Fiction

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.

Fiction

Free Coffin

by Corey Flintoff

The coffin lies at the curb, tilted aslant on the strip of grass next to the sidewalk. Old Mr. Byerly spies it on an evening walk through his suburban neighborhood. It’s been put out alongside a pile of other discards—an old-fashioned lawn mower, a chrome-legged kitchen table, a bookcase with only one shelf. The stuff is from a house that’s under renovation after sitting vacant for many months.

Flash Fiction

Pest Control

by Saswati Chatterjee

There is a mermaid in your fields, fisherman. I saw the signs when I was coming in; its lower jaw was lying unattached, and I could see the deep groove its upper jaw had left as it dragged it along the dirt, ripping wheat out from the ground, no doubt. Here, I have its jaw for your examination. Look at it well. A fine specimen, is it not?

Fiction

Markets: A Beginner’s Guide

by Shalini Srinivasan

In the folds of banyan trees, between the treeish world and ours, are markets. Real markets, not the pale human sort that happen every week, as if things that are worth buying happen every week. A banyan market occurs one day a year, which is as often as trees are willing to entertain on such a lavish scale. And once a year is just barely enough time to make the stuff that trees dream of. – Revathi Kumar, ‘Markets: A Beginner’s Guide’

Flash Fiction

The Mirror Test

by Moses Ose Utomi

“The mirror test . . . is a behavioral technique developed in 1970 by American psychologist Gordon Gallup Jr. . . . In the classic test, an animal is anaesthetised and then marked (e.g., painted or a sticker attached) on an area of the body the animal cannot normally see. When the animal recovers from the anaesthetic, it is given access to a mirror. If the animal then touches or investigates the mark, it is taken as an indication that the animal perceives the reflected image as itself, rather than of another animal . . . Very few species have passed the test.” – Wikipedia

Fiction

The Rainmakers

by Megan M. Davies-Ostrom