Flash #42 Aug '26

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Flash Issue #42 Aug 2026

featuring
Swetha Amit, Sudha Balagopal, Chelsea Hanna Cohen, Miranda Diaz, Gary Fincke, Mary Grimm, Tom Hedt, Suzanne Hicks, Ra'Niqua Lee, Peter Mladinic, Claudia Monpere, Catherine O’Brien, Per Olvmyr, Pamela Painter, Donna Shanley, Ann Yuan

Swetha Amit

Mancala

The surface of the mancala board feels cold in my hands. I carry it past the steady hum of the oxygen machine and the hospital room's medicinal scent. My grandfather lies propped against a fortress of pillows, his chest rising in shallow, ragged rhythms. His face is pale in the afternoon sun, revealing the hollows carved by illness on his cheeks.

The last time we played was ten years ago, when I was twelve. Mid-game, I flung the stones, sending a small storm of marbles and noise across the board, and accused Grandpa of cheating. The mancala board stayed on the porch table for weeks afterward. His hands froze above the wooden pits as he stared at the fallen stones. For a moment, neither of us moved. The afternoon light shifted across the porch railing, catching dust in the air. I remember the scrape of a chair leg as he leaned away from the board. He didn’t argue. He didn’t correct me. He just got up and walked away. The mancala board stayed on the porch table for weeks afterward, gathering pollen, raindrops, and heat. Eventually, we stopped talking, the way people stop tending a garden they once loved. Visits grew shorter. I moved out for college I rarely visited. Over the years, Grandma died; Ma and Pa remained in that house, dealing with empty-nest syndrome. The board remained where it had always been, waiting for the familiar set of hands to reach for it.

“You brought it,” his voice cracks like old paper.
“Of course,” I say, sliding into the chair. “You still owe me a rematch.”
A faint smile tugs at his lips. I set the board between us. Glass stones—amber, moss green, smoky gray—clink as I place them in their cups. I remember those summers on the porch: hummingbirds hovering, crows cawing, the oleander rustling in still air, and the scent of Grandma’s banana walnut cake drifting from the kitchen. Back then, his hands were strong and steady. Now blue veins map his skin, and his fingers tremble as they hover over the board.

“You start,” I say.

He gathers the stones. He exhales and begins—tap, tap, tap—dropping each stone into the cups.
When he finishes, he leans back.
“My turn,” I scoop the stones and slow my hands to match his rhythm, letting each one fall deliberately into place.
“How you used to rush in those days,” he observes.
I nod and chuckle. “You tried to teach me patience, but I never listened.”
“Patience is just another word for waiting.”
“Waiting for what?” I persist.
He doesn’t answer. Instead, he watches me play intently. I drop the stones, and they land unevenly in the cups.
“For moments like this,” he says at last.
It’s his turn. He inadvertently skips a cup. I notice but say nothing. When it’s my turn, I drop a stone into the wrong cup.
“Hey, that’s not right,” he exclaims.
I shrug. “Maybe I’m clumsy.”
“Clumsy, huh?” His mouth twitches.
The clock ticks. Outside, a car passes. Life continues without pause.
When he finishes his turn, he looks down, then up at me.
“I think you’ve beaten me,” he whispers.
I study the board. He’s right. I could end it, but I shake my head instead.
“It’s not over yet.”
A pause.
“Next time,” he says.
I watch him sink back into the pillows. His breathing remains hoarse and ragged, and his hands still shake. His face suddenly looks brighter. The wooden board rests between us, heavy with colorful stones.
I trace its surface with my fingers. It feels warmer now.

Swetha is an MFA Graduate from the University of San Francisco. The author of a memoir, A Turbulent Mind, and three chapbooks. Her words appear in Had, Bending Genres, Ghost Parachute, Gone Lawn, Cream City Review, and others. A member of the Writers Grotto, her stories have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, Best of the Net, Best Small Fiction, and Best Microfiction.

Sudha Balagopal

Turmeric and Yogurt

              Argue when Amma insists on dragging you to the salon a week before you are to meet the man who might become your husband. Grit your teeth as the aesthetician says, “I'll make blemishes vanish, help your complexion glow.” Feel your oesophagus burn when she adds, “With so little time, we'll have to hurry the results.”
              Clench your fist around the cream she asks you to apply three times a day. Read the label that proclaims, “Guaranteed to make you fair.” Gasp because the ingredients remind you of a chemistry lab.Tighten your hands around the bag of skin-care vials you carry home.
              Sad-shut yourself in your room after Amma bemoans that your skin has been her challenge since you were born. Slap forehead when you recollect what you used instead of soap: besan paste, turmeric and yogurt, followed by malai-cream and drops of lemon―because vitamic C removes tan.Remember she applied almond paste and rose water on your face; recall she said, “I don't understand why nothing works.”
              Flounce out. Yell that you feel like a fraud. Thump your fist on the table when Amma says, “Dear, all of this is only until marriage. After, none of this will matter.”
              Observe as Amma scrubs―Vim in the kitchen, Harpic in the bathroom, Phenyl on the floors―to render your house spot free.
              Grab the aesthetician's bag of skin-care vials. Walk outside to your third floor balcony, unzip the pouch. Lean. Watch the chemistry-lab contents crash-splatter. Notice how they smear gray cement.

