Flash

VACUUM by Filip Jakab

January 5, 2026

“Choke me!” Vinnie yells. His skaterboi Gen-Z body—a pale, rampant, mangled flesh to be further detested, desolated, deprived. Though the flesh and bone he otherwise soothes with a daily intake of smoothies that include collagen, selected antioxidants, and protein powders. He drinks a lot of purified water. He’s one of the lost by-products of his generation. He nourishes his Promethean body to the max so Sean can destroy it. He pumps it up twice, three times a week, with an unfuckable gym bro who goes by Dixon in the city center. Post-pump, they take dumb selfies (he never shows them to Sean).

FROM A DONOR FILE by Christian TeBordo

January 1, 2026

Charles “Chip” Prime, Jr. has no previous connection to the University and was not considered a prospective donor prior to his contacting this Advancement Officer requesting an urgent meeting at the Quattro Bar of the Four Seasons in East Palo Alto, California. Chip contacted Officer directly by text message, and when Officer attempted to explain that the Bay Area was not part of his regional portfolio, offering to forward him to the relevant staff member, Chip replied that the Bay Area was not his region either, and that he only wished to speak with Officer, being familiar with certain work

NOT EVERYTHING DIES IN THE DARK by M.M. Kaufman

December 29, 2025

For Ben There reality was, being all realistic, when it blinked out. One second I’m looking at Sammy and Joe sitting on the stoop in their church clothes eating deviled eggs and rice casserole off styrofoam plates, when suddenly they’re—not. They’re still there, but they’re in sweatpants and pretending to eat plastic corn on the cob. Then boom: Easter clothes and eggs again. I ask, Did anyone see that? All I get is shrugs. That’s the only answer they ever give me anyway. How’s ya’ day? Shrug. Wanna watch the game? Shrug. Whatcha wanna do with your life? Shrug. The

THE ANSWER by Maxfield Francis Goldman

December 10, 2025

“This is the last time I am ever going to do something like this to you,” Casper says as he takes his mom’s hand and kisses it. It tastes like cardboard, and smells like sheetrock. It’s rough on his lips and has this unbearable consistency he can only compare to dried dates. But she is beautiful, and everything about her is disgusting. Per usual, she is really not here, but she’s smiling this kind of absent-minded smile, but not really at him. Not really at anything. He lets his lips linger just a little too long. Hears ambiguous beeping sounds

BECKETTIAN by Shane Kowalski

November 10, 2025

Murphy was visiting Malone. It had been a while since they had seen each other. Murphy being busy in the city, while Malone had lingered in the countryside. Murphy remembered those dark country roads, whizzing down them in the nights as a youth. No noise. But at the same time, all the noise in the world. The humming shadows. Malone was always the type to leave enough room between himself and other people. Murphy, on the other hand, had become a successful C-AWP II, a thing he so frequently had to explain to new acquaintances that it had lost all

THE BROKEN TOWER by Kaden Griggs

November 5, 2025

The hulk of the Orizaba lulled hugely in the calm spring water as if the waves were tongues tasting the air in broad gulps like old hounds lapping water from ground puddles. Not much moved. The poet was drinking and avoiding his beloved. His father had died and he was very sad tonight. He had never felt emptier within. Lust enters when the hollowness leaves nothing else behind. He makes the mistake of believing again that the drinking will bury the lust and set things aright but it only invigorates the lust. Lust for all things. Lust for the remembrance

IN ANOTHER LIFE, I AM A DIRECT DESCENDANT OF SHARKS by Bethany Cutkomp

October 30, 2025

And if I do not keep moving, I will pass away. They call this ram ventilation, a shark’s way of breathing. My invisible gills demand the same method of survival. Since hatching from your womb, I have been burdened to forward momentum, a squirming force to be reckoned with. Raised in a realm above sea-level, however, the current has always worked against my nature. Most mornings, you barely squeeze in the chance to slather sunscreen over my ampullae of Lorenzini—freckles, you insist I call them—before I’m out of the door and down the street, bike pedals whirling, thrusting through the

STRANGE IS THE MEAT by Brittany Terwilliger

October 27, 2025

As his bolt pierced the deer’s flesh, Nathan felt himself reduce, his body contracting into a dark, wet mass. He clenched against the blinding light, choking on snorts as he plopped onto a leafy patch of moss and lay feeble and disoriented. Something licked him, eyes darting. Liquid warmth filled his mouth, his belly. He drifted off to sleep. His mother (but that wasn’t his mother! His mother was a chain smoker with Betty White hair) nudged him to stand. And he found that he could, although he didn’t want to. He preferred his leafy bed, the green smell of

BELLYBUTTON BABY by Dilys Wyndham Thomas

October 23, 2025

I have this recurring nightmare in which I swim through amniotic fluid. Poppies litter the fluid, and a baby is lost somewhere amongst all the falling flowers, out of reach, beyond my thrashing hands. To keep the nightmare at bay, I lay awake in yet another hotel room, avoiding sleep. The man in bed with me has his back turned, constellations of freckles scattered on sunburnt skin. It’s obvious from the way his body teeters on the edge of the mattress that he has decided I am a one-night stand. I run my fingers along the map that is this

MY ENTIRE EXISTENCE PROJECTING ACROSS THE UNIVERSE IN BILLOWS OF GLITTER, CONFETTI, AND FLUSTERED GIGGLES by Sophie Kearing

October 22, 2025

At the intersection between the Many-Worlds Interpretation and the Law of Assumption, you can bow out of the shitty life you’ve created for yourself and slip into an existence that’s basically your own personal heaven. People call this place your “desired reality.” Let me give you some reference points here. In my old reality, moving house was always an exercise in abject misery. But. Let me tell you how things unfolded after one night I used the “state akin to sleep” to visualize stepping through a doorway into a magical world of miracles and ease. On Monday morning I received