Flash Archives

BELLYBUTTON BABY by Dilys Wyndham Thomas

October 23, 2025 · Fiction

I have this recurring nightmare in which I swim through amniotic fluid. Poppies litter the fluid, and a baby is lost somewhere amongst all the falling flowers, out of reach, beyond my thrashing hands. To keep the nightmare at bay, I lay awake in yet another hotel room, avoiding sleep. The man in bed with me has his back turned, constellations of freckles scattered on sunburnt skin. It’s obvious from the way his body teeters on the edge of the mattress that he has decided I am a one-night stand. I run my fingers along the map that is this…

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MY ENTIRE EXISTENCE PROJECTING ACROSS THE UNIVERSE IN BILLOWS OF GLITTER, CONFETTI, AND FLUSTERED GIGGLES by Sophie Kearing

October 22, 2025 · Fiction

At the intersection between the Many-Worlds Interpretation and the Law of Assumption, you can bow out of the shitty life you’ve created for yourself and slip into an existence that’s basically your own personal heaven. People call this place your “desired reality.” Let me give you some reference points here. In my old reality, moving house was always an exercise in abject misery. But. Let me tell you how things unfolded after one night I used the “state akin to sleep” to visualize stepping through a doorway into a magical world of miracles and ease. On Monday morning I received…

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THE BACKYARD GRAVE by Marina Manoukian

October 20, 2025 · Fiction

My father dug his own grave. But he didn’t use it right away. For years, the grave lay unfilled and inviting. All he would do was visit it once in a while, stand by its empty feet, and sigh. I don’t know if it was a sigh of relief or impatience. He made us promise to leave the grave unmarked once everything was in its place. Everything has its place. I slept in the grave once. But not on purpose. It’s ill-advised to read meaning into sleepwalking so I won’t try. All I know is that I woke up surrounded…

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A PRAYER FOR THE FISH IN THE TUB by Zoë Rose

October 16, 2025 · Fiction

With just enough water in the tub to sluice through its gills as it thumps its caudal fin and arches its spine the carp could stay there for far longer than it will take to prepare the vegetables for the stock which the carp’s head and bones and skin and any parts not reserved will be joining the next morning. Its jelly eye fixes on the water stained ceiling which it doesn’t see as anything but part of what is above because the carp has never seen water stain or been even wet before the tub. When its head seizes…

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FOLLOWING THE HEARSE by Carleton Whaley

October 10, 2025 · Fiction

Driving through the Detroit suburbs, cutting through traffic, honking and cursing at other drivers, the brothers make their way to the crematorium. It is difficult to keep up with the long hearse. Traffic seems to move automatically for it just as it blocks the brothers’ car. “I know,” the older says to the younger. “Yeah?” the younger asks. They are still navigating the void which now defines their relationship—the change from middle-and-youngest to older-and-younger. “I was just agreeing that I probably shouldn’t have told Nana to shut the fuck up.” “Coulda been handled better,” the younger says. They pass a…

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HEIR APPARENT by Jack Lennon

October 7, 2025 · Fiction

1 Your wife was overjoyed when your uncle drowned in three inches of water at the bottom of a cave. It meant your family would inherit his house. Although you both wished it wasn’t in such tragic circumstances. That’s what you kept saying to people. Not that you had any strong feelings about him or his death. You barely knew him. Was spelunking in Chile a normal pastime of his? Nobody knew him well enough to tell you. Not at the funeral, not during the will reading, nor when you took his place in his very respectable neighbourhood. They would…

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PILE DRIVE ME INTO THE EARTH by Thora Dahlke

September 19, 2025 · Fiction

Althea Downs spends all summer break in her bedroom. Through the pivot roof window, the sun deep fries her no matter where she sits. She drinks berry-kale smoothies and listens to macabre podcasts that give her strange dreams about swimming pools full of blood. She showers at midnight and sweats through the entire night, wakes up cocooned in sheets so soaked you’d think the scale would finally plunge below 100. It does not. She thinks about killing herself, but only casually. This is her tenderest hobby, lazy and indulgent, she spoils it like a rescue. It’s not really death she…

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COAGULOID by Hank O’Neill

September 17, 2025 · Fiction

It tastes so god I can’t hav another bite I say — and the hole of evrybody jus shuts up like oh is she about to stop? Loud one second and then gasping like is this reel? I hear somone literallay go holy fuk is that the end of Mis Plasteek? They’re holding out ther phone recording as they say, Guys I can’t beleev I’m catching this on video, plees like and subscribe. Meenwile I see the Produser behind the curtain mouthing to me: okay nice, now milk it. Which is jus wat we rehursed. The guy with the phone…

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YOU TEACH ME HOW TO BE by Emma Burger

September 15, 2025 · Fiction

You’re all so thin and beautiful. I only wanted to be like you. To want for nothing. To live in a gorgeous Tribeca loft. To wear Brunello Cucinelli and Loro Piana like it was nothing. To show up to morning drop-off at P.S. 234 with an expensive blowout and a full Alo set, en route to pilates. You lived the life I thought I deserved. One day. For now, I was supposed to be your yoga teacher. Your guide. I wanted my body to look like all of yours, but I was the reason yours looked the way they did….

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TWO DAYS AFTER THEIR MOTHER DIES by Kim Magowan

September 10, 2025 · Fiction

Josie uses her key to let herself and her sister Amy into Cora’s apartment. She walks in first, then turns to see Amy standing in the doorway, hand braced against the doorframe. Josie says, impatiently, “Come on.” Finally, Amy enters this apartment their mother lived in for three years, moving here after she injured her knee and at last accepted that it made no sense for an older woman to be living in a house with two sets of stairs. But Amy has never seen it, because she’s so stubborn and unforgiving. Watching her older sister walk slowly into the…

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