Sudha Balagopal's fiction appears in Claudine Lit and Adroit Journal among other magazines. She's the author of two novellas-in-flash: Nose Ornaments and Things I Can't Tell Amma. Her stories have been included in Best Microfiction, Best Small Fictions. She is Series Editor, Wigleaf Top 50.

Chelsea Hanna Cohen

That One Time

That one time when she transferred to your school, junior year, and your teacher introduced her and told her to sit in the desk next to yours, her blond ponytail floating behind her in a perfect arc, unlike your own limp brown one. That one time she asked if she could sit with you at lunch because she didn’t know anyone else yet and you brought her over to your table of friends, where she was clearly far too pretty to be. That one time the popular girls swooped her up after that but she still smiled at you in the hallways, still stopped and chatted in the bathroom.
That one time she mentioned a party, and when you admitted you weren’t invited, she said oh you should come anyway, everyone is welcome! and your best friend convinced you you should both go, chances like this weren’t going to come around often. That one time you walked into the backyard and everyone’s eyes turned toward you, then slid away. That one time you were in the kitchen and she entered the room, beamed, I’m so glad you came!, and you could no longer hear your best friend over the pounding of your heart. That one time when she turned away from you to smile at a popular boy, his hands suddenly all over her. That one time, later that night, when you were drunk and came upon her in a hallway and kissed her so you could pretend it was the alcohol, and to your shock she reciprocated, pressing you into a corner, her mouth soft on yours, and all you could think was yes yes yes.
  That one time the next day when she sat down next to you in class and said hey all casually, like nothing had ever happened, and that somehow hurt worse than if she’d acted weird about it. That one time she called you, later that night, and asked you to come over. That one time she did that one thing with her tongue and your vision blurred with heat. That one time, after, she told you that no one could know, that this had to be secret, and you, so drunk on the taste of her, agreed without hesitation. That one time when you smiled at her in the hallway and she glanced away and slung her arms around the popular boy instead.
  That one time none of it mattered and you went over when she called anyway. That one time she moaned the popular boy’s name when your tongue touched her clit. That one time you tried to tell your best friend about it and she looked at you with a shocked expression that she immediately tried to hide so you stopped talking and pretended you were joking but both of you knew you were lying. That one time your best friend tried to talk to you about it again but you shut her down, and after that she stopped trying.
  That one time she didn’t call when she’d said she would and you held out as long as you could before you finally broke her rule, was the one to call, and her phone rang and rang and rang and no one answered. That one time the news spread like wildfire: the popular boy drunk, car accident, two dead. That one time you watched her friends cry in the hallway and everyone comfort them while you silently screamed into your locker. That one time you said you were going to the funerals and your lunch table looked at you, and one of your friends said why, you barely knew them and you fell silent while the conversation moved on, your best friend’s eyes never leaving you.
  That one time you got ready for her funeral, hands shaking as you tried to put in earrings you never wore. That one time you got to the church and didn’t know what to do until you felt a hand slip into yours and your best friend was there. That one time you didn’t hear a single word the priest said. That one time at the cemetery where you tried not to look too sad so no one would wonder why. That one time your best friend took you behind the tree and wrapped her arms around you and you collapsed against her, your grief escaping your body in howls, muffled in her dress, and she whispered in your ear It’s okay, I’m here, I’ve got you.

Chelsea Hanna Cohen lives in Tucson, Arizona, plays piano, and fixes grammar for a living. Her work has previously appeared in Split Lip Magazine, Flash Fiction Online, and Bourbon Penn, among others. You can find her on social media @chelseahannac.

