Flash | X-R-A-Y

Y by Thomas Thatcher

February 7, 2022

I picked up the BB gun. I carried it to the road over my shoulder. Then eventually I pointed it at an oncoming car. The driver didn’t see me. He was driving slowly and he didn’t see me with the BB gun. He was about to hear Tsshh Krr. Copper-coated premium BB’s. I thought it might have cracked the windshield but it hit and skipped off the windshield. Boom and the smoke of the incense, which came with the prayers of the saints, ascended up before God out of the angel’s hand (Rev.8:4) We needed bread and I didn’t have

FIFTY-FIVE AND OLDER by Christopher Notarnicola

February 4, 2022

I’m about to be sick on the front porch. Granddad is at the back, beating his cane against the screen door to scare the Muscovy ducks. The neighbors understand—nobody wants duck mess on the walkway. We’ve split a buttered bagel and yesterday’s half pot. He’s probably finishing breakfast while my first bite slips from my tongue in a string of saliva, landing like egg yolk in the flowerbed. I gag. The neighbors have a hard time with my prolonged presence, though no one seems to have heard my heaving. Drum and bass in the front drive after midnight, and in

ALERT by Caelyn Cobb

February 2, 2022

We all regret downloading that crime reporting app. “I’ve learned that I’m always a few blocks from some guy swinging a chain,” our friend says at dinner. For us, it’s gunshots or fires. Gunshots reported, four hundred feet. One mile. Six hundred yards. People on the app give these alerts thousands of likes. That’s what you get, someone comments. “Probably just fireworks,” I say. Those distances don’t feel that close. One mile might as well be a different universe. They have a different congresswoman and everything. When we’re getting ready for bed the app says there’s a fire at Food

HALF-SISTERS by Kristen M. Ploetz

January 26, 2022

red + blue Her birthstone is amethyst and she has his blue eyes. At the fair, he buys her a purple balloon; when it slips from her grip, he buys her another and ties it to her wrist, winks as he promises, this one will always stay. When he reads to her at night he points to the lupine in Miss Rumphius and tells her about the importance of family. On sunny days he holds her hand as they meander through rocky tide pools where they look for the purple arms of sea stars under shimmering water. She steps barefoot

THREE SELECTIONS FROM MORE ANIMIST BABBLE (A WIP) by Bram Riddlebarger

January 24, 2022

The Hornworm and the Green Tomato The hornworm had eaten the better part of the upper reaches of the tomato plant. The green tomato was petrified. It was already late in the season and now this. “YOU BETTER NOT EAT ME,” screamed the green tomato as the hornworm cast glances its way. “I’m so fucking horny,” said the hornworm. Its rear horn rigid. “I’ll BE RED IN A FEW DAYS,” negotiated/bargained/pleaded the green tomato with a faint blush. “You’ll be red-y now,” leered the worm. It ashed a cigarette as tobacco worms did. The cherry burned. The hornworm bit

COURT MANDATED THERAPY by Sage Tyrtle

January 19, 2022

Bill is not having flashbacks to Vietnam. Even though the shiny-haired psychiatrist says there’s no doubt at all, even though the list of symptoms looks like his autobiography. Bill sits on the burnt orange couch. He looks at the palm frond wallpaper. He says in his most even tone, “No, I believe you’re mistaken,” and he’s being careful because if the psychiatrist decides that he’s a danger to himself or others then he could end up a Thorazine zombie like Harry Alessi up at the sanitarium. Bill clears his throat and makes himself look into the psychiatrist’s eyes. Makes himself

‘BLUE BANJO: THE HIRAM SADLER STORY’ DELETED INTERVIEWS by Bodie Fox

January 17, 2022

HAZEL COX (Hiram’s first wife): I was pregnant with our first the night he played the Russian Roulette. We was in a dive bar after a show in Lubbock, Texas—I’ll never forget the place, neither, ’cause it had a sawdust floor and the piano played itself. He was drunk, of course. Except for that first year we knew each other—from the day he walked into my music store to the night of our wedding—he always had something to sip on, whether it was a bottle of rye or a bit of sippin’ cream. He lost. But, in a way, he

MOVEMENT STUDY by Amelia Scott

January 14, 2022

The only way they had was their nakedness. This and this alone delivered them through the many corridors of their pursuit: their innumerable stations of falling over and springing upright. Their eyes, their pupils, were open, bright, darting: brilliantly black-on-white. They were silent—mutists—but too antic for the soliloquy over the straitjacket. They were turned out of the asylums as quick as they were caught, hopped then over hedges and fences, scattering the hills. The realm of objects at all times tried to court them; its advances went unrequited. (That is what a prop is, said Marx: a thing that tries

GREAT BLOOD by Zee Carlstrom

January 12, 2022

Every day, during his half-hour lunch break, Horace Median Dahl strolls along the ornamental concrete pathway that cuts through the center of Grace Hill Cemetery. During this restive walk, he eats his usual brown-bag lunch: a snack-sized sack of Doritos and a chicken and cheddar sandwich with BBQ sauce, the way his mama always makes it. Today, however, Horace strays from the ornamental concrete path and tosses his mama’s lunch into the garbage. Unencumbered by tradition, he strides down a weedy gravel walkway that takes him into a dark corner of the cemetery, devouring a tilapia salad sandwich and a

THE SHAPELESS by Gregory T. Janetka

January 10, 2022

When they told her how the body had been found thirty feet from the road by prisoners who were scouring the gutter for trash, the only thing she could think to ask was if there was any way to save his sperm. The police did their best to express their regret in broken English but she didn’t hear a word, lost as she was in the minute details of DNA harvesting. Months had passed since then, or was it years? Maybe it was yesterday, who could tell? His body’s blueprint might be gone from this earth but in its absence