Flash

A DIFFERENT KIND OF FIRE by Marina Flores

July 11, 2019

Firefighters in reflective neon suits stormed into the blazing Texas Thrift Store as helicopters circled the building in surveillance. The flames that escaped from the structure’s openings whipped and stirred together like vermilion lovers beneath a glassy black sky. A generator on the roof of the thrift store flickered—once, twice, like the first few seconds after lighting a sparkler on the Fourth of July—seconds before an atomic cobalt and orange explosion. Fire swallowed the structure in one gulp, almost offended by the attempt to save the remains of the building with hose water. That night, not much light was needed

SHOWERLESS by Chris Wilkensen

July 10, 2019

This train is a church in both its movements and its congregation. No one dares interrupt the silence. Metal rolling over rusted metal. Outside the scenery passes by like life to a teenager: fleeting but feeling never-ending. Most passengers wish they could be anywhere else to feel anything else, to feel something other than strictly operational. At each stop people straggle off, mostly alone, onto their next journey. New passengers come aboard. She hovers over me. She breathes harder and heavier. No other free seats. Her pink hair raises my own arm-hair. I move my bag to the ground for

PHARM BOY by Chris Milam

June 30, 2019

At the grocery, I was debating which would pair better with a chicken sandwich when I saw a ponytailed head wedged inside the refrigerated glass doors inspecting a carton of eggs. “Hello there, do you have a preference in pickles?” “Excuse me?” “Pickles.” I held both jars in front of me. “Bread and butter or dill?” “I don’t eat them. Sorry.” The smack of flip flips on linoleum trailed her into the next aisle. I accidentally bumped into her again minutes later. I didn’t need her to be anyone specific, not Rachel, not my mother, or the bored college girl

OUT by Michael Lehman

June 28, 2019

I walked out of the desert to get on a bus, and the driver threw me off in Phoenix. He said I was too dirty and shoved me out the door with a big bucktoothed grin. I changed my ticket at the counter. Immigration cops wearing body armor with black-and-white American flags on their shoulders were standing at the exits barking for papers. Past them, the valley floor was baking, the air full of dust. I walked by a campus of telephone company buildings, surrounded by glistening lawn and a cyclone fence topped with razor wire full of snagged plastic

RAW MEAT by Jo Varnish

June 27, 2019

She was eighty when being eighty meant being eighty. It meant grey hair and dark colored calf length skirts, tights and rounded toed court shoes. It meant a green felted coat and patent leather black purse shaped like the queen’s, with a shiny silver clasp that snapped shut. It meant that purse held, at a minimum: a checkbook, a hairbrush, rouge, a lipstick, tissues (a pack, unused, and at least one folded, used), a pair of spectacles and a variety of pens. It meant she walked slowly, tutted at ill mannered children and grew African violets in mismatched pots along

PIERCED by Charles Duffie

June 26, 2019

Each evening, I remove the band-aid, pinch the tweezers’ silver teeth, and draw the splinter from my thumb. I faithfully clean the small wound. By morning my private stigmata will be partially healed. The body is a determined machine. The sliver of pine is only half an inch long and thin as a needle, but against my brown palm it glows like a cosmic shard. I dip a cotton ball in peroxide, touch the splinter, disinfectant cold as river water, then place the baptized thorn in the hollow of a contact lens case and click the lid. The click always

THE CALL WAS COMING FROM INSIDE THE COCKROACH by Maggie Dove

June 21, 2019

“It’s just a Palmetto Bug. I’ll put it outside.” This could be a more daunting task than relocating, say, a daddy long legs or a lost lizard that found its way into the house. When the humidity is just right in Florida, somewhere around the 90% mark, the Palmetto Bug doesn’t just run away from you. The Palmetto Bug defiantly takes flight, rocketing directly into your face, making even the least squeamish of native Floridians scream in horror as the fwip-fwip-fwip of their wings flutter at all five of your senses. The Palmetto Bug is a shiny, brown, beastly creature

BONE RATE by Kristen M. Ploetz

June 20, 2019

The marble lobby smells like old paper and spiders have taken residence in the dark corners of the tooth dentil trim. From behind a framed pane of cheap glass, ten wanted men stare at Naenie. Eight of them are smiling. She glances long enough to know some are dangerous, but all of them are broken. Of the three windows, the middle is open for business. As Naenie waits her turn, she watches the woman in a red coat. With a gloved hand, the woman slides a small white box toward the clerk and drops three coins into his palm. Naenie

ROADRUNNER by Dave Housley

June 19, 2019

Roadrunner can see the arches in the distance. Behind them, the mountains. He is running, moving as always, minding the blur of the desert on either side, the potential for danger in the road ahead. Is that a rock mound or an anvil, the shimmer sun a hundred wicks of dynamite simmering. He moves up a hill and smells the creature, a whiff and then a beak full of rot, a flash of mottled fur and the coyote is lumbering behind. The beast clutches something in his paw. A detonator or a hand crossbow or the complete Acme Mail Order

TRASH DAY by Savannah Slone

June 18, 2019

Driving home from work, Evelyn wonders what would happen if her airbag released, should she be in an accident. Would it vacuum itself back into place like a video playing in reverse? Would she have to put it back in herself? What if she didn’t put it back in right? Wouldn’t putting it back sound the horn? Should she drive into the country, with the steering wheel’s guts resting on her girth, as not to disturb the neighbors with her honking as she put the airbag back where it belongs? Or would she take it into a mechanic? But what