Miranda Diaz

The Last Florida Panther

She’s going to be darting across I-75, sleek form gilded in headlights. She’s going to be head-down streaking like a comet across six lanes, struck and flung by the drowsing driver of a snarling pickup. The impact will knock the driver awake to snort and swear and crush a fallen smoldering cigarette against the dashboard just before his cargoed thigh catches fire. The impact will knock her a few dozen feet to crumple on the highway shoulder, noble face smeared with acrid, oily grass. She will stagger to her feet, shrink away into the straggling stand of palms that marks the border of things that can be seen from the road. She will not die in the bright eye of traffic. She will drag her back right paw, pulped under the tire-rubber, marking a path in the dry dirt. Days later an ant will fall into her rain-filled prints and drown, and the others will know to avoid the edges. She will nose along a canal, slower now, organs perforated, shredding against broken bones with each pull of her mighty lungs. She will smell for something familiar and she will not find it, only gasoline-splash asphalt-baking garbage-burning stink. It will disorient her, now, as her sharp mind slides off the edge of knowing. She will sight a palm hammock through one bloodied eye and veer toward it. Her burnished pelt will disappear into the shadows, nose-first, swallowed up. You would not see her, if you were looking. She will pad into the darkest copse and curl. She will lower herself on her haunches and rest her head, heavier now than comprehension, nauseating weight. The strength she has never not known, bunched muscle, flashing leap, will leak into the scrub. Her eyes, sunsetting estuaries, will blind and dull. The meat of her will poison. Her crushing jaw will slack and gape. Mosquitos will dart in and out of the cavern of her useless maw. The driver of the pickup will stop at a gas station outside Ft. Lauderdale. He will stretch out a cramp while the tank fills.

Miranda Diaz is a fiction writer, poet, and public health scientist. Born and raised in Florida, she now lives in San Francisco. Her fiction is forthcoming in Club Plum and was awarded the Coppice Prize in 2025. Her poetry has appeared in The Rumpus, Poetry Breakfast, and Cellar Door. www.mirandadiaz.com.

Gary Fincke

In Service

The facilitator said, “Pair up with someone you don’t know well,” and Meg ended up with Stan Wallace, a man from design at the ad agency where they worked. He looked forty-five, twenty years older than she was. After she was blindfolded, he spun her around as if preparing her to play Pin-the-Tail-on-the-Donkey. He did it so slowly that her jeans began to feel too tight, her t-shirt transparent, her pink bra exposed. “Don’t overdo it,” she said.

“Turn left and walk,” he said, his voice cracking as if she had been right to sense him staring. She hurried to start down the hall not far behind another couple she heard chatting as they passed by. They went up a flight of stairs, the sighted counting the steps for the blind, but Stan Wallace kept Meg on the ground floor, and she walked as quickly as she could, maybe making him think she could see through the blindfold. “Stop. Turn right,” he said, slowing her down. “There’s an open door. Walk through.”

“We’re in the high school weight room,” he said, and she imagined a cement floor painted green and gold, the school colors. A knight on horseback, the school logo in the center. “I haven’t heard anything but your voice for a couple of minutes,” she said. “It’s like we’re the only ones anywhere near here.”

“We are.”

“This trust thing is creepy,” she said as he told her to believe in him and sit.

“It’s where the boys bench press,” he said. “Let yourself lie back and extend your arms.”

She thought of her t-shirt riding up. She pictured herself in a pornographic pose. “I can’t do that,” she said.

“Sure, you can,” he said, but she sat with her back stiff. “Come on, don’t be such a bitch.” he said. ”Ease yourself back.” She concentrated on how far this might go before she tore off the mask and ran. When she raised her arms, Stan said, “Open your hands,” and laid an empty iron bar on her palms. “Sweet,” he said. “Now press it,” but Meg only stiffened and breathed.

“Switch,” the facilitator called down the hall.

Stan Wallace lifted the bar and said, “You failed,” but Meg was already standing, the blindfold in her hands. She slipped it over his head and tied it in place. The floor, she saw, was deep maroon. Without a school logo and illuminated only by the hallway lights, it reminded her of the horror-film basement rooms that frightened women peered into while calling, “Hello?”

He shuffled ahead of her down the hall, pausing when she told him to, turning through a door. “Keep your hands down. Trust me to get you through the doorway,” Meg said. “Now hold your hands out. Don’t move.” She splashed cold water over his hands, and he jerked away. “Relax,” she said, but Stan’s head snapped back when she touched his face with a paint brush. “We’re in the art room.”

Again, she grazed his face with the soft bristles. “I know we’re not supposed to touch, but it’s not me. Think of the brush as an iron bar while we walk some more. We have time to do one more thing while you’re blind.”

Seconds later, she said, “Go up these stairs. Four of them, no railing.” He wobbled, uncertain, hesitating before each step. “The auditorium,” she said. “You’re on stage.”

She walked him around the stage, stopped, and said, “Go forward now. Take six steps. You won’t fall off the edge, even if you take big steps.” Stan Wallace managed three steps, then three small shuffles. “That’s not six real steps. You can still take four more. Go ahead.” He took two and froze. “One giant step,” Meg said. “Like the kids’ game.” He didn’t move. She stood so close behind him that she knew he could feel her breath warm on the back of his neck.

