Fiction

I am not an illness. I’m a soul with a goal. Everyone on this floor is here for intrusive thoughts, ideations, risk of harm to themselves or others. What society used to call possession, they now call neurotransmitter imbalance or schizophrenia or obsessive compulsion.

Flash Fiction

Collecting Ynes

by Lisa M. Bradley

Ynes doesn’t remember the marigold, but she has a recurring dream in which she accidentally swallows an entire tangerine. She grows very warm and realizes it was not a tangerine at all but a small sun. She knows if she tells her mother what she swallowed, there will be a panic. So instead, she keeps her mouth shut. The sun sits warm in her belly and shines tendrils of light down her arms and legs. When rays escape her fingertips, she puts on mittens.

Fiction

Christopher Mills, Return to Sender

by Isabel J. Kim

This is the dead thing becoming the body. This is the dead thing opening the body’s eyes. This is the dead thing rising from the grave. This is the dead thing saying “What the hell—I didn’t ask to be summoned. I was having a great time being dead and dreaming about nothing.”

Flash Fiction

I Have Reached Into the Quantum Basket

by Marie H. Lewis

I HAVE REACHED INTO THE (Quantum) BASKET, SEEN THE THINGS SHOWN, HEARD THE THINGS SAID, KNOWN THE THINGS DONE. (Declaration of Initiates)

Fiction

Cousins Season

by S. Fambul

Last week, in a tangerine raincoat that did not suit her pallid skin tone, Phylicia Wimby smiled through her lies. There is an 87% chance of rain for tomorrow. Due to the high probability of unpleasant weather for the entire week, we predict the Cousins won’t be arriving until next week at the earliest, once the rain dries up. Her and all the other meteorologists in shiny citrus-colored vulcanized rubber swore to us that Cousins Season wasn’t coming for a while, that in Virginia we had more than a week to prepare.

Flash Fiction

After Naxos, Ariadne

by Julia August

After Naxos, Ariadne moved to Nicosia and built a new labyrinth online. Here she sits and smiles and buries her bullish secrets: where to buy building permits and apply for trademarks and government grants and benefits. How to join the fire service. Authenticating seafarers. “That way leads to an external labyrinth,” she says pleasantly. “Oh dear, has the roof fallen in? I’ll send someone down to dig it out later.”

Fiction

Slow Communication

by Dominique Dickey

Darla Revere was born to live her whole life as part of a conversation, the outcome of which she would never know. She was raised to be certain of three things: 1. The leviathan will come for you. She will come suddenly and without warning. 2. You will feel great joy and pain at the moment she contacts you. Be prepared. You may only ask her one question. 3. If you change yourself too much—if you do not bear resemblance to your mother, your grandmother, the long line of women the leviathan has touched—she may not be able to find you when it is your time.

Flash Fiction

The Unseen

by Allahrakhi Memon

A city stands on the horizon. It glitters against the hazy background of a desert, enticing you to come near, to relieve yourself from this afternoon heat and revel in the shade of its skyscrapers. You consider it. You’ve considered it for a good portion of your life.