Flash

SPRING FORMULA by Tom Snarsky

May 5, 2025

I notice some crocodile cracking near the bend, which is already pitched the wrong way—against the turn, so as a car’s tires point left the road’s normal force pushes it right, recipe for a rollover—and think somebody’s going to get killed. So I go to the municipal office to complain, but no one’s there. BE BACK SOON says the sign. So I grab one of the envelopes and start to write on it, just right on the envelope, my name is Ryan Pendleton I live at 29 Keep Tryst Rd in the Hermitage and someone’s going to get hurt and

BOWLING WITH DRACULA by Justin Gibson

April 28, 2025

The first thing we discovered was that vampires loved contracts. Well, no, sorry, I guess the first thing we discovered was the vampires themselves — that they’re real. We figured it out pretty quick, as pets went missing; as we started to get the heebie-jeebies when twilight flooded our backyards a cool blue; as pale strangers stood outside our windows in the middle of the night and asked if we’d let them in, voices like warm caramel. Very strange stuff for these parts, but very obvious: That’s vampires. But we figured out vampires loved contracts almost right after that. Erik

APPROPRIATE by Andrew P. Heath

April 25, 2025

She said something vague to me. I said something appropriate. She said, What? I said something appropriate. Looking at her. Her collarbone. She said something sarcastic. I said something appropriate. I looked at her collarbone, then slowly looked up at her face. She looked like a cocker spaniel (I did not say that). I had once been very attracted to her. When she would take a shower, I could hear the water running, and I imagined her in there, elegant, graceful, small, her long black hair slicked across her white body. The image was potent and intoxicating, I was drunk

CRYING FROM THE DUST by Jace Einfeldt

April 14, 2025

A week after my baptism, I hit my little brother in the head with a tee-ball bat and sent my whole family into a frenzy on a Saturday afternoon in mid-March and got locked out of the family car and told to sit on the couch and think about what I did while my younger brother bled all over mom’s brand-new dishtowels in the middle seat of our 1998 emerald-green Yukon Denali. As my family flew down the street on angel’s wings, I contemplated what I had done while picking at the beige, peeling leather couch in the living room

OUTSIDE HUSBAND by Natalie Warther

April 9, 2025

The survivalist stuff started as a hobby for my husband. An attempt to disconnect from the tech-dependent modern world. But quickly, our renovated backyard started looking more like a trash dump than a place to entertain the neighbors. He just kept making “tools.” Dental floss snares. Crayon candles. Pantyhose fishing nets. Dryer lint tinder. Maple syrup mouse traps. He used every single trash bag in the house for the water collection system. “Where are your shoelaces?” I called to my sons as they trudged towards the bus stop, flopping out of their sneakers. “Dad took them for his tourniquet kit.”

WOLF IT DOWN by Billie Chang

March 31, 2025

I push Ally’s note clean into the corners of my mouth, the motion wet and slow, the ink kissing molar. Finn is in the shower. The bathroom door splintered last week after Mr. Rutabaga ran into it, full force and head-on, in pursuit of a fast spider. We drove him to the on-call vet. He sits now in his doghouse with one less tooth and a tender snout. I can hear Finn’s motions through the wood-chipped cracks: the stumbling as he raises his leg to wash the bottom of his foot, the collapse of water after he pools the drops

SWORDFISH STRIPS by Michael Brooks

March 24, 2025

Emily spots her strutting up to the hostess stand: a willowy curl of a woman, Asian and raven-haired, white blouse tucked into a black pencil skirt at her narrow waist. Her eyes are sharp as blades, bright as the silver chain about her neck. She grips a Prada handbag that fins from her side and points with a slender finger to a table at the wide bow window, in Emily’s section. Nothing in her face or posture wavers. A man strides in behind her—maybe fifteen years her senior—a graying swoop of hair roofing a scrunched face and thin-framed glasses. He

ACREMONIUM by Shira Moolten

March 18, 2025

Gina didn’t believe Sam when he said he’d discovered mold inside the air duct. “What do you mean, mold?” she said from the couch, not looking up from her phone. “It’s probably dust.” Sam got down from his perch on the bar stool. “I’m going out,” he said, then went to Walmart and bought painting masks and rubber gloves and vinegar. Within 20 minutes he was back, reexamining the duct in their condo with a flashlight. “It’s everywhere,” Sam said. “Come look.” “That’s okay,” Gina said. She was reading a really interesting New York Times article. Besides, Sam was always

TICK by J. Eagleson

March 17, 2025

You are a tick. You fly through the air on an arc of static electricity, in hopes of landing on something alive and real. Your travel is always a courtesy of others, or an unexpected spark of nature. Purgatory for you is a blade of grass or a dark sock that renders you a shadow in the night as you crawl towards your heaven of soft flesh. You latch onto the shadow of her ankle, monosyllabic in name and purpose. People around here tend to wear socks — she does not. A waft of odor floats up from her shoes,

“I’LL DO” by Sacha Francis

March 14, 2025

“I’m not doing a reading for you.” “You do have the cards, though,” Drew sneered. He was laying the deck out in four piles – the way he shuffled Magic. “Yeah,” I said, “but only ‘cause they’re dads.” “And you know how to do it.” He conjoined the sets, his thumbs bending around the feathered edges at first, joking like he wanted to riffle them. I shot him evils and he shot back worse, his nose and eyes scrunching up to mock me. He was like a girl. “Sort of,” I said. I’d never done it for anyone but myself.