She saw the facilitator enter the back of the auditorium and raised her hand to signal her silence. “Coward,” she said, but Stan Wallace didn’t budge. “Pussy,” she whispered into his ear, and hurried down the stairs, keeping her hand raised as she walked toward the facilitator. Meg was less than halfway to her before the facilitator screamed.

Gary Fincke's latest flash collection is In the Light and Dark (Pelekinesis 2026). A collection of full-length stories, The Comfort of Taboos: More Selected Stories, will be published in October by Braddock Avenue Books. He is co-editor of the annual anthology Best Microfiction.

Mary Grimm

Applied Entomology

The oldest cousin read about the tsetse fly in their uncle’s National Geographic and invented a game which was like tag except that whoever was It was the tsetse fly. Instead of tagging, she instructed, they had to bite the person they caught. But the baby cousin said she would tell her mother if she got bit and so they agreed that it would be a pretend bite. When anyone was bitten they had to fall down and pretend to sleep, because they would have sleeping sickness. The boy cousin wanted to be the tsetse fly but the oldest cousin said that the curlyhair cousin had to be the tsetse fly because her name began with T.
They played the game on the street which was one of those streets that never have cars going down it. The tsetse fly lived in the forest, the oldest cousin said, or sometimes in coffee and cocoa plantations. She read this from the page she had torn out of the National Geographic. The redhair cousin wanted to know what a plantation was. The boy cousin went into the house to ask if they could have cocoa but his mother said for gods sake no and don’t slam the screen door.
The day they played tsetse fly was the week after school was out, which meant that it was sunny and hot because all the summer days of their childhood were sunny and hot. The skinny treelawn trees were the plantation and the safe home base was the neighbor’s old black truck.
When the curlyhair cousin caught the boy cousin she snapped her teeth at him. He claimed that she had turned him into a tsetse fly and flew around with his arms out making airplane noises. The baby cousin hid under the truck and the redhair cousin went into the house to tell on them. The oldest cousin said they weren’t doing it right and they might as well play Chinese checkers, which their mother said they could as long as they didn’t come in the house because she was on her last nerve. They never did play it again.

Mary Grimm has had three books published, Left to Themselves, Transubstantiation, and Stealing Time. Her stories have appeared in The New Yorker, Antioch Review, and the Mississippi Review, as well as in a number of journals that publish flash fiction, including Helen, The Citron Review, and Tiferet. Currently, she is working on a series of climate change novellas set in past and future Cleveland.

Tom Hedt

Fire

It was Ray that lit the lantern, but we were all accomplices. Out on the dock, over the lake, late fall static dry, cold & crisp.

We were there for Sandy. We lit it for Sandy. Yes Sandy. Sandy who just died, that Sandy. This is when it started. She wasn’t there on the dock; she was in the cabin with her teenage boys. Time is important time when parents are going to die, so it was good & we left her with that time.

The cancer. It had metastasized. Breast tissue to bone marrow & brain. What is a brain with cancer in it? & she had a magnificent brain. A PhD & still a brain that knows enough to get out of the way & let the brightness of her spirit shine through.

Brightness.

& I know now she’s dead – but she wasn’t then. We were just thinking she would be & the lantern, it was a prayer lantern that we lit.     For brightness.

We wanted to send the brightness like her spirit, over the lake. The lantern flying & reflecting over the cold darkness illuminating the water & it was Ray, her new husband, that lit the lantern. Yes, that Ray. The high school sweetheart & after so many years they’ve gotten back together & we were there for their wedding that weekend. Married so he can take care of her.

He was sharp & funny & round faced & ironic & that was before his brain cancer.
His brain cancer came after her brain cancer.       Can’t even imagine a loving couple of light bright people both of their brains with cancer & those treatments left him scrambled & Sandy ended up taking care of him when she was in remission from all that praying but we didn’t know that then.

She had her prayer groups & all that cosmic shit where she was trying to elevate her spirit up to 1,000 whatever the hell that means & she was saying that’s where Jesus was, but what the hell, she was getting better & it seemed to work for her so what do I know? But this was before all that.

It was Ray, Ray who held the lantern & lit it, as was appropriate for her new loving husband & we were standing there in our prayer & good will.

That fucking prayer lantern. We lit it & the smell of sulfur & paraffin & visions of this beautiful bright light floating over the lake, but it was evening & the breeze took it up off the lake, cold air carrying the fire into the warmth of the pine, with our prayers for Sandy.

