FLASH #38 AUG '25

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Flash Issue #38 Aug 2025

FEATURING
Mileva Anastasiadou, Claire Bateman, Bethany Bruno, Abbie Doll, Rosemarie Dombrowski (RD), Travis Flatt, Susan Fuchtman, Collette Grace, Jeff Harvey, Kelly Murashige, Pamela Painter, Rory Perkins, Shoshauna Shy, Julia Strayer, Sage Tyrtle, Grady VanWright, Maru Yang

Flash Reading
Friday
August 29, 2025
at 7:30 PM
View it here >>>

Mileva Anastasiadou

He Speaks Led Zeppelin and I Talk Talk

He sings, oh yeah, babe, I’m gonna leave you, he sings loud like he owns the song, like he owns me
but doesn’t want me anymore.
I sing, na na na, la la la, it’s a shame, such a shame. I can’t properly recall the lyrics because I
never thought I’d need to sing them. I never thought I’d need him either.

He looks straight ahead, right at the future and he sees open skies and possible fulfilling yet unlived
lives.
I look at him, then at the past and I see deep waters and traps I didn’t fall into, then I look back at
him who is still gazing at the sky.

If we are all planes, he doesn’t like this airport, he’s taking off.
If we are all planes, I am a boat, because I’m too heavy to fly and I can’t lift the anchor, but I don’t
mind and I enjoy the view.

I beg him to stay, as Kurt Cobain is singing in the background, how low.
I hear, I’m way below you and I can go lower.
He hears, I’m high above you and I bet you can stoop lower.

He’s only goth in June.
I’m goth in winter too, when life gets cold and harsh and gothic.

He says, whatever I say or do, it all comes down to this: is this worth my time?
I think but I don’t speak out, whatever I say or do, it all comes down to this: how can I make some
sense out of this crap?

He’s an air sign, he talks in maths and riddles and a particular Led Zeppelin song.
I’m a water sign, I barely speak, but I Talk Talk.

He writes down the grocery list. I never talk money, or errands, or chores with him, because he’ll
say, yes, I’ll go get milk but have you considered the existential wound induced by time?
I decipher the word code, milk stands for ‘goodbye’, eggs for ‘so long’, and mozzarella stands for ‘I
don’t love you anymore’.

Once we overcome this, I tell him, but he places his finger on my mouth.
He comes close, close, closer, a quick kiss on the forehead, we’ll never overcome this.

He goes, I want you.
He means, I want you now.

I say, a glass of water, please.
I mean, do you care enough to keep me alive?

Mileva Anastasiadou is a neurologist, from Athens, Greece, and the author of "Christmas People" and "We Fade With Time" by Alien Buddha Press. A Pushcart, Best of the Net, Best Microfiction, and Best Small Fictions nominated writer, her work has been selected for the Best Microfiction Anthology 2024, and Wigleaf Top 50 and can be found or is forthcoming in many journals, such as the Chestnut Review, Necessary Fiction, Passages North, The Forge, and others. She serves as the flash fiction editor of Blood+Honey and The Argyle Literary Magazine.

Claire Bateman

The Radiant Age

Yes, there are still some people alive today who remember that otherwise ordinary Tuesday in February when, as dawn broke time zone by time zone around the globe, the air suddenly became visible as color-streams like it was awakening from a long dream of obscurity or light had decided to turn itself inside out.

  Startled by the iridescence rippling against their windows, adults locked their children indoors, stepped hesitantly onto their porches, drawn by the shimmering motion yet fearful that the fuchsia, turquoise, vermillion, etc. might clog their lungs―a few even pricked their own fingers to make sure that inhaling the strange air wasn’t making their blood run aquamarine or canary yellow. When they discovered that it was still red and that breathing felt just the same as it always had, they gave themselves up to a frenzy of picture-taking—selfie in tangerine and ochre! selfie in burnished gold! Released to play in the brightness, the children tried to close their fists around the colors slipping between their fingers and stuck out their tongues in hopes that the breezes would be candy-flavored, but they tasted disappointingly neutral.

  For a while, the whole world seemed like a party―a placid pastel cotillion, a neon hallucinogenic rave, and every kind of celebration in between, depending on atmospheric conditions. Hardly anybody went to work; instead, they all wandered around marveling at how the colors flowed, mixing and separating languidly or violently according to weather patterns. Eventually, of course, the people became habituated to the sight of their own neighborhoods’ atmospheric palettes, no matter how lavish, and then everyone was on the move to view the bone-silver winds of craggy coastlines; the delicate viridian breezes gracing mountain tea gardens; the vertiginous indigo crush of rainforest monsoons. But since the human psyche can bear only a limited amount of novelty and transcendence, this travel craze eventually burned itself out. The voyagers returned home to change tires and tote groceries amid local chromatic eddies as well as cook and sleep in them, since by then, the outside air had circulated into all the buildings. Life went on in the normal ways except that hardly anyone used cosmetics, created art, or dressed in anything but white, black, or gray since everyone’s visual perceptions were already filtered through veil upon shifting veil of color.

  And now on each anniversary of the change, the elders describe how things used to be while everyone else scrunches up their faces, struggling to picture the lusterless past–”How did the people endure it?” they ask. And the elders assure them of how lucky they are to have been born in the Radiant Age.

