Flash

SUDDEN SILENCE FOLLOWED BY MILD APPLAUSE by Matt Kirkpatrick

December 19, 2022

The music lifted like a cosmic prayer. Then the collective scream: the squawk, the beef and bleat of the slaughter, a rumbling dusk arcing across the auditorium.

I AM MEAT JELLO WITH FEELINGS INSIDE by Pat Jameson

December 16, 2022

I’m about to reverse out when I think–drunk kid. In my car. And I’m drunk. Maybe a bad idea.

MOVING HOUSE by Daniel David Froid

December 12, 2022

The crack widened at last and cleaved the porch in two. The tree had effected a crack that, the men saw, was surprisingly neat. The work of the devil, said Fred.

FINDING THE JOY by John Chrostek

December 7, 2022

No one had spoken up for me. Not a single soul on my street told the officers they had the wrong idea, that I was a pillar of the community.

DOUG AND A CAT by Anissa Elmerraji

December 5, 2022

He lunges into the dirty can and takes the cat by the scruff. It hisses and scratches his hands until blood drops fall from his hands.

TRANSATLANTIC & TWO OTHER FLASH PIECES by Peter Krumbach

November 30, 2022

The 84-year-old woman across the table from me describes a couple who has chosen to be buried in coffins stacked on top of each other in one grave.

PONT-SAINT-ESPRIT 1951 by Phoebe Billups

November 28, 2022

The man clutches at his stomach as the attendants wrestle him into a straitjacket. By the time they manage to sedate him, the waiting room brims with new patients.

ALL THE BEES IN CALIFORNIA ARE DEAD by Piper Gourley

November 23, 2022

I’m in California now, where bees die in the light. Where everybody dies first, then lives forever.

MY STICKY-FINGERED GIRLS by Lynn Mundell

November 21, 2022

I look at the baby doll abandoned on the floor next to its ripped box, its unblinking blue eyes staring back at me. One of its fat cloth legs has been ripped off in the fight.

HERE AND NOWHERE ELSE by Claudia Schatz

November 16, 2022

The window over the bathroom sink, up high and pointing out, the only window in the whole house where all you see is sky.