Flash | X-R-A-Y

BABY WITH A FLAMETHROWER, CHEWING GUM ON A MOUNTAIN by Rebecca Gransden

April 24, 2018

Stay back! I will melt your mugs with fire if you move an inch, you police cordon shitmorons. Your pink stinks. Especially you. Stares at squat policewoman centre left I’ve filed my baby teeth into pointy baby fangs, and I will bite with my baby jaw if you try to stop me. The pitball in the alley showed me how to do it. I watched its eyes too, you know. Baby arcs flamethrower flame overhead making an infernal rainbow against a starry ink sky My burping today is toxic gas, regurgitated from last night, from the barrels of radioactive waste

WHERE WE LEFT IXIAN COUNTY by Tobias Carroll

April 22, 2018

The suburbs of tiny Ixian County were unmade in the torrents and floods of 2003. After the waters had abated they left behind a highway exit, a handful of roads, and little else. Four towns’ worth of ruins and a farm, abandoned to bankruptcy years before, that had gone largely untouched. That was it. The ruined barn and the decomposing silos, now home to hundreds of bats that dined on the county’s grotesque moth population, mocked us all. The mudslides, swore the relevant parties, were finished; the mudslides would never come again. Infrastructure was being built, they promised, at this

A FEMININE DARKNESS REBORN: REVIEW OF MOTHER! by Christina Antonovskaya

April 21, 2018

(Warning: spoilers) We were looking for the room at Champagne Centre for the appointment, and I found a pin on the ground that has “I feel it all” written on it and an image of a woman smoking printed on it. I took it and put it in the left pocket of my pea coat and will probably keep it there. This quote resonates with me and also with the themes of the script and film. Impurity, more exact, the myth of pureness is depicted through Mother’s character with physiology, vicarious causation of surroundings, and the creator of Mother himself,

MEANING OF NIGHT by M. C. Zendejas

April 19, 2018

Dean never came around too much to start with, but after his dog died he stopped coming altogether. Claudia had just moved out, and there wasn’t anything to do anymore. I sat in front of the TV, flipping through channel after channel until I eventually hit static. The quiet became too much and I decided to go over and surprise Dean, but he told me no, that he wasn’t in the mood to see anyone. He said it through the closed door and I had to press my ear against its worn wood to hear him clearly. As I walked

OH, THE MEADOWS by DAVE K

April 18, 2018

Five pairs of hands let me go on Monday morning. Only one pair was needed. My supervisor did a lot of the talking, though the other four men in the room would chime in at intervals to finish his sentences. There was no pattern to their interruptions. Poor head for numbers. Ledgers carious with miscalculations. Antisocial personality, unfit for the camaraderie of professional life. These were their words, their nasal Ivy League voices shared like a common uniform, their faces scrubbed and shaved waxy under the lights, their ties and suspenders, their matching socks. I sat in front of them

XBOX VIDEO GAME REVIEWS 2018 by Gene Morgan

April 10, 2018

Fortnite Fortnite is a riot simulator for children. Characters lives are short like ours– the game is filled with moments to reflect upon hard choices, choices in the format of a fun cartoon-like murder game young boys love. Fortnite for Xbox is a perfect way to get killed over and over again and feel emotion as you grow old and work a job and come home to smoke weed from a battery, make vegan hot dogs, take kids to basketball practice, and fall asleep before making love. This game is an easy diversion in an otherwise asinine journey where you

THIS IS GONNA BE GOOD by Claire Hopple

April 7, 2018

“Do you know where Bernie is?” a stranger asked the man as he was headed in to change. “Not sure. I think I saw him in the parking lot a minute ago,” said the man, trying to be helpful to the stranger even though he was technically a stranger. “Who’s Bernie?” the stranger then asked. “I thought you were looking for Bernie. How can you be looking for him if you don’t know who he is?” “Why can’t I be looking for someone I don’t know?” The man had had enough. He went inside to change for his shift so

IMITATION CRABMEAT by Nathaniel Duggan

April 6, 2018

Dad spends Christmas Eve on the beach killing green crabs, before he returns home to turn on all the holiday lights. The house flashes and dazzles like a landing strip. The sky, meanwhile, looks foreclosed. “You should’ve seen the fuckers,” he tells me, pinching his fingers to imitate claws. “Some of them big as your face.” He has no heat, furniture, or future, so we sit in lawn chairs in the living room, our breath glowing like neon. His expression is sour-smug: he is a man who knows his own expiration date. When he dies shortly thereafter—without complication—I bury him

THE NAVIGATOR by Kelby Losack

April 4, 2018

Because your friends are assholes, they toss us in the trunk in the sixty-nine position. They duct-taped my ankle to the steel rod of my prosthetic leg. I don’t even know how to feel about that. You think that twin telepathy shit is real? Check, one, two. Nod your head or something if you hear me. How are we getting out of this alive? One-two, one-two. Fuck. We’re going to die, huh? Check, check, one, two. If I had any memories of being in the womb with you, I think being curled up next to you in this cramped darkness

LITTLE CACKLES by Derick Dupre

April 3, 2018

A windy morning outside Denny’s in Carefree. Windshields and gas pumps ping with dust. Rosettes of yucca twitch and sway. Inside it sounds like a light rain passing through. A waitress saunters up to a table where three men sit. Her dirndl skirt swishes in time to the dust, and for a moment it seems like the only sound in the world. The three men are John Huston, Rich Little, and Orson Welles. She recognizes Little right away and fangirls out in front of the two older men. Oh my god I knew it, it’s him, can I have an autograph Mr. Little?