  Yet not everyone is dismayed by the thought of invisible air. In fact, a rumor has sprung up that someplace in the world (on which of the seven continents, nobody knows) there’s a remote and hidden valley inexplicably shielded from the change; unaware of their singularity, its reclusive inhabitants move through each day “barefaced,” without any colors between them. Though most people recoil from this story with a combination of pity and disgust, it has ignited the imagination of a few individuals in every city, but because they’re savvy enough to keep their fascination a secret, each will go through their whole life assuming they’re the only one who daydreams about sailing over storm-wracked oceans, slogging through putrid bogs, and staggering along frozen mountain passes, ice axe in hand, until at last they discover the valley where they can gaze to their heart’s content into that element so wondrously disguised as pure and perfect absence.

Claire Bateman is the author of the hybrid collection The Pillow Museum (Fiction Collective 2) and nine poetry collections, most recently, Wonders of the Invisible World (42 Miles Press) and Scape (New Issues Poetry & Prose). She has been awarded Individual Artist Fellowships by the National Endowment for the Arts and the Tennessee Arts Commission Foundation, as well as two Pushcart Prizes and the New Millennium Poetry Prize (also twice). She lives in Greenville, SC, and is poetry editor of Hubris.

Bethany Bruno

“What We Carried”

Sweet Tea (unsweetened)
Aunt Carla set out a full pitcher, claiming it was healthier this way, even though Mama always said unsweet tea was for Yankees and people with no backbone. The ice had already melted once, then refrozen in the drive from Jacksonville to Port St. Lucie. The cubes clinked softly as I poured a cup, pretending not to hear Carla whispering that I looked “smaller” than she remembered.

Deviled Eggs
Deviled with too much paprika, just like Mama made them. Dot from church said she used Mama’s recipe “exactly, right down to the mustard brand.” But I remembered Mama scraping her finger around the yolk bowl to taste for spite. “Recipes are for women who don’t trust themselves,” she’d say. I popped one into my mouth and gagged at the sweetness. Miracle Whip. Mama would’ve tossed the whole tray.

Ambrosia Salad
Glowing pink and sour in its glass bowl. Cousin Marissa brought it from a Publix in Palm Beach Gardens. Nobody touched it. Mama called it “swamp mush.” When I was six, I cried after she threw my Easter serving onto the lawn and told me if God had wanted us to eat fake fruit, He’d have made coconuts grow with marshmallows inside.

Macaroni and Cheese
Store-bought, with crumbled Cheez-Its on top. Lukewarm. I watched people scoop it anyway, out of obligation. I wondered if they knew it came from my hands, the daughter she hadn’t spoken to in eight months. I’d made it in a foil tray, covered it with plastic wrap, then stood in Mama’s old kitchen, staring at the burnt-orange tile and waiting to feel something. I didn’t.

Fried Chicken (cold)
From someone named Darla. I didn’t know who she was. She had short coral nails and a Gold’s Gym keychain. She said, “bless her heart” when she hugged me and called Mama a “firecracker,” which was polite code for something less polite. Mama would’ve hated her. The skin was rubbery.

Green Bean Casserole
Cream of mushroom from a can. Topped with the wrong onions—no crunch. Brought by Mrs. Kimbrough, who still insisted I looked “just like her,” even though my mama and I hadn’t shared a face in decades. At some point, I stopped correcting people. It made everything quieter.

Watergate Salad
Green, fluffy, electric. Mama made it every Fourth of July, even when nobody asked for it. Said it was the only recipe she learned from her own mother. Said it was called “Watergate” because everyone lied about what was in it. I took a spoonful. The flavor smacked of pistachio pudding and cheap secrets.

Winn-Dixie Sheet Cake (chocolate)
Still in its clamshell. I grabbed it from the bakery aisle at 9 a.m., unsure why. There had been coconut cake in the fridge, but that felt too pointed. This one had balloons piped in green and blue frosting. I scraped them off with a plastic fork and left the slab bare on the table.

  No one ate it.

  After most of the guests left, I sat on the screened-in porch and let the swamp heat settle over my shoulders. The frogs had started their slow, deliberate conversation. Inside, someone rinsed dishes. Someone else turned down the volume on Mama’s old transistor radio. I closed my eyes.

  She used to sit out here in the evenings with a cigarette and a cup of black coffee, even in the summer. Said it was the only place she could hear herself think. Said Florida was the only place where grief made sense—where everything was already half-sinking anyway.

  Aunt Carla brought out the last of the sweet tea.

  “She’d be proud of you,” she said.

  I didn’t answer.

  Instead, I pulled a crumpled napkin from my pocket. Inside was a single deviled egg from the tray, the yolk sliding against the paper. I placed it on the railing and waited.

  The lizard came first.

  Then the ants.

  Then nothing.

Bethany Bruno is a Floridian author whose writing echoes the language, history, and quiet beauty of her home state. Born in Hollywood and raised in Port St. Lucie, she earned a BA in English from Flagler College and an MA from the University of North Florida. Her work has been featured in over sixty literary journals and magazines, including The Sun, The MacGuffin, and The Louisville Review. Visit www.bethanybrunowriter.com for more.

