry bags of feed.

Both my daughter and Alan stood in the doorway, each at different times, asking if I needed anything from out there. But I didn’t. I never do. The screen door hit them both on the ass as they left, each at different times.

And just like that, our narrow, shoebox house, with its papered walls and sun-bleached sills, fell quiet.

I was alone.

[Read more…] about Buffalo Ballet

By Noah Milligan

I lived with a couple of roommates I’d found on Facebook of all places, a forty-something YouTuber and a thirty-two-pound tom turkey named Frederick. The guy made videos of ping-pong ball tricks, earning royalties from advertisers. He had something like six hundred thousand followers, which blew me away.

“Who the fuck cares enough about trick ping-pong shots to subscribe?” I’d ask.

“You’re behind on your rent,” he’d reply.

He had a point, but he spent most of his day building elaborate ramps like we lived inside Mousetrap. He’d bounce a ball off an upside-down bucket on the second floor onto the banister where it would strike a series of dominoes that would careen down until the last one knocked another ping pong ball at the bottom of the stairs, which would trigger a pellet gun to shoot a balloon filled with another ping-pong ball into a cup. His ridiculous contraptions took hours to set up, and then they’d miss the mark. He’d set it up again. Miss again. He’d repeat the process dozens of times until eventually, it worked. Drove me insane. Problem was, though, I needed a place to live.

[Read more…] about The Turkey Perdition

By Alysia Hush

Two September sixteenths ago, I fell in love with Eric Winters while sitting in the front row of his freshman lecture class, fervently taking notes on the Ottoman Empire. My laptop fell, crashed; we made eye contact, he winked, and I’ve been devoted to him ever since.

I’ve been his teaching assistant for a year. He’s a great boss: making sure my workload doesn’t outweigh my course work, listening with genuine interest while I complain about my roommate, bringing me those gluten-free cookies Professor Higgins leaves in the faculty room. He even lets me call on the weekends.

[Read more…] about Eric Winters and the Best Day Ever

By Leila Martin

“Yes?” The man had a wild, unkempt look about him, as if he’d recently had a kick from a car battery. He regarded me with intense suspicion.

“I’m here about the ad,” I said. “For the ghost? My name’s Joseph.”

“I see.” His stare hardened. For a moment, I thought he was going to turn me away, but then he opened the door wider and stepped back to let me into a dingy hallway. “Through here.”

The living room was florid with chintz; the only plain surface I could see was an ancient TV lurking in the corner. A plump tabby lay curled on the windowsill, flank rippling softly. The man waved me into an overstuffed armchair and crouched on the sofa opposite. He snatched a clipboard and pen from the coffee table. “I want her to go to a good home,” he said.

[Read more…] about Free to a Good Home

By Rosamund Davies

You’ve been sitting at this cafe table for an hour now. You’ve checked your emails, your social media; you’ve updated your apps and read the news. There’s nothing else your mobile has to offer. You look around. People are talking, laughing. That couple looks happy, leaning close to each other. The man sipping slowly in the corner though, he could be waiting, just like you.

You give up scrutinizing your fellow patrons and sip your own drink, then sink into idleness, staring blankly at the door, waiting. You’re used to waiting; you’ve waited many times before, and in a minute he’ll appear, smoothing back his hair, flustered, apologetic, beautiful. He knows you’ll forgive him. He knows that when you see him it’s this moment now that matters, not what went before. When you see him, your heart will lift and expand, and the long minutes of waiting will melt away into the longing to be together, now, in the future, forever.

[Read more…] about Love Eternal