FLASH FICTION
My Cat Gets Loose in the Steakhouse by Scott Garson

Mom says it’s my fault, because I insisted on taking the cat through the heavy twin doors, but who leaves a cat in a car in a parking lot on a seventy-nine degree day, with sun shining down and…
Read MoreA Girl Climbs a Tree by Ruth Joffre

This isn’t the first time. Sometimes, it feels like she’s always climbing this tree: when her little brother betrays her; when her memory fails her; when she barely passes a test and her father tells her, “One more C…
Read MoreEpilogue by Carol M. Quinn

They staggered, stunned, into the fall, she and Teddy making giant vats of pasta and vegetarian burrito dinners to feed twenty-five, inviting home everyone they knew to eat, to drink, to stay over, please, we have a futon and…
Read MoreGirls’ Weekend by Steven Simoncic

A hunk of butter hits the fry pan. Then two pieces of bologna. Sparks of grease jump and sizzle. My dad’s hands—massive, oil-stained, almost old—slash tiny gashes into the bubbles of perfectly pink meat. White bread and yellow mustard…
Read MoreHow to Return Your Child to School by Hillary Smith

He’ll want the Moana one with zippers like cresting waves and straps that glisten blue plastic glitz. He’ll cry that Michelle Naylor’s mom let her buy that one in purple. You’ve only met Michelle Naylor’s mom once, at family…
Read MoreOld Girl by Virginia Reeves

The last time I picked Hallie up at the airport, she was wearing a ratty beige shift that would’ve been a nightshirt if not for the decorative navy rickrack at the neck. Instead of hello, she said, “You hate…
Read MoreCoyote the Younger by Stephen Aubrey

In all those moments after he’d lit the fuse but before the rocket-powered roller skates propelled him across the yellow desert at sublimely sub-sonic speeds, in all those moments what came most vividly to Coyote the Younger were the…
Read MoreInheritance by Madeline Anthes

Everyone expected me to take my mother’s eyes. I had a right to take what I wanted, and her eyes were legendary. She’d taken them from her mother, and her mother had taken them from her mother. They were…
Read MoreThe Color It Leaves Behind by Kathryn McMahon

My girlfriend has a pet rock that watches us in bed. A cold lump of gray with googly eyes, a feather headband, and a red glitter mouth that Becca would never wear. It used to be in a box…
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