Abbie Doll

foreheads: the billboards of the face

they’d met through mutual friends, bonding over their state-based names, his short for california, hers for arizona. what with them sharing a border and all, building a life together seemed inevitable.
  one night, cal stood scrubbing away at a pancake stack of dinner dishes, whistling while he worked and all that, when ari stormed down the stairs, mission at hand. she burst into the kitchen: electric toothbrush buzzing—a contained hive between her lips—paying him no mind while she rummaged through the junk drawer. he stood there in inquisitive silence, watching the episode unfold, her determination an electric force dominating the room. always.
  ari, in her secret desperation, unearthed a crumpled pad, holding it up to no one in particular in a flashy huzzah motion. her hands, moist from the aforementioned brushing, shifted said dampness to the paper in her grasp, peppering it with raindrop splotches until its stark whiteness began to resemble a pale dalmatian. and like a dog, she resumed her plunderous dig, shoving shit aside in a thunderous display. cal continued to stare and admire, earthquake shook by her passion, as ari unearthed a bouquet of ballpoint pens. she clicked and scribbled the first but got no ink. chucked it into the sink where it made a plop and a splash into his sudsy forgotten dishwater. she goldilocks-proceeded to the second, which too was a storybook dud, an undetonated grenade that soon ricocheted off their tile backsplash, off hexagons of shimmery gold, clattering to the counter.
  cal approached with hands outstretched, but ari was too immersed, too honey-glued to her archaic hunt for a functioning writing utensil to see. she grabbed a third—which worked!—producing its ink in a satisfying revelatory stream as she scribbled out her thought in a fury of a hurry, undoubtedly determined to secure it—to protect it from the greedy jowls of the unspeakable ether. she folded the finished slip in two, stuck it into her pocket, and snuck back to the doorway, beyond ready to spit and rinse, but cal was waiting, sneak attack ready. he seized his shot, scooped her up, and wrestled her back, pinning his possessed lass with a playful pounce. ari shrieked and squirmed, but his fridge-like weight kept her in place as he dug his fingers down into the pockets of her jeans, claiming his treasure.
  dominance asserted, the win was his. he simba-hoisted the soggy slip above her head and read its contents, bursting into a laugh of disbelief, giving her a look like this? this—was worth all this hassle just to jot down? she nodded, eager and sheepish, a sly grin creeping. he held her there a moment longer, grabbed a black Sharpie from their ravished drawer and scrawled FOR RENT in big, bold strokes across the vacant space: the prime real estate of his goofy lover’s face.

Abbie Doll is a writer residing in Columbus, Ohio, with an MFA from Lindenwood University and is a Fiction Editor at Identity Theory. Her work has been featured in Door Is a Jar Magazine, 3:AM Magazine, and Pinch Journal Online, among others; it has also been longlisted for The Wigleaf Top 50 and nominated for The Best Small Fictions, Best Microfiction, and the Pushcart Prize. Connect on socials @AbbieDollWrites.

Rosemarie Dombrowski (RD)

Texts from the Tour Van

I text to tell you that we’re broke, and that we still owe things, and that other things are broken too. But you know this because it’s what you’re running from as you’re driving north across New Mexico, calculating the ratio of broken strings to dollars owed to confirmed attendees by the hour.

Back home, I realize that Saunders is an absurdist, or maybe just absurd, but I’ve never liked Beckett as much as the rest, so why would he (Sanders) be any more appealing? I text you to tell you that the New York Times can go fuck itself, which is something I should’ve had the guts to say years ago.

Later that day, I text you to say that Whitman was the first American to truly understand the horrors of war, or at least the first to inscribe it, which he did in notebooks and poems and the letters he wrote to the mothers of the amputated boys. Whitman was everyone then and yet no one is Whitman today. I ask you if you see the irony in this and you do.

You’re almost to Denver now, and you’ll be too big for Phoenix by Christmas, so I text to remind you about the RV, how I’ve wanted one since my aunt and uncle took me to the Ozarks, let me drink Shasta and watch the deer lap up lake water from the kitchen window. They always said that no matter how poor you are, if you have a table where you can share a good meal, you’re going to be happier than most.

We’ve talked about this before, the happiness equation or the 50K theory. I’ve never wanted six garages or more shoes cluttering the closet than I already have. I hate it when want gets in the way of love, when it fractures our bond and leaves us texting hateful things or nothing or all. But we’re never really like that, and maybe it’s because we’re not quite broke and we’re not quite broken, though we’re tired of all the shattering around us, and I keep wondering when that’s going to do us in.

I text you in the middle of the night to tell you that I heard someone break a bottle in the alley. I imagined the shards boring into the hard clay, puncturing patches of weeds and years of debris, all of this followed by silence, as though everyone who heard it figured it was nothing worth texting about.

Rosemarie Dombrowski (RD) is the inaugural Poet Laureate of Phoenix, Arizona, the founding editor of rinky dink press, and the founding director of Revisionary Arts, a nonprofit that facilitates self-care and healing through poetry. She’s published four collections of poetry and is the recipient of a Fellowship from the Academy of American Poets. RD teaches at Arizona State University, and her work has been featured at Poetry Daily, poets.org, the Emily Dickinson museum, NPR, TEDx, and elsewhere.

