I found the flyer outside the grocery store. Feeling lonely? Ghosts for hire! I would’ve thought it was a prank if I hadn’t been seeing ghost children helping the elderly check expiration dates on bagged granola or deceased personal trainers floating alongside runners, cheering them on.
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Dream Mother by Andrew Bertaina
She wasn’t listening. My mother had always been a wonderful listener. Now that she was dead and only a part of my dreams, mother had a bit of a foul mouth and didn’t listen well.
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Vinegar Instead of Blood by Don Malkemes
The beets knew what they were doing; Kimbark was patsy perfect. He was a visitor in his father’s house, which was a remarried house with a new mom, new brother, and fruits and vegetables.
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Florence, Yesterday Evening, Dusk by Jill Witty
Among the many Monti possessions, all belonging to the Contessa, none was so highly prized as the Palazzo Principio, a magnificent Renaissance building that sat along the Arno, a stone’s throw from the Ponte Vecchio. Beautifully restored and as large as an entire city block, the Principio was said to be the most valuable privately-owned building in all of Florence.
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Cake by Anthony Varallo
Time passed. The boy grew older. Taller. Able to reach all the way inside the freezer whenever he felt like it, which wasn’t often. Most of the time, he could find whatever he wanted in the refrigerator.
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Little Pelvic Bone by Jessica Fordham Kidd
The mother bit the very tiniest tip off the snake’s tail. It tasted metallic and felt tough between her teeth. Then, she tossed the snake into a stand of privet hedge.
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Two Flash Fiction Pieces by Rita Feinstein
He looks at me so suddenly that I return to my body in pins and needles. For a moment there, I’d forgotten I exist.
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A Guide for Boys (Ages 6+) by Samuel Rafael Barber
It’s perfectly normal to imagine becoming a Football Star. Your imaginations need so much practice for where we will be taking you. “The Possible” is as important to imagine as “The Real” you think you see.
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Fear of Women by Logan Hoffman-Smith
“You have to understand—the Women were hungry, angry, trying to survive—that this is what happens when a Maker cannot love their own creations,” mother tried to explain. Beloved, i would gaze at the invading Women, at their sallow eyes and ruptured hearts, and see only monsters. Perhaps this was why i did what i did.
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Empty and Sparkling by Katherine Indermaur
Every night the man came home and saw the progress his wife was making on the mirror. Somehow she found just the right place for each shard, the right edges to slide alongside one another.
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Dawn of Graduation by Mike Yunxuan Li
When the decision letters came, he didn’t even open a single envelope from the Cali schools. He believed the East was where the heart of the country resided. Surely, people there would notice his intellect and talents. Surely, they would give a shit about the stuff he was passionate about.
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Fitness Test by Sasha Tandlich
The kids say things behind his back when he makes them stand at attention at the start of class. He has three classes at once; there are too many kids and all he’s trying to do is keep them under control. His strictness is read as meanness, but he only looks angry because his transition lenses are taking too long to adjust to the bright Florida sun.
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How to Survive a Date by Holly Pelesky
You will show no signs of weaknesses. There is power in your womanhood. You of pants on a first date, of fight classes, of weaponry.
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Answer Woman by Michael Chin
The extent of what she knew for sure about her past was trapped inside the glass dome of a snow globe, the weight at the bottom of her rucksack for every move she had made.
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Women's Work by Celeste Colgan
I never learned. In a year’s time, Mother, Buck, and the chicken coop were gone. Aunt Betty bought chickens already drawn at the meat counter. I thought a lot about beheadings.
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The Only Thing Left by Thomas Price
I know it seems odd that that long, strong bone in the leg can think, let alone feel, but it was still part of me, and as it lay in the bed, night into day and day into night, all it could wonder was, with so much of me gone, why hadn’t it been enough?
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Black Cactus by Marc Tweed
The sun bathes the front of the shop in a new white light as he readies to open. A small gray bird has made its way in somehow, slamming itself repeatedly against the big spotless window and he uses a broom to gently prod it out the propped-open door to freedom.
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A Man Explodes by John Honkala
They want answers. Did the man explode? Can a man explode? Why have you said nothing? Why is the press silent too? The man with the megaphone climbs a fence and calls to the police station.
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Bulletproof by Bethany Marcel
Monica felt her soul leaving her body. It traveled up into the organic, free-range rafters, then looked down at Monica, and laughed and laughed.
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Nature Morte by Michelle Orabona
Get out of the house, they said. Do something. Make something. Be something. They knew, they understood. But it was time, they said. We’re just trying to help, just looking out for you, just trying to help you move on, carry on, get through it, over it, past it.
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