& suddenly we were praying for the forest like the fire had a mind of its own & we stared in wonder as the lantern burst into flames, 30 feet high & we watched helplessly, fingers outstretched, grasping toward the brightness, the burning lantern floating of its own volition. Heat & light, flames & paraffin & the bone-dry Ponderosa pine straight in its sights.

Tom Hedt’s work has been published widely, including Flash Boulevard, Does it Have Pockets, Bright Flash Literary Review, The Sijo International Journal of Poetry, and Song, and elsewhere. His poetry compilation, Artifacts and Assorted Memorabilia, was published by Cold River Press in 2020. Tom is Associate Poetry Editor for Bending Genres. He lives in Eureka, California. More information at ThomasHedt.com

Suzanne Hicks

Sandy the Penny Pony

            We didn’t have anything to smoke our weed out of, but instead of just poking holes in one of the empty cans that littered the backseat of my dirty Corolla, you insisted on the corncob pipe we spied when wandering the aisles of Meijer, so I scooped up a handful of silver and copper coins from my cup holder to buy it.
            Inside the superstore, we messed around for a bit to cool off in the air conditioning like we’d been doing since we ran out of money for the motel. I watched you stick your bare feet in high heels and strut like a model on a runway, remembering how you once told me you hated beautiful people like you weren’t one yourself. How everyone wanted your attention, but you picked me when I was like a wounded bird needing saving.
            In the home goods area, I ran my hand across a gauze blanket like the one I had on my bed back home, flinching when I pulled a thread that caught on a hangnail. I thought of the nights we spent giggling, sharing secrets. How you could be one person when we were alone, and someone entirely different when we weren’t.
            You touched up your nail polish in health and beauty, appearing so unaffected while I rubbed Oil of Olay on my face, noticing dark circles, my sunken cheeks. You'd said nothing when I told you I was getting so tired long before we had to sleep in the car.
            We grabbed a bottle of water out of a cooler, taking sips as we meandered through the grocery area. I saw you put a nectarine in your purse, and my stomach gurgled as I wondered if that fruit could taste sweeter than the bottle of Boone’s Farm we passed back and forth that night in the park by your house, sitting on the swings, when we stayed up long after the sky was filled with stars until we drank every last drop.
            We walked through the aisles of fish and small birds, pausing in front of a row of clear plastic boxes with hamsters, and I watched one with its nose twitching, sitting in its stationary wheel, going nowhere. My eyes watered, and you popped the gum you’d swiped off a shelf before yanking me away.
            After I counted out change to pay the cashier, we stopped at the restroom to pee and wash our armpits with foamy soap, and on our way out of the store, you climbed up onto Sandy like always. You’d laugh every time, digging in your bag for a penny to feed the mechanical horse, waiting until people were close enough to hear you call her the cheapest ride in town.
            But that day you just extended the palm of your hand to me, demanding, and I shook my head saying I needed to search for some pennies in my car. Before I headed out to the parking lot, I looked at you on that horse, remembering how you were like a light I’d wanted to bask in, the way you linked your pinky with mine when I said I’d drive the night you wanted to run away, thinking about how badly I had wanted to disappear with you, feeling the weight of the coins left in my pocket when I turned to walk away.

Suzanne Hicks is a disabled writer living with multiple sclerosis. Her work appears in matchbook, Gooseberry Pie, Stanchion, Bending Genres, Milk Candy Review, and others. Her stories have been selected for Best Microfiction (‘24 and ‘25) and the Wigleaf Longlist (‘24 and ‘25). She lives in Las Vegas with her husband and their dogs. Find her on Bluesky @suzannehicks.bsky.social and read more at suzannehickswrites.com.

