Stories

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…

He climbs the spiraling stairs. Bowtie dangling from his fist, he climbs and sits atop the castle wall, where the torch-dotted city folds to dark shapes. Below, vastness, empty, as he feels sitting here. His feet are heavy, pulling downward. He does…

In the cool of the morning, I walk between my rows of peppers, brushing my fingers against the glossy leaves of Anaheims, Brazilian Starfishes, and Carolina Reapers. I grow peppers the way my mother and grandmother before me did—I grow them for the …

Molly was twenty-four when she woke up one morning, discovered she was already dead, and shortly thereafter asked me to bury her alive. Our paths had diverged after Ole Miss: she got a house and a husband amongst the ancestral oaks of Oxford, while …

When it comes to life in general, I’m not sure I can agree with her. I like comfortable. I like easy. I prefer not to have terrible things happen. I have to admit, however, that I tend to lean toward the strange. My little world is filled with oddit…

Your obsession with fossils. That silly tool belt… What were you going to do, brush dust off me? Stab me with your tiny shovel? via Pocket

K’loth bends his face to the basin and washes. The first washing of the day is for the Gods. One is the Goddess. Two is the God. Three is the Shadow. The water drips from pale blue tentacles above his mouth that move in the motions of prayers he has…

You are ten years unborn on the evening of the day that will soon become known as G-day. I am washing dishes in the kitchen of our newly bought terrace, cleaning the residue of dinner from our finest boot-sale porcelain. via Pocket

Now Watch as Belinda Unmakes the World - Flash Fiction Online via Instapaper https://ift.tt/1VJHUkx

1. THE BRIEF