Travis Flatt

Exiles in the Forest of Ghostlights


            I am Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, and I stand and gulp like a toad, sweating and saying nothing. And nothing. And more, nothing.
            Someone in the audience, old from the sound, coughs so loud I can feel it in my knees. Mike, who plays Horatio, stares at me while one leisurely bead of sweat moseys down his forehead and rests on the tip of his nose. His eyes scream, "Dude, for chrissakes, say something."
            I walk off stage left. Just walk right offstage left. Exit stage left pursued by silence.
            Instead of discovering a frantic stage manager standing at a podium with a script to cue me, I find darkness. So much of it. Miles. Infinite. Until, one by one, flick on little bluish lights. I make my way to the nearest light; it's a ghostlight lamp, the pole lamps illuminating backstage in most theaters with soft blue-white bulbs. I'm in a forest of them, amongst a constellation. The ghostlight only gives off light, so it's cold here. There's a slight, chilly breeze.
            Nearby, I make out a throng of figures huddled around another ghostlight, like an impotent campfire. I wander over to slip in and join their hushed conversation, see a guy dressed in a toga, a mime, a dude in a bear suit, and a flapper lady. I hope to go unnoticed, to eavesdrop, but they stop to stare at me. "Hey y'all," I say, "What's all this?"
            Bear Suit gestures outward with both hands like "Ta-da!" and says, "This is where you go when it happens."
            The rest nod.
            Toga Guy mutters something in Latin.
            "Oh," I say. "Can I ever go back?"
            Flapper Lady shakes her head sadly and says, "Not unless you remember."
            I look back and see no trace of the stage curtains I parted to give me into this speckled void. The dotting of lights seems to have spread through the outlying darkness, advancing in all directions—as they say our universe might—and more and more blink on around the rim of the expanding perimeter. "Wait, shit," I say. "My girlfriend's back there. In the audience. With my parents."
            Bear Suit shrugs and says, "And I heard we had a scout come down from Hollywood. From MGM. That's a sad story, Bub."
            The mime dabs her eyes with an invisible handkerchief. She blows her nose with it, then smiles and offers it to me.
            I smile back and decline.
            "I'm sorry, dear," Flapper Lady says. "We all lost someone." Now, she glares at Bear Suit. "This isn't the company any of us would have chosen. I'm sure."
            Bear Suit brightens, "Oh, hey—you didn't bring any cigarettes?"
            Toga Guy looks up, hopeful, and mutters something—still in Latin—to Bear Suit.
            Bear Suit nods, then slyly says, "We know you've got something to drink."
            "Ignore them," Flapper Lady says, "Try to concentrate. While it's still fresh: where were you in the show?"
            I pace, snapping a finger, and say, "'To be or not to be, that is the question. Whether tis nobler in the mind to suffer the… the…'"
            The Mime holds her left arm straight out, gripping something in her hand, squints like she's aiming, then strains to pull something back with the other fist.
            "Arrow!" I shout.
            They shush me.
             “Slings and arrows," I whisper. “God, thank you. Slings and arrows.”
            In the distance, the lights begin blinking off, sweeping inward toward us. My fellow ghostlight campers shuffle away separately into the darkness.
            For a moment, I'm back in the blackness, and a column of light opens ahead, through which I hear the shuffling of programs, a sniffle, my dad's distinctive bassy mumble, and my final thought is how badly I need to pee as I step out into the yawning brightness.

Travis Flatt (he/him) is an epileptic teacher and actor living in Cookeville, Tennessee. His stories appear in Gone Lawn, Flash Frog, Flash Boulevard, New Flash Fiction Review, JMWW, Prime Number, Puerto del Sol, and other places. He is a Best Small Fictions nominee and was long listed for the Wigleaf Top 50. He enjoys theater, dogs, and theatrical dogs, often with his wife and son.

Susan Fuchtman

FAULT LINES

              When my brother Connor walked around the corner, he looked pretty much the same as always, though he’d been dead two weeks. He was dressed in the same jeans and t-shirt he’d had on when he jumped from the plane, but clean and whole, not bloodied where his skin ripped, not torn where shattered bones broke through.
              I’d been splitting wood. It felt good to haul the wood splitter around, throw it hard into a clean oak log, again and again until my arms felt slack. I didn’t see him right away but felt his eyes pricking at my neck. When I turned and saw him, nonchalant like he was home from college for the weekend, I dropped the splitter and said, “Connor!”
              I walked over, not sure what to do. It’s not like there’s ghost etiquette. He must have thought my brain had oozed out into that field like his. He stepped toward to me. He didn’t seem mad at all. I backed away.
               “No, Connor, no, I’m so sor—" I bent over and vomited. When I stood up, he wasn’t there anymore. I pulled some weeds and wiped the splatter off my boots.

              The last time I’d seen him alive was his 21st birthday. He’d invited a bunch of us for his first solo parachute jump―Alf and Jeremy Hendershot, his girlfriend Julia, and some friends from college who lived nearby. Our cars and pickups were parked on the edge of the field where he’d land. Alf had a cooler in the back of his truck, filled with soda and orange juice rather than the usual IPAs. Julia brought cinnamon rolls because they were Connor’s favorite, and we made sure to save him one. We were amped, laughing and joking as we watched him drop out of the plane. At first, he was okay, arms and legs spread wide. But then we saw the tangled chute. We covered our eyes, but we didn’t think to plug our ears.
              The second time I saw Connor’s ghost, Mom had me picking raspberries north of the house. The bushes were barbed and full of bees, so I was focused on avoiding both, yet picking quickly to get the chore over with. When I started back to the house, bucket full, Connor was there.
              He grinned, like he was happy, happy to see me, happy to be a ghost. I set the pail down, slowly, and glared at him. Connor’s eyes opened, wide.
               “What the fuck, Connor,” I yelled. I hoped Mom wouldn’t hear me in the house. “Why the fuck did you have to go and die?”
              I heard the back door slam; Mom walked toward me, eyes narrowed and curious. Connor was gone. I picked up the bucket and strode into the house, pulse throbbing in my ears.

