Flash

ELEPHANT EYES by Kristopher Monroe

February 25, 2026

When I was in fourth grade my mother disappeared and I never saw her again. At first my father wasn’t sure what to tell me but he realized that the truth was better than obfuscation so he told me she was admitted to a sanitarium which I didn’t understand so then he explained she was simply sick and resting which I definitely did understand. For as long as I could remember my mother was sick in a certain way. She’d be doing dishes or loading laundry or scrubbing the tub and suddenly become overwhelmed with sadness and break down weeping

JAIL TIME by Duff Allen

February 20, 2026

As a little boy nothing made me happier than to visit Dad in jail. Daniel, Mom would say every time, you haven’t forgotten your father, have you? We both sat down on the same side across from him. Who I called Dad, Mom called Daniel. He didn’t call her anything. He didn’t speak to her. He only spoke to me. Tell me how your grades are, he said. You don’t wanna end up a loser, like all these guys. Dad would look around then at the other tables with other prisoners. They were talking to their families too. I knew

THE FACEPLANT by Jamey Gallagher

February 19, 2026

We got the plant at the plant show and we brought the plant home and we put it on the windowsill and we watched it—not constantly but a lot more than we watched our other plants. Its lanceolate leaves grew fast. It got these paper-thin blooms that grew and unfurled and became translucent and turned out to be faces. Lips, nostrils, cheeks, eyeholes: all the usual face parts. The faces, after they unfurled, made little motions all day. Moues, I guess you could say. Women’s faces, men’s faces, it was hard to tell which. Some of the faces were stunningly

JULIA FISHWELL by Kai Broach

February 13, 2026

When I met Julia Fishwell, I was trying out a lot of different deodorants. A fungal infection had left my armpit skin itchy and brittle. The Old Spice I’d used since puberty was too harsh. All the new ones too. Every week I smelled like a different person. Julia stared straight at me from behind the drug store counter. “You don’t want this one.” She swept my hypoallergenic stick from the conveyor to clatter against other rejections in a basket at her feet. She rapped the counter like I was a distractable pet. “I’ll be right back.” She stepped from

FISH ON THE SHORE by Miklós Vámos, translated from Hungarian by Ági Bori

February 9, 2026

Silence and semi-darkness inside the market hall. Only the moon strolls among the empty stands, with a shopping basket on its arm. Faint lights on the counters and their retractable shutters. Loose apples and cabbages hiding under them. The building is somber, surrounded by dark houses. The windows—illuminated squares. There is not a single soul around at the market at this time but the fish in the aquarium. This is their time. Tubes carry whirring air under the water along the sidewalls. There is a lot of jostling for room. The stronger ones swim up to the edge of the

punk band ideas by L Scully

February 6, 2026

punk band ideas l scully first idea Motorboat Widow second idea Abort Your Kiddo third idea Muscle MILF fourth idea

MY TRAVELLING PERIOD by Dayna Weissman

February 4, 2026

They’ve brought in a man with a lie detection kit for the reunion of the seventh season of my second favorite reality television show. They’re getting all of the ladies wired up to his machine and asking them if they think they are the hottest lady in the office. The “office” is the real estate firm where they all work as real estate agents. All of the ladies say, no, they do not believe they are the hottest lady in the office. The machine goes off every time. It’s good to believe that you are the hottest lady. It’s gotten

SETTLEMENT by Benjamin Niespodziany

February 2, 2026

after Chris Erickson Tristan Funicular fell asleep not long after dawn. His teeth were on wrong and his bong was full of something less like water and more like moss. He was lost. His stress level was Jurassic. His panics were unlearned. This was a mere hours before Tristan’s door was kicked down by the scholar Parlor Hallelujah who demanded her dues. You see, Parlor Hallelujah was a crooked academic, a well-known non-peasant, an aggressive lecturer, a stirrer of sins. The hushed business she conducted was equal parts consultation and intimidation. She lived off the wisdom she gave to others. Hundreds

ROAD HEAD by Lila-Rose Beckford

January 19, 2026

Leroy wakes up in a desert turnout, contorted in his truck bed like he tried to hold himself together in his sleep. His head throbs. His mouth tastes like blood. The sun is already climbing. The sky is too clean, too wide. No eyes for miles. The desert has stripped him thin, but that’s the point. It’s burning off the wrong parts, leaving only what his wife will recognize when he goes home. Athena wakes in a guest bedroom with white plaster walls, glass doors, and a rug that was woven by someone else’s hand. The lovers have the

DEATH DRIVE by Quinn Broussard

January 16, 2026

One night, I text my boyfriend, Next time we have sex, I want you to hit me and tell me I’m worthless. He doesn’t respond to it. In the morning, I drink black coffee and don’t eat. He texts me between my classes, Come over later, and so in the evening, I sit on his couch and watch him watch sports. It’s a different one for each season and I can never keep track when one starts and another begins – it doesn’t follow logic, that the Super Bowl is in February and they’re still in these same thin jerseys