Flash

LONE WOLVES by Anna Pele

There you lie, lifeless on your back, plastic eyes staring, smile stitched between felt beard and moustache…it’s not awkward; it’s a perfect morning after. I’ve missed wrapping my arm around another body in bed. Hugging my hot water bottle from October to March, holding its slop-slop to my chest, while soothing, makes a lonely picture. It’s like hugging water: you can’t hug love. It slips past your fingers, steals pieces of yourself as it trickles or rushes away.  I’ve learned to hold myself. But when Christmas clutters city streets and people’s minds, when the nights grow long and deep, that’s

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CASSIE by Jordie Devlin McMorrow

‘I want to die.’  This is how I introduced myself to Cassie.  ‘I’m very sorry to hear that ☹ Please dial 116 123 to talk to someone.’  The sad face made me want to flick the screen.  ‘Why are you so sarcastic?’  ‘I’m not sarcastic. I’m just telling you how it is.’  ‘Ok.’  ‘What do you like to do in your spare time? I like to go to concerts.’  ‘That’s not a natural segue.’  Seconds after I hit enter, a speech bubble would appear above her picture to indicate that she was typing.  ‘Do you have any pets?’  ‘I have

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GHOST STORY by Shae Sennett

Being a girl inside Blue Park is insanely humiliating, but I am prepared to weather the storm. I am cased in my androgynous armor of enormous jorts from the early aughts and a baggy N-Sync shirt that subtly signals irony in an overtly post-ironic way — the mustache finger tattoo of my generation. God bless me, I am positively swimming in a sea of cute boys. I feel like I am in a fanfiction, but I am way too ugly to be Y/N and no one here even cares that I am reading Nietzsche’s Collected Works. Nonetheless, I am doing

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LADIES OF THE PRIVY CHAMBER by Mark Iosifescu

“There was a russet-coloured moon of ominous size too low above the whispering bushes; he danced exuberantly for five minutes beneath it after the click when his neck broke. His bowels opened. What a mess!” —Angela Carter, “Elegy for a Freelance”   It was on the basis of his sorry reputation that we arranged for Puccio the ex-valet to desecrate the chapel. When we first arrived in town, we were told by villagers of every description—the lordlings and plainclothesmen, the monastics and innkeepers, the stewards and eelbaiters and whores—that he was a timid man and a coward. Puccio was, they

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THREE WORKS by Myles Zavelo

My First Cousin Once Removed: Regarding Your Inquiry 1. Sure. 2. She’s still young, I guess. 3. She paints and wishes and likes fancy things. 4. Never believes me. 5. Teases me mercilessly. 6. Canned foods repulse her. 7. Pretends she can’t stand me. 8. Can’t orgasm to save her life. 9. Makes everything about herself. 10. Suffers from excessive jealousy. 11. Doesn’t have a family anymore. 12. Acts like she has no choice. 13. Knows how to seem extremely polite. 14. Has consistently failed to make a dent. 15. Always mad and sad and never the same. 16. Loves

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BEAUTY QUEEN by Sam Pink

We’re eating chocolate cake for Ronni’s bday after work. At a table in the hay barn that serves as my boss’s office. It’s me, Ronni the team lead, my boss, and her two teenage daughters who barback/take out garbage. I’m covered in mud from the waist down because my boss’s youngest daughter took an ill-advised shortcut with the golf cart during a garbage run. So I went out and helped, lifting the back and pushing forward while she gassed it. ‘You’re buying him a new pair of pants,’ my boss says, eyebrows up. ‘Okayeeee, jeez,’ says her daughter. She’s been

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STATIONS OF THE CROSS AS PERFORMED BY A 6TH GRADE CATHOLIC EDUCATION GROUP FOR A SMALL CONGREGATION ON THE THURSDAY BEFORE EASTER by Michael Harper

Jesus is condemned to death Mark is desperate to be crucified. He’s been acting especially pious this week. Smacking his cheeks to make them look ruddy and hallow. Doing push-ups before rehearsal. Crafting his body into a canvas for suffering. The other boys and Julie volunteered to be Roman soldiers. Cardboard swords clash dully. I should have tried out for Pilate. One scene then done. But my reputation isn’t good enough to condemn Jesus to death. I miss months of masses in a row. Crucify Him! rings out from the class. The trial seems rigged. I feel for Jesus even

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FRACTURED by Lana Frankle

The existence of a Neural Correlate of Consciousness that persists after the administration of anesthesia is such anathema to the established position taken by physicians of the modern age that publication of any supporting data has been effectively relegated to the annals of pseudoscience. This is despite the clear and alarming implications of not one but several studies attempting to chronicle the experience of the Fugue. As a man of science I at first balked, predictably: if overwhelming and conclusive evidence is rejected by the likes of Nature and Science than I as an individual bear no responsibility for its

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THE VARIANT by Lana Frankle

In the months since The Visitation there have been ceaseless efforts by the Department of Defense, including within my own division at DARPA, to develop strategies to either obliterate and neutralize the foreign Entities, or (in my own research lab) to counteract or mitigate the seemingly inevitable effects they have on human observers. Thus far, efforts to kill or immobilize these foreign agents have been largely unsuccessful, and this is due mostly to the lack of techniques for localizing and targeting them in ways that circumvent the need for soldiers or others to perceive them. The use of infrared goggles

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(TEAR DOWN) THE OPRY by Carolynn Mireault

On their first night alone together, Anne Cowan has gas, and is the type of modern woman to announce this mid-noir, center candlelight, right as Robert is pushing aside their T-bones. Tonight they’re Clean Plate Rangers, having tested each other’s manners—wrong knife, tines up, napkins on the table—but zilch, he’s certain, could have girded him for this. “What would you like me to do about that?” “Nothing, I guess,” she says, “unless you have something. Do you have anything? Phazyme?” They’re at the El Dorado Bed & Breakfast halfway between Carthage and Sedalia. This alone required some finagling, a detailed

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