              His ghost visited me one more time. I’d been fishing in the creek below the pasture. At first all I noticed were twigs falling, then he jumped down from the big maple tree, red and yellow leaves skittering. I threw down my gear, including the creel with three river trout. The last one I’d caught flopped a little, gills still moving, not quite dead yet.
               “I never should have given you that flyer—”
              Connor shook his head hard, pointed at himself.
              Nobody else knew about the flyer that advertised skydiving lessons—not Mom, not Dad, not the therapist. I’d thought I was helping him.
               “I didn’t want your 21st birthday to end up like Mike Halstead’s, drunk out of your brains and the Civic wrapped around a tree.” I could feel the bile in my throat again, swallowed it. “Oh, Connor, I wanted—"
              Connor walked over and hugged me. He wasn’t cold. He squeezed me so tight I couldn’t talk, let alone breathe, but I didn’t want him to stop. Once I could breathe again, I was alone.
  The third trout, the one I’d caught last, was as still as the others now.

Susan Fuchtman writes poetry and short fiction. Her recent and forthcoming work can be found in Short Circuit, Reckon Review, Pangyrus, Flash Flood, and elsewhere. She lives in Iowa City, Iowa where she is a board member for PorchLight Literary Organization, a non-profit which supports writers through community based, collaborative, and multi-disciplinary approaches to creative writing.

Collette Grace

tenderloin

The driver asks me what I plan to do while I’m in the city. I try a lie on for size. I tell him I’m visiting my dad. The window is rolled down, sweat cooling off my palm as I ease it into the jet stream generated by our highway cruise. My father is in a different timezone. His tenderloin recipe requires cooking twine, lemon juice and a rub. I find myself wishing I lived in another decade. I have not eaten meat in seven years. If you handed me a forkful of his tenderloin, I would not hesitate.

Collette Grace is a Texan author who needs to write like she needs to breathe. She is a graduate of Texas State University with a B.A. in English and Religious Studies. She enjoys literary fiction with queer and romantic themes, though her guilty pleasure genre is apocalypse fiction. She currently works as an administrative assistant. Her hobbies include reading, writing, napping, and being plagued by e-mails. Instagram: @collette.grace

Jeff Harvey

First Day Jitters

Miss Cheatham asked me on my first day in her fifth-grade classroom to introduce myself so I walked to the front and said, “I’m Pete and I like to swim and paint pictures of dragons, and me and my younger brother have the same last name even though we have different dads because if anybody on the west coast heard my brother’s real last name, they’d know his father was the head of that motorcycle gang with angels on their jackets, which is one reason we had to leave Vegas, but mainly we left after Mom got into trouble working at the Stardust because she only dealt aces to her boyfriend, and some kind of bad guy saw it on camera and was after her, but Mom knew where to hide out so he would never find us and that’s why we’re back in Memphis.”

Jeff Harvey lives in San Diego and edits Gooseberry Pie Lit. His work has recently appeared in or is forthcoming in Whale Road Review, Ghost Parachute, Bending Genres, and MoonPark Review. He's online at jhhwriter.com.

Kelly Murashige

Half-Mast

            When he tells you he slept with Aila Chan, you sag in the wind. It’s her. That her. The her you used to call a sister. You too shared a bed, back when you were little. She had a bug-eyed plush she kept on the top rail of her headboard.
            You ask why. He shrugs. They were drunk, and it was fun.
            You nod, smiling, like you’re not dying inside.
            Once he’s gone, you cry. You lost a competition you don’t remember entering.
            You text him that night. You want to talk. Tomorrow.
            You want him to know why you reacted the way you did. You want him to see why you’re so slow to trust. You want him to understand you two were once best friends. You still can’t look at her without falling apart.
            He tells you he’ll meet you by the stairs, after assembly. You spend the rest of the night writing down everything that happened. You write so much, you take up two whole sheets of paper. You clutch them all throughout assembly the next day, wrinkling the corners.
            Then, at last, dismissal. You wait by the stairs, students streaming all around you. When you turn your head, you catch sight of the flagpole, its flag waving in the wind.
            You wait. You wait. You send a string of messages. Hours later, he texts back, apologizing for forgetting. You say it’s okay, then ask if he’s free tomorrow.
            You reread your notes. Cross out a few things. He doesn’t need to know all that.
            Next day. Same place. Start of lunch. He doesn’t come.
            He’s sorry. So sorry. He had to meet a friend.
            You set up another meeting. Same place. Different time. Then, when he misses that one too, you try once more, with enthusiasm. Different place. Same time. It’ll work. You’re sure this time.
            Your written explanation gets shorter every day. You stuff more and more of your hurt back into yourself, editing yourself down, crossing out your own feelings. You fade into the background, two papers becoming one, then half a sheet, then nothing at all.
            Years later, in your mind, you’re still there, at the flagpole. You hold onto your secrets, even as they grow in you.
            Then you do it. Lower the flag. Mourn all that could have been.
            You raise your head, then the flag, beautiful even when alone.

