FLASH FICTION
My Mother the Nectarine by Megan Haeuser
My mother never ripened. When she was young, they bit into her and stopped the natural ripening process. After they’d spit her out, she stayed green until she began to rot. At the end of her life she was…
Archeophony by Sean Trott
When I was a young boy, my mother showed me how to tune the radio to hear the voices of the dead. The secret, she explained, lay not only in the frequency one landed on but in the precise…
they shine among gods. by Kym Cunningham
This is a story that has already happened. It is also happening right now. It is never not happening. In a land that touches our own, there lived four sisters. Like all, they were both and not special for…
Big-Mouth Mitchie by sheena d.
Mitchie’s mechanical pencil shatters into a hundred billion trillion pieces. “Dewanda, behave!” the teacher screams at me. She don’t know us or our names or remember that Dewanda goes to a new school now. So we don’t call her…
Wicked Americana by Sacha Bissonnette
I told my mom I loved her at a gas station in Minnesota but I’m not sure she heard. The cashier must’ve been stocking drinks or something so it felt like it was just me and her in there.…
The Devil Alive in Jersey by Catherine Buck
“She cursed that baby—” “Her thirteenth, I heard, and who can blame her—” “You can’t blame her for thinking it, but doing—” “Who among us—” “I wouldn’t—” “That’s you, though, isn’t it?” “You’re better than us?” “You think she’s…
The Family Gathers at a Meal by Andrea Cavedo
The first time was an accident. She was slicing carrots, trying to keep them thin and angled, assaulted on her left by the blaring television in the living room, and on the right by her children squabbling in the…
Particulate Matter by Rigel Oliveri
It is the one-year anniversary of the day your husband’s body was cremated and you are at the Jefferson Middle School Fall Orchestra Concert. Here’s a fact: The funeral home people don’t normally tell the bereaved when a cremation…
Some guilty pleasures on this side of the border by Moisés R. Delgado
Nearly two decades in this country and Ross would make it difficult for our mom to leave if she had to leave tomorrow. It’s where she found her favorite purse—plum purple, faux leather, a simple yet elegant tulip print.…
Floaters by Kelle Groom
Dark birds fly from my eyes. Disappear. Where do the kittens come from? We don’t have a cat. Just kittens lumped together like a single entity. A litter. In a box a blanket a bag on the passenger seat?…