The deer came back over and over to places it didn’t understand. The deer hated the lamp at the end of the pier. The deer wanted to die. via Pocket

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Harry and Marlowe and the Secret of Ahomana - Lightspeed Magazine via Instapaper https://ift.tt/2NcGSQM

In an empire at the wide sea’s boundaries, where the clouds were the color of alabaster and mother-of-pearl, and the winds bore the smells of salt and faraway fruits, the young and old of every caste gathered for their empress’s funeral. In life she…

Kayn knew he was being rejected by the orgynism for almost a full year before it fully expelled him. He could easily live a million years past this humiliation and never understand what he had done to deserve such a rejection from the collective tha…

In this universe, the last time we talk is when I return the basketball I borrowed from you. We are seventeen. We’ve known each other for seven years. via Pocket

Times have changed here. We’re not a bunch of kids anymore. All this happened a long time ago, in the summer when Blackboard Jungle ruled the screen, “Rock Around the Clock” shot up the charts, and Hal March asked the first $64,000 Question. via Poc…

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Some kids do that---they imprint on empty objects, they give them stories and opinions and a will, until they feel half-inhabited even to grownups, who have to pretend that they care how Chrissy’s blanket feels about things for so long that one day when Chrissy’s at school they step on the blanket and apologize. I did it with anything, when I was young; my toys were always in the middle of some intense plot that nobody outside could understand.

The woman began as an idea, as so many women do. She couldn’t be entirely beautiful, because that would stretch credibility too far. She couldn’t be ugly, either, though. via Pocket

Even though your creative fiction professor fawns over Joyce, you don’t understand the copy of Ulysses you checked out from the library, so you hide behind it while you stare at your classmate whose skin flickers. His blue and green skin is speckled…

The worst day of Wells the Magician’s life begins pleasantly enough, with a shot of whiskey at the Lost Kingdom bar. via Pocket

How to tell your boyfriend you are in love with a robot: Tell him, “I may possibly be in love with a robot,” because absolutes are difficult for biological brains to process. He won’t be jealous. via Pocket

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We were getting coffee, which we used to do all the time, when Tierney told me she was thinking of having it done. I’d hurt her feelings. I hadn’t meant to. As I tried to think of what to say I followed the line of her eyes to a woman who’d just wal…

It is the business of the Dream Curator to choose, and at the moment he is doing so. On his left, an uninspiring rococo fantasia on a childhood humiliation; on his right, a fractured symbolist nightmare of mollusks and walls of televisions. via Pock…

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I’m fourteen the first time I bargain with the indigo snake. I find it basking on the rocks that are piled against the south side of our house, a lazily drawn line of black, like a cursive letter that has gotten away from itself. It lifts its head a…

NASA died two hundred and three nautical miles above the planet Mars. It died when Daniel Chen, the last surviving crew member of Pilgrim 2, ran out of breathable atmosphere. At that point, Chen pulled himself close to the nearest camera lens. via P…

A little #FreeFic #swordandsoul for your day https://t.co/AkcKYPTlGj

LIGHTSPEED fiction: “The Iron Hut,” by Maurice Broaddus (@MauriceBroaddus). http://t.co/3AtD5gVK0a #FreeFic #Fantasy http://t.co/W1dORVCz5i

Read (or listen to) “Seven Wonders of a Once and Future World,” by @CarolineYoachim. http://t.co/kXKg6HpeTI #FreeFic http://t.co/AVO4nJp1Mn

I remember as children we were warned about the women who drove the unmarked white vans that circled around our neighborhood during those long hot summers, in particular creeping slowly down the boulevard which ran alongside the park, where if you positioned yourself at the right angle, I suppose in front of the swings, you might be able to see a flash of a child’s private yellow underwear as they pumped their legs upward.

“Slots Palace,” says Suze. You all stare at her. Staring at her is worth doing. She’s moved into a new bod since coming here, and the change has been a big improvement. There wasn’t exactly anything wrong with the one she initially adopted for the pentagon’s pre-consensuality union, but she became dissatisfied with it and the dissatisfaction affected the rest of you---especially Kagura, who said it reminded him in all the wrong ways of a past consensual of his who turned out badly.

As the commuter jet descended toward the ruins of Las Vegas, Roland Zhang craned his neck at the window, watching the skeleton towers grow nearer. Billowing clouds of dust clogged the air, and wind-blown dunes partially buried the filthy, abandoned buildings. He’d viewed footage from the far corners of the Earth, every remote hellhole imaginable, but this was the first time he’d ever seen the real deal in person. He tugged at his collar, sweating in spite of the air conditioning.

Jeremiah Tolbert is a writer and web designer living in Northeast Kansas. His stories have previously appeared in publications such as Lightspeed Magazine, Way of the Wizard, and Asimov’s. He’s an avid watcher of television and films, and has completely given up on avoiding spoilers. Spoilerfree: A Device for 21st Century Entertainment Living by Memory …

Use the photograph above as the inspiration for your flash fiction story. Write whatever comes to mind (no sexual, political, or religious stories, jokes, or commentary, please) and after you PROOF…