Read this poignant yet bittersweet love story by Travis Burnham. Apple trees, shoe golems, & his wife's ashes make for an unforgettable road trip.

Time and space have nothing on this issue. Stories from Stewart C Baker, Andrea Corbin, Wendy Nikel, & Travis Burnham. Editorial by Anna Yeatts

A disaster filled tale about a church knitting circle gone wrong (or right) and a wormhole. Prepare for the Apocalypse and bring a casserole. Read it now!

Read this science fiction short story by Steven Fischer. Only one man can see the oncoming apocalypse, the world turned to ash, including his love.

There’s this story we like to tell on Deck 3—we, the quiet ones. The voiceless dishwashers and short order cooks and house musicians who scrub and busk in grimy bars on a space station full of grimy bars. It’s about a girl who was quiet too. One night, this girl met a trader, just like […]

Step 1: Dig for parts in the Gearwoman’s scrapyard, through dead frames and the rotted pages of old schematics. Find one of her bots, with thin limbs not yet rusted, intact and broken like yourself. Collect, and run away. * * * Step 2: With no schematic, put him back together. Shape his face with […]

A dark fantasy flash fiction story by Sheila Frances for the November 2017 issue. A baker imbues his bread with magical powers

A science fiction flash fiction story by Emily McCosh about family and growing up on distant worlds in the November 2017 issue.

A science fiction flash fiction story by Lina Rather (reprint). The last night in space when transmissions from Earth cease.

A historical flash fiction inspired by trench warfare between the British and Germans by Brian Trent. Friendship in unlikely places.

That it has long been our joke that our hair lengths are inversely proportional, and cannot exceed the same cumulative mass it possessed on the day we met; That our faith was bound by this same Law, your exuberant pantheism balanced against my quiet nihilism; That this Law does not apply to beards; That you […]

Enjoy the magical realism of literary flash fiction by Shara Concepción. Be transported to the Spanish neighborhood of young girls finding their own magic.

Mrs. Bhatia was five when the first colony began on Mathuria. On her birthday, her father started a savings account in her name and began working nights and weekends to fund it. She was sixteen when he got lung cancer, the year before the government mandated the use of respirators outdoors. “Today, Delhi is uninhabitable. […]

The Thing Inside Pluto was displeased. So was Aimee. Its roiling muscle-goo made her queasy, and she’d dressed for pilates, not for two bland government spooks kidnapping her to negotiate with an alien. She lit a cigarette to block the ozone smell. …

She’s four years old, wearing footie pajamas with giraffes on them, and she wants the moon. She’s very specific about when and where. She would like to have the moon on a plate with her breakfast. That way she can look at it while she eats, and when…

Three and a half hours to interview, 270 miles to LA, 94 mph The mass of writhing tentacles that slithered onto the passenger seat a minute ago probably isn’t a hallucination. Correction: given that I had to blow into a tube to start this rental, it…

To-Do List for July 18, 2039 Kill my duplicate from another dimension. Get rid of all this stupid kale. Top Five Reasons I Hate Kale Kale is like broccoli that wishes it were lettuce, or lettuce that wishes it were broccoli. Get your own identity, k…

From H.G. Wells’s tripod-controlling Martians to Douglas Adams’s poetry-loving Vogons, from the cosmic horrors of Lovecraft’s Cthulhu Mythos to the scholarly Sorns of C.S. Lewis’s Space Trilogy, science fiction writers and readers alike have long be…

The precise date and time of the appearance of the Sjöberg Portal is indeterminate, as Ms. Marta Eriksson, on whose property it appeared, noticed it only by happenstance when, upon peering out her study window, she saw the back end of her sheep (Lud…

I clearly remember the first time I saw The Lion King. It was July of 1994, me, my toddler, my newborn, and my mother in a classic big-screen theater. I remember being awestruck by that song, and that stunning opening scene. Mom? She said, “It’s…

Please stop screaming. [110dB—adult human is distraught.] I assure you your offspring is just fine. It appears to be entertained by the dust ‘bunnies’ in my holding tank. Oh—please stop screaming—it has found those plastic keys I sucked up last week…

When we turn thirteen, we witch-children must sing at the Witches’ Sabbat. It is how newly of-age witches are introduced to our ancestors, my grandmother said. Taking puffs of her pipe, she told me about her own Sabbat, in the same woods I would hav…

The first is a boy of only twelve summers. He smells like rotting fruit, his shirt bruised with blood and bile, and I know from the look in his eyes he intends to kill me. I put an end to his suffering as quickly as I can. A mercy, I tell myself. vi…

Paige was itching to paint something when she noticed and remarked on the birds—grackles and ravens mostly—that were flitting around carrying bits of copper wire and circuitry. via Pocket

When I’m approached by writers new to the craft or readers looking for an example of well-written flash fiction, time and again, “Beholder” by Sarah Grey is the story I recommend. There are no world-ending catastrophes or serial killers lurking bene…

Over the past ten and a half years with Flash Fiction Online, we’ve seen hundreds of great stories. But for every editor, there are those few that keep coming back, that are never forgotten, whose titles pop up every time someone asks for your favor…

My favourite story since beginning my time at Flash Fiction Online, the one that I recall most often, is “Portrait of my Wife as a Boat,” by Samantha Murray. Time and again I return to the image of the coracle sitting on the tides edge with the sun …

The Strawberry Queen of Irapuato - Flash Fiction Online via Instapaper https://ift.tt/2IcsmkN

Six months pregnant, and I should have been happy. Six words to fire me, and I should have been angry. Instead, I drifted in a fugue. Spring faded, summer swelled, and our lives were falling apart. So we went for ice cream. June heat, dirty pavement…

A beautiful woman robed all in white, lips red as rubies, followed the young, pale-skinned priest as he walked though the forest. The priest knew she was a yakshi, a demon that tore men’s throats out and drank their blood to quench her thirst. She w…