Ra'Niqua Lee

Return to Home Island

Can’t go back except by a ferry with passenger benches lined up like fishy pews. Not but a handful of us are settled in the seats as the captain guides us.
Home costs. Return costs. Being the first and only born to a man who refuses to leave costs. Give and it’ll be given back. The ferry ride is free.
A ministering happens on the water. This sun ride and saltwater daydream across the channel does something to the spirit, a comfort I chase all day and only find here.
Pops said he would wait for me on the other side, but I expect to be left standing at the gates until I gather up the resolve to walk.
An elderly woman I think I recognize pulls mints from her canvass bag.
“Have one,” she says.
I accept the offer and thank her sincerely.
“This ride always goes by too fast,” I say.
“Compared to what?” she asks.
Compared to the four-hour drive from my duplex outside Atlanta. Compared to the two mile walk along a sanded road to the little metal-roof house where my pops still lives. Compared to spending a weekend filing taxes, reconciling accounts, and maybe fishing, if I’m lucky. How long have I been a new daughter to someone who expected his old son? Lineage. My pops will make me dinner and then spend the evening asking prying questions. This barrier will keep us far away from his own twisted up loneliness.
I tuck the peppermint in my cheek.
“Maybe you’re right. I guess we’re lucky it’s not longer,” I say after a while. “In case of emergency.”
We don’t have our own emergency services, just people and prayer, and a population shrinking faster than the island’s landmass—a piano note held so long it starts to die.
The woman nods like she knows, like she has deep knowing in her forehead folds and the creases at her eyes. She has likely been going back and forth on this ferry for decades.
Soon the gangway appears in the low marsh. We sway as the ferry slows sudden. The engine goes quiet and so does the ministry of the water.
The woman hands me the bag of mints.
“Your father likes these,” she says. “Tell him this place isn’t big enough for him to keep on like such a stranger. Tell him May said so.”
“I will, Ms. May,” I say.
And I do know her. She caught me as child under tree branches and Spanish moss, dancing alone as the sun sank fugitive hot. She shared her salted cod with me, walked me back to my father’s house, and called me a “good child” from the porch.
As everyone else shuffles up the aisle, I imagine I know what it’s like to trust a promise as easily as trusting a hard back bench. I look out at the gate. Pops isn’t there.
I shove the mints to the bottom of my bag, while the memory of Ms. May settles somewhere deeper than the gray-green water between here and there.

Ra'Niqua Lee is a writer, teacher, and community organizer, who writes to share her particular visions of love and the South. Every word is in honor of her little sister, Nesha, who battled schizoaffective disorder until the very end. For her, always.

Peter Mladinic

Winston

In Shop Rite he saw Pam slip five packs of Winston into her coat pockets and walk around the register aisles. As she was walking out, Frank caught a cashier’s attention, and pointed Pam’s theft out, and was told her mother would pay for them, like it was some sort of arrangement Pam’s mother had with the store when the mother and daughter came in; whenever they were there Pam lifted items the mother paid for. Pam didn’t need to steal, her family owned a construction company. The story’s crux was Frank saw her taking smokes and not paying, and she wasn’t going to get away with it. He himself wouldn’t steal. After all, he was a Catholic, and sang in the choir on Sunday. He played bass in his band some weekday nights and most weekend nights, and by day drove a limo, taking people to and from airports, when he lived above Larry Kahn Realty on Main and River and his hair, dark brown, had not yet turned white. Pam also had dark brown hair, fine like Frank’s, only where his was straight hers curled at the ends, and came down to but didn’t cover her ears. She often wore a dark cloth cap with a visor, which gave her, in the mid 80s, a mod effect. Though she seemed to pay no attention to style. Frank, who never wore a hat, was informed and careful about style. I see Pam slipping the smokes into something like a peacoat of light fabric. She dressed plainly and she looked plain, her skin tone light olive, like Frank’s, only where Frank’s face was long, like Pam’s brother Joe’s, Pam’s was wide but not too wide. Her main feature, heavy eyelids. Slender, but not thin or curvy, except for her eyelids, really, she had no outstanding feature. The eyelids, and, when the weather warranted, the peacoat and cap with the visor. It was rumored she liked girls, and had a girlfriend, but no one steady, no significant other, so people could point and say: they are an item. I don’t think she finished high school, or ever lived anywhere but home with her mother and father and her brother Joe. Frank had a music room he took everything out of, and had a painter paint sky-blue.

Peter Mladinic's most recent book of poems, The Whitestone Bridge, is available from Anxiety Press. An animal rights advocate, he lives in Hobbs, New Mexico.

Claudia Monpere

Twirl

        I’m admiring my neighbor’s foxgloves on a rare, early morning walk when I notice how long my shadow is. My legs: the length of a hallway! I twirl, laughing at my skirt’s gigantic flare. “Twirling is fun,” my shadow says. “Let’s twirl more often.” I stop, stunned. She’s silent although I try to make conversation. I tell my husband and kids when I return home, but they roll their eyes, commenting on Mom’s weird imagination. Only my youngest, five-year-old Janey, takes me seriously. She tries unsuccessfully to have a conversation with her shadow. Disappointed, she cuts shadows out of black paper. We glue them to popsicle sticks for a puppet show.
        A week later: family picnic in the park. I’m exhausted from carpooling, chaperoning the tide pool field trip, homework help: distinguishing b from d, mastering long division, making a balloon powered car. But everyone expects my buttermilk fried chicken, potato salad, and brownies. My twin boys, always ravenous, eat all the brownies, laughing at our anger. My shadow bites their arms. It’s noon, and she’s just a tiny stump. But she has teeth.
        More shadow incidents: shapeshifting into a giant spider at my second youngest’s birthday party to scare a bully, massaging my shoulders after my husband misses another IEP meeting for our middle child, lullabying Janey to sleep after a nightmare, texting my husband that his weekly golf game is canceled when it’s not.
        My husband wants another baby. No, I say. Too kindly, perhaps. My shadow is angry that I’m not more firm. But my husband is persistent. I feel myself folding.

