Stories tagged flash-fiction

The Gopher

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Mark’s outside mowing his lawn after dark again. I suspect this spate of nocturnal activity was occasioned by yet another dispute with our neighbor’s Mrs.

The Law of Natural Selection

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Once a student brought him a jar of black widow spiders. Tony put it on his desk. Somehow the jar got tipped over, and the spiders got out.

annah la Javanese. Gauguin

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Her feet are raised upon an embroidered green pillow and she sits naked in a blue velvet chair. Red earrings dangling from her ears, while a red monkey sits at her feet with one leg extended. She is exotic. A powder blue on her lips and at her navel,

Frozen Chicken

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One of the pieces, I noticed, had the real shape of a miniature chicken, its mohawk, pin legs, and small definition of wing. “Look at that,” I said to my friend. And just then, the wing twitched.

The Tamarack Swamps

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Last night, in a tavern called Wits End, we dropped quarters into a console, sized and shaped like an old TV.

Scream (The Lost Children Challenge)

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Nobody knew my cousin's life was going to be hard better than I did. From the moment her mother was shuttled to the hospital at midnight, in a loud pink shirt she had brought from her home village in China...

Residual Flashbacks

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Residual flashbacks; just tiny bright lightning bolts that flash in front of my eyes, just like standing watching a soaring bonfire on a cold and frosty November night, pinprick sparks flying up into the endless darkness of the night.

The Dog Catcher

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I looked around the room at the shit, the dog bed, the dish. Lights burst behind my eyes, knees weak. “Fuck…” I bent over and puked.

Walk away. Walk away now...

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You cannot fool the devil.

City Basements

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My flashlight sometimes catches spiders big as Easter bonnets. Once I spotted a full-grown alligator, probably flushed down a toilet in its youth. Somnolent and heavy, it grinned as I scampered past.

Three Degrees of Separation from the Same Thing We Were Still Supposed to be Thinking About

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It was hard to believe that, even very recently, there had been first days of school where nothing happened.

The ad

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But fat as the man was, she didn't see him. She didn't see any of them anymore.

Lost

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“It’s lost. Lost and gone. Forever. My love for you. I’m sorry.”

Road to Nowhere

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I could smell a bold combination of cheap perfume, stale smoke, and sex excreting from her weathered pores. The bus engine hummed as we climbed a winding road. She scratched her neck and tried to finger comb through her knotted hair. I caught a glimpse of

The List

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There were one hundred titles on the list. One hundred books that could neither be assigned nor put on a recommended reading list.