Born and raised in Hawaiʻi, Kelly Murashige is the author of the YA novel The Lost Souls of Benzaiten (Soho Teen, July 2024), which was listed as a winner of a 2025 Young Adult Favorites Award by the Children’s Book Council and a best book of 2024 by Honolulu Magazine. Her second YA novel, The Yomigaeri Tunnel (Soho Teen, July 2025), received a starred review from Publishers Weekly.

PAMELA PAINTER

NOAH PRATT WRITES A STORY


Stories tell us who we are Mrs. Marsden says to her fourth grader Noah Pratt.

            Noah Pratt says stories are stupid.

            Pratt says he don’t read stories.

Then write a story Mrs. Marsden says.

            Noah Pratt writes a story.

            Noah Pratt writes fourth grade sucks.

            Noah Pratt writes Comfort Rooms suck.

            Noah Pratt writes Ms. Beemer’s comfort sucks.

            Noah Pratt writes call me Dungeon Master.

            Noah Pratt writes my DM friends live in my closet.

            Noah Pratt writes my DM friends protect me.

Noah Pratt says this story is dumb.

Write how your DM friends protect you and what from Mrs. Marsden says.

            Noah Pratt writes this story is not about me.

            Noah Pratt writes this story doesn’t have any more stories.

Noah Pratt puts an X at the end of this line.

Noah Pratt says read this story and die.

                                                By Noah Pratt.

PAMELA PAINTER is the award-winning author of five story collections. Her stories appear in numerous journals and anthologies, and have been included in Four Norton Anthologies, Best Microfictions, Best Short Fictions, and have received four Pushcart Prizes. Painter’s stories have also been featured on NPR, YouTube, and staged by WORDTheatre in Los Angeles, London, and New York. Painter is a Founding Donor of the Flash Fiction Archive, established in 2020 at the Harry Ransom Center, Univ. of Texas, Austin.

Rory Perkins

Monsters Of Our Own Invention

Before you died we were fifteen laying on my bed staring up at the In Between where the monsters lived. I made up stories of children being dragged through the cracks in the ceiling and adults who became ghosts. You screamed and dragged me under the covers.

Before you died we went into the woods at night and called out to spirits we pretended to believe in. Your body was already weakening then and we had to stop every few meters. When it got dark we sat stargazing through a gap in the trees and listened out for the voices of long dead relatives. A squirrel launching between branches sent your head into the crook of my neck. I promised to protect you. We locked pinkies and said that one day we would get married.

Before you died you were too ill to get out of bed. I came over everyday after school and told you what was going on underneath the floorboards. I wrote you chants in a language only we knew that would ward off the monsters with three heads and no eyes.

Before you died the monsters were closing in. They followed you to the room with too-white walls and smiling nurses. These monsters attached themselves to your arms and legs and spoke in the beats of your heart. They were keeping you alive, I said, and maybe soon they would take you to the In Between where I could watch you from back home under the covers.

After you died I left the funeral early and ran into the woods. I lay in the same clearing we used to visit and listened to a thousand spirits hiding in the branches. Above, something flapped its wings. Another soul taking flight.

Rory Perkins is a British writer focusing on shorter works. He has been published in Vast Literary Press, SoFloPoJo, Passengers Journal, and Artam's The Face Project (forthcoming). He can be found at @roryperkinswriter on Bluesky.

Shoshauna Shy

SHEET CAKE FROM TARGET

OK, so I kick the bucket eight days before Christmas. Not the best time to try and nab a pastor, funeral director, or airline tickets. Besides, Kenny and his wife are coping with that wild card stepson who totaled their Buick, and Bethany is packing her family for the holidays in Paris. Jamie’s bakery has orders up the wazoo, so it’s not like he can get here and do my red velvet cheesecake or that chocolate tuxedo torte I adore. Arnold (not their father) is totally useless at organizing a movie date, bless his heart, much less a razzle-dazzle ballyhoo for me. No one knew about my faulty heart valve anyway. So, if nobody can make it to Ypsilanti for Old Gram till after New Years, that’s soon enough.
But then it’s Ground Hog Day and there I lay–still in cold storage. Even got the headstone, casket and plot paid for so it’s just one simple phone call. Wrote a little comedy skit for the twins, made a playlist with some George Winston (everybody likes George Winston), and instructions for Bethany to sing “The Water is Wide” with her guitar. Figure those lessons during high school should pay off somehow.
  Next thing I know, Kaylick Funeral Home gets on Kenny’s case, says they can’t keep me any longer; it’s state law. Didn’t they tell him about the casket, for chrissake? I spent a week deciding between a blue or pink sateen liner, then went with pink to give my face some color. But whatever Kaylick did or didn’t say, knee-jerk Kenny somehow opts to go the cremation route. Doesn’t even check with anybody. So Arnold being Arnold plunks me on the dining room table, tells them how he gets to eat with me every night (ha ha). Says let’s plan a memorial for the spring. Bury her ashes then, says my Arnold.
     April April April bounces phone-to-phone, the new mantra. April’s just around the corner.
  Except now it’s June. Now it’s graduation parties and swim lessons and mini golf and some ditzy coworker’s wedding (excuse me? Coworker?), every weekend chockablock. Arnold wants to put our house on the market because he’s relocating to Sunset Villa on Sanibel Island. That’s where the biddies line up to fawn over any remnant of the male species that washes ashore. Goddammit, Kenny, can’t you concoct a little to-do in the backyard before he sails?
  Because what I want is to swoop in and eavesdrop while you all are finally gathered in one place. Let me hear the stories traded about my Cool Whip waffles, our sledding hill Saturdays, the soccer games I sat through, the pooches I rescued. Little Doxie napping on my feet under the dining table, remember that? I wore those fur slippers on purpose! The hands of Rummy we played when you each made it home weekend nights and we sipped 7-Up and ate Mallomars, sometimes till 2:00 a.m. Got you home by curfew that way. And those quilts I sewed from all your pajama tops once Jamie outgrew them. Now they cover the grandchildren’s beds.
  So, drop bally-hoop-lah, Kenny, drop razzle-dazzle. Just make a picnic in the yard. Tell your brother he doesn’t need to assemble no ganache-y orange liqueur five-layer anything. I’ll settle for a sheet cake from Target. A day-of sheet cake will do.