        One day my shadow vanishes. She is not folded in a drawer waiting for someone to sew her back on. Janey and I weep. She tells me she wants to be a shadow when she grows up.

Claudia Monpere received the 2024 New Flash Fiction Prize from New Flash Fiction Review and the Genre Flash Fiction Prize from Uncharted Magazine. She has stories in Best Small Fictions 2024 and 2025 and Best Microfiction 2025 and 2026. Her collection, The Periodic Family, is forthcoming from Cowboy Jamboree Press. She lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Catherine O’Brien

Clapping with Ghosts (TW Child loss)

I feel safe in my dreams. I am a pilgrim to a closed door a little less deathly in pallor. I swerve through traffic to pick her up from nursery. Her favourite soft toy watches incredulously from its booster seat. I sit cross legged on the carpet and hope a rogue fabric lacerates a vein.

Who am I if I’m not who I believe I am? I was a mother to a child and a child of a mother. Beyond that, I am something to nothingness.

I have pictures of a cherry bruise and strands of hair light and fair as my kisses on her chin. I am the tears of an oasis dipped in the sun.

Her father claps his hands in my face when I do not answer.

‘And what about your other children?’.

I fixate on the ‘and’ - it doesn’t need to be there.

Thwack. He slaps me once and then once again. He catches me munching on memories. She is spinning in a charming-pink tulle dress. I was thirsty to gift her riches, to ripen change. He pulls my hair and the same week he plants a tulip tree.

‘You made me do that.’

Afterwards, I am tender footed when I wake to climb the stairs to lay on her bed.

His mother told me an anecdote when we first dated about how he had tumbled out of his pram. When I hear it again, I see him falling onto broken stones.

Why exclude her so easily from his diet? I stay to dine. I am stalked by the silliness of smiles, her face latticed by its first flurry of snow, the daft blue of eyes, how she became the water that ran from the mountains to quench my city and the disaster that impersonated an innocuous Thursday afternoon.

Catherine O’Brien is an Irish writer of poems, flash fiction and short stories. Her work has most recently appeared in Ghost Parachute, BULL, X-R-A-Y, Frazzled Lit Magazine, Irish Country Magazine, Washing Windows V, and Bending Genres. You can find out more on X @abairrud2021 and Bluesky catherineobrien.bsky.social.

Per Olvmyr

What the neighbors want

When there's a knock on the door, it's just a neighbor who wants to inform that I mustn't cook fish gratin too early in the morning. Think of the children and how their clothes will smell, she says, and mentions the clothes again.
Then there's an old lady who runs her hand over the railing and pats it. She doesn't want to disturb me, but since she's here anyway, she has some questions about my shampoo. Is it Extra sports shampoo? For men only? Maybe you could consider changing?
An hour later there's a new knock. You look so sweaty when you take the stairs, a man says. He can barely bear to see it. We've had this paving for a long time, he adds. Paving, he says and walks away. Paving, paving.
After a while some other neighbors show up. You've been so quiet lately, one of them says. The others nod and agree. If you open your mouth, they suggest. You must brush your teeth properly, around the corners. You see, it's such nice air in the stairwell, a woman says. Nice air, they say. And what about the sports shampoo, says another. Is it for men only?

Per Olvmyr lives in Malmö, Sweden, and has been published by Evergreen Review, Poetry Wales, Takahē, Baltimore Review, and other magazines. His work was nominated for best small fiction and best of the net. He can often be found in stairwells engaged in long conversations with neighbors.

Pamela Painter

TOO LATE

It was too late to tell the truth about too many things gone wrong. About how we met at the party to celebrate my engagement to your brother, and how your eloquent yet funny toasts, public and private, kept turning up in my dreams, and how sometimes I woke from those dreams to find you nearby on my pillow, eager to hear the lurid, delicious details.

It was too late to break the engagement, to cancel flowers, caterers, reception hall and alert the bridesmaids and best men that the wedding was not going to happen, never mind say why as if explanations were needed by anyone except my parents and his parents also yours, and by your brother, whom we both still loved, but not enough.

It was too late to tell the truth, but not too late to add more lies about missed dinners, the interruption of text alerts, or mislaid letters. Not too late to embellish our future with plans for travel, plans for a larger apartment to accommodate all our books, to speculate about the prospect of having twins, or decide not to have children at all. Not too late to wonder how long to wait so finally the divorce I will ask for is not too late. To wonder will you wait? If it’s not too late.

