KATHRYN KULPA: AFTER EIGHT

Flash Fiction by Kathryn Kulpa AFTER EIGHT Thin Mints were always the most popular. Every year, first sign of spring, our garage filled with boxes of Girl Scout cookies, and my mother ordered extra Thin Mints. Just in case. Was it the name that got us? Thin Mints, as in you can never be too

MELISSA FLORES ANDERSON: Hearing The Hound

Flash Fiction by Melissa Flores Anderson Braced Against It is not true that Pandora’s box once opened can never be closed. It is more that all the forbidden, the broken bits, edges jagged like wild benitoite, get jangled with the polished, the beautiful, the delicate bits of life. It is impossible to pull the threads of

AMY MARQUES: Fed on the fear of the dark

Flash Fiction by Amy Marques  Fever High She didn’t remember being told she was a burden. What she remembered was the world whirlpooling around her in an ever-expanding vortex that fed on the fear of the dark, of bee stings, of Sarah O liking Sarah N better than her in a tornado that gobbled up

RYAN GRIFFITH: Someone had x’ed out the eyes on his passport…

Flash Fiction by Ryan Griffith Transit 1 Someone had x’ed out the eyes on his passport. His face was lost to him, borders.The bar was also a Laundromat and he watched clothes forever falling, the scent of things made clean. On television someone had scored a goal, a president was talking, something was on fire.

ELIOT LI: No Room For Joy

Flash Fiction by Eliot Li Another Fencing Tournament in Columbus, Ohio She unzips her fencing jacket, slips her blades into plastic sheaths. Sinks her face into a towel spread onto both palms, kneeling next to her equipment bag. She stays like that for a while. I want to tell her it doesn’t matter, whether she

GARY FINCKE: THE FIRST GREAT GASP THAT HOLDS

Flash Fiction by Gary Fincke     I Married a Monster from Outer Space     On Friday nights, after my father left without a forwarding address when I was twelve, my mother and I watched old horror movies together. Double features. I picked one. She picked one. There were plenty of them out there, but for the first

JENNIFER SCHOMBURG KANKE: They think you don’t know they are there

Flash Fiction by Jennifer Schomburg Kanke Loss Prevention CW: Mention of past sexual assault They think you don’t know they’re there. The middle-aged men who finished the police academy but failed the test and won’t say if it’s long division or the psych eval that tripped them up. They’ve lulled themselves to a beautiful bitterness

PHEBE JEWELL: Good Girls Don’t

Flash fiction by Phebe Jewell Good Girls Don’t Each night you tell yourself it’s the last time you’ll sleep with Anger. It’s not too late to become a good girl, gliding into wordless sleep, waking empty and calm. Every morning you pull on your good girl skin, tugging the zipper from the soles of your

HOWIE GOOD: Under a cold, ashen sky

Flash Fiction by Howie Good Limbo The presses literally thundered. Up in the newsroom, I could feel the floor tremble from their rumbling as I worked on the next edition, the edition in the process of being printed already outdated. Now words and pictures exist like souls in limbo, never fully present behind the Plexi

CONOR BARNES: All the digital humans are kind of buggy

Flash Fiction by Conor Barnes Uninstall And Reinstall When I download the simulation onto my laptop, I mess it up somehow. I don’t have the right drivers. I have to restart my computer. When it finally works, it’s kind of buggy. Mountains render before the ground under them. The menu for the weather looks nothing