Shoshauna Shy earned a Notable Story distinction in Brilliant Flash Fiction’s 2022 contest, was included in their 10th Anniversary contest anthology in 2024, and long and shortlisted in the Bath Flash Fiction Award anthologies in 2022 and 2023. She was shortlisted for the Flash Fiction Contest 2023 Awards conducted by South Shore Review, and in 2025, was a finalist for the Wild Atlantic Writing Award out of Donegal, Ireland.

Julia Strayer

Polar Opposites

I follow a woman on Instagram who lives on Svalbard, an island north of Norway near the Artic Circle. In summer, the sun never sleeps. In winter, the sun never rises, though its light leaks over the horizon.

Winter landscape is pristine, swept in snow white, twilight hues of lavenders and streaks of pink, and dark of night. Ribbons of green and purple northern lights dance overhead and stars scatter across the sky as sugar kisses.

I want to lie under sky. Follow reindeer. Live in solitude and stare into the distance where ocean blues meld with sky. A palette of serene clean. Softened edges. Minimal texture. Calm. No expectations, no belongings, no time.

I could never bring my mother. She’d appreciate blues and periwinkles, a world painted in a cool blush to match her eyes, but she’d convince wind and waves to bring her frothy foam, debris, plastic waste from far away. She’d stack books in front of the window view, leave coffee cup rings on deck railings, burn lights to melt the stars, drop gloves and keys and purse in snow cover, not to be found until spring melt. Plus Chinese food boxes piled on untouched mail perched on old magazines, punctuated with candy wrappers and used tea bags; wire hangers stuffed in garbage bags, shopping bags, grocery bags; and laundry baskets burdened with wrinkled clothing. The only item she wouldn’t have is an iron. I don’t know how she’d do it, but she would. She’d ruin everything.

Julia Strayer has stories in Glimmer Train, Kenyon Review Online, SmokeLong Quarterly, The Cincinnati Review, Jellyfish Review, Wigleaf, Atticus Review, and others, including The Wigleaf Top 50 and The Best Small Fictions. She teaches creative writing at New York University. https://juliastrayer.com

Sage Tyrtle

Looking Out Windows

          Robert's grandfather was Videocamera Kid at high school, at parties, hauling around a Kodavision the size of his head. Carrying extra 8mm tapes for when he filled one up, with girls in leg warmers singing Duran Duran in the quad. With football players chugging Coors. With the smokers in the parking lot, leaning against Mustangs in denim jackets. With his own face, once, in the boy's restroom mirror. Moving to the side of the camera. Looking.
          Robert's father was Influencer Guy, pointing his iPhone 18 at his generous mouth eating maggot-ridden cheese, hanging off the side of a high-rise at dawn. The pink light highlighting his chiseled jaw. Hopping the fence to join the dancers during Carnival in Rio de Janiero and keeping time perfectly. Lying on the sand, stroking a baby crocodile's head, whispering, "Next week, I'm train surfing in Beijing. Follow for more." And then the moment he moves toward the stop button. How his eyes stop sparkling.
          Robert is a Recording Head. After his dad's accident he needed to bring in money. Post-surgery, his hyper-realistic glass eyes track the people around him, his hazel irises surrounding the aperture that automatically streams everything he sees to the appropriate authorities. If he closes his eyes for too long, if he looks down for too long, his pay is docked. He tells himself it isn't his fault as his eyes snare people climbing the border walls. Illegal documents. Fires. Insurrection. Shields wielded as weapons. Screaming. So much screaming.

Sage Tyrtle's unsettling words haunt The Offing and New Delta Review―yet NPR/CBC/PBS let them on air. They teach storytelling to suspiciously talented humans (Clarion, Second City). Work + craft rants: www.tyrtle.com.

Grady VanWright

The Corners

He sat on the edge of the stool and rubbed his gloves together. They were cracked at the seams. Sweat soaked the wraps under them.

The light above was cold and yellow. The kind that hums.

He looked out across the ring and saw his father in the fifth row. His old man was alone. Hands folded in his lap like he was in church. He didn’t wave. Didn’t nod. Just looked at him.

He’d seen that look before.

He looked away, but it stayed with him.

The other kid stood tall in his corner, chest puffed out. His gloves hung loose at his sides. Some boys looked mean before the bell, but most just looked scared. This one looked like he was trying to look like something.

Then the kid glanced to his left. Toward the seats. Toward his own father. He was here too. Shorter man. Stocky. Arms crossed. Face like stone.

So they both had them tonight.

Two fathers, sitting in the dark, waiting for their boys to bleed.

He rolled his shoulders and spat into the bucket. The spit was pink. That was normal.