PAMELA PAINTER is the award-winning author of five story collections, and co-author of the textbook What If? Her stories have appeared in over a hundred journals and in numerous anthologies including Best Microfictions2025, Best SmallFictions2025, and the Wigleaf Top 50, 2025. She has received an NEA and four Pushcart Prizes, and her stories have been staged by WordTheatre in New York and LA.

Donna Shanley

FLIGHT

            Rise above it he’d tell himself, in the midst of the gabble, the jabber, the prattle and chatter. Rise above it. The family said he didn’t listen to them. He knew that he heard them. It was just that he could no longer differentiate the noises coming from their mouths--always open; baby birds demanding nourishment, leaving him emptied. Ultimately, though, it was the squeaking of the furry pet’s wheel that exiled him.
            He felt some sympathy, some kinship with the creature, eternally treading a destinationless road, morning flattening into noon, seasons blending into one, tepid, without the sear of sun, the snap of winter, but the sound abraded his ears, driving them inward. Their seashell spirals unwhorled, stretching into tunnels to a different ocean: quiet-earth-breathing. His nose shrank, hardened; his cheeks flattened, eyes gold-tinting, until his face looked like rolled-out dough, decorated with an almond and two gooseberries. A vagabond thought hovered: good enough to eat. Stomach yearning, he sensed the thought seeking a perch. He flapped at it to dispel it. Not allowed!
            The racing feet pattered, the wheel screeched. Rise above it. Without willing it, he felt his arms lifting, spreading. His skin sprouted plumy softness.
            In the churchy hush of midnight trees, he was finally home, complete, dreaming, when furry squeaks chain-sawed into the delicate bones of his head. The vagabond thought hovered again, swooped, settled, sharpened to a point.
            Afterwards, he felt the plump compactness of the meal returning. He dropped it on the front porch so they’d know he’d listened.

Donna Shanley lives in Vancouver, Canada, where she can see mountains when it isn’t raining. Her flash and micro fiction appears in numerous journals including Vestal Review, Flash Frontier, Milk Candy Review, MacQueen’s Quinterly, Ekphrastic Review, Club Plum, Identity Theory, Crow & Cross Keys, Flash Boulevard, Centaur, and Best Microfiction 2024. It has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net.

Ann Yuan

Sisyphus of Ohio

            Back then, there was no chairlift. Back then, helmets were not required. Back then, nobody cared about these kinds of things because we couldn’t afford them anyway. We carried skis on our shoulders and started climbing the steep ridge. We relied on our human power to gain elevation—2,500 feet for a 1,170 vertical drop, the shortest route to virgin terrain.
            What the fuck, we said, we are Sisyphus of Ohio. We valued the eternity of useless effort. The least we could remember from Mr. Calvino’s world literature class.
            Below the mountain, the town hummed with trucks pulling in heavy machines, black steel against white snow. They were building lift towers, hauling cables, and drilling the foundation. Soon, the town would be populated with rich people enjoying the height but without physical stamina. Soon we would run the lift to rack up tuition money, which eventually paid for our first car, or our father’s debts. And our mothers would grill cheeseburgers in the cafeteria, folding their arms over their chests and exhaling Camel during breaks. We would stay at the base most of time, going up only when the cable slipped—ride a line up, ride the same line down. And occasionally we would look up at the mountain and wonder how she had gotten so icy despite all those snow guns, how she had become so repetitive and lame, yet still sucked us up with her white magnetism.
            But back then, we couldn’t see any of these. The cold and brightness on the top flushed our brains. We stomped on the skis and bumped mittened fists. The wind whipped our open mouths, choking someone’s sex joke. We tied up trapper hats, yodeled, and let gravity take over—our newly found way of flirting with danger. Snow burned our eyes, our cheeks red and lips blue. We learned to relax, dodging the flickering pine trees. The trail undulated under my skis, a gentle touch in a free fall. We descended at the same speed and arrived at the same time. The base welcomed the Sisyphuses back to the starting point. It was the beginning of the season. It was the end of a run.
            We promised to do it again.

Writing from Long Island, NY, Ann Yuan was a finalist for the Oxford Flash Fiction Prize 2025. Her fiction has appeared or is forthcoming in The Baltimore Review, Your Impossible Voice, Oyster River Pages, Gone Lawn, Moonpark Review, Eclectica Magazine, Bending Genres, BULL, and elsewhere. Her work has also been included in the Overheard Anthology and Iridescence Anthology. You can find more at annyuanwriting.com.