The ref stepped in and said something about a clean fight. He wasn’t listening.

He kept thinking of his father. The time he’d knocked out Charlie Harper in the third and the old man just nodded once. The time he’d lost to the Mexican boy and he hadn’t said a word. They rode home in the truck with the radio off. That silence had hurt worse than the body shots.

He wondered now if losing tonight would be different. Or the same.

The other boy had stepped forward. The ref pointed them in.

His mouth was dry. His breath came shallow. He tried to suck in more air and couldn’t.

He glanced once more at his father. The old man didn’t move. Not a nod. Not a blink.

The bell rang.

It was sharp. Final.

He didn’t remember the first punch landing. Just the sound of leather and the sudden flash of it all. The kid moved quick. Quicker than he thought he would.

He fired back, caught him on the ribs. Heard him grunt. Good.

They moved like that. Step, pivot, throw. Gloves thudding off shoulders, elbows, sometimes jaw. Sometimes nothing.

Between rounds, his coach talked but it came from far away. Like someone yelling through a closed door.

He didn’t look at his father between rounds. He didn’t want to.

In the fourth, the kid caught him under the eye. Sharp and clean. It stung. Blood ran. Not bad, but it ran.

He wiped it with his glove and went back in.

They were both tired now. Breathing heavy. Bouncing less.

He kept moving forward. He could feel the old man’s eyes on him. Not seeing them, just feeling them. Like weight on the back of his neck.

In the last round, they stood in the center and traded.

No footwork.
No plan.
Just fists.

When it was over, they stood side by side, breathing like horses. The ref took an arm in each hand.

He didn’t care which way it went. Not anymore.

The arm didn’t go up. Not his.

He walked to his corner. Sat. Unlaced his gloves himself.

He looked up. His father was already gone.

He sat on the edge of the stool and rubbed his gloves together. They were cracked at the seams. Sweat soaked the wraps under them.

Grady VanWright is a poet, author, and playwright whose work blends introspection, independence, and the surreal edges of the human condition. Based in Houston, Texas, he has been writing and reading poetry for over 25 years, drawing inspiration from a lifetime of experiences and historical fascinations. His work has been published in Washington Square Review (2025), The McNeese Review, Oddball Magazine, Blood+Honey, Querencia Press, and numerous online literary journals.

Maru Yang

Cherished Things

            The old woman stood in the midday sunlight, beneath the summer fog that clung to her skin like the scent of cinnamon and grain. The moisture had dampened the rotting trunks of the fallen trees that were scattered across the forest floor, and the once-calloused wood was now like a sponge within her grasp as she knelt down and carefully pried it away from the soil. She lifted the piece of wood up to the sunlight and inspected it, holding it close enough to her face that she could smell its earthy sweetness so similar to the smell of rain.
            She would start a collection, she thought absently, and tucked the piece away into her bag.
            She had been coming to these woods quite often now, ever since her husband had passed away last spring, and she had found it to be surprisingly regretful that she had not come sooner to revisit this place.
            When she was young she had chased fantasies of ambition and money and fame—million dollar mansions, paparazzi at her doors, fans screaming her name. How ironic it was that back then she had wished on stars, yet now that she had lived among them and touched the chalk of the moon, the place where it all began was where she wanted to be.
            And if she closed her eyes and listened well enough for it, she could still make out the melody beneath the harmonies of the birds’ and crickets’ songs, singing out the symphonies of their prologues and their stories. Down by the banks of the hanky panky, it whispered, where the bullfrogs jump from bank to banky… She saw a flicker of their young, muddy faces; their hands stacked one over the other.
            …and a fee, fie, foe, fum, who's got the rhythm of the ker-plunk?
            A final clap of hands, laughter, then resignation, and one by one they tapped out of the circle until they were no longer ten-strong, but two.
            The old woman forgot birthday dates and lyrics to songs and where she last put her keys and how to fold origami. But this she remembered and, perhaps more unexpectedly, this was what she most never wanted to forget. She could still hear their voices filling the air; still feel the sweat of their palms against her skin.
            She remembered once when she was a little girl, her father had taken her to the elementary school that he had attended in his youth. A new playground had been built beside the old one—with soft rubber mats and mulch and plastic rock walls and swings and spinning tubes. The old playground had been a single metal slide the color of the dull, cheap toilets found in public parks, and the ground beneath it was an unmulched patch of flattened dirt where the grass had died long ago. As a young girl, the new playground had been dazzling with its colors and climbing bars and, as she played, she could not understand why her father’s gaze continued to drift away towards the lone slide in the corner of the empty space.
            “Why don't you go play over there?” He had asked her, but she was busy with the jumping ropes and other games.
            Fast forward years later, her father’s early memories died with him in the grave, time buried deep within the soil as his life sprang forth and fell rightfully back because gravity keeps you tethered to your birthplace.
            Still, the old woman couldn’t help but wonder.
            What secret was it that her father had seen within that grassy plain, and that old metal slide? An entire era of laughter and memories were etched into its rusting frame, the language scrawled across its bones like hieroglyphics lost to the present age.
            Perhaps she would never truly know what had happened there, because memory is like another dimension—mysterious as the wind—yet how similarly she saw now that she and her father might have lived, if she put their lives side by side and intertwined their sorrows and cherished things.

Maru Yang is a youth writer and former Power of the Pen State Tournament Finalist as of the 2022-2023 season. Her work can be found in Chapter House Journal.