Tag: flash fiction

Courtesy Never Dies

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by P. A. Farrell

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No one told me I would be using a walker, hunched over those curved aluminum handles and hoping the brakes on the wheels would hold, but that’s life. You never know what it’s going to throw at you, and you’ve got to be ready to catch it with both hands and draw it toward your chest so it doesn’t fall to the floor. But today, the bus jostled, slamming me into a pole. A man sneered at me, “They shouldn’t let people like you on the bus!” Yeah, people like me, with walkers.

A slow slog from the bus stop sends stabs of pain to my ankle, but I push on. Good thing my folding friend has wheels. I don’t think I could pick it up. Each slab of the sidewalk is daring me forward. The beast is waiting, and I’ve got to gather my strength, so I take it slow to save my breath and prepare. 

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Onwards and Upwards

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by Bri Eberhart

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Once a year, on a crisp autumn morning, fog stretches across the yard, disappearing into the thicket of trees surrounding my house.

The haze is alive, breathing heavily on my neck, beckoning and pulling me in deeper until I can no longer tell where it ends, and I begin.

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The Bus

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by Jessica Tan

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The long, yellow bus screeches to a halt next to the curb as you lift your eyes up, watching the doors fan open for the first time this fall. You spent all morning organizing your school supplies, thinking of what your new schedule would be like. But first, you have to make the journey there. And if you had it your way, you would drive there yourself. If you were old enough.

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Love Beans

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by Katie Coleman

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Leena’s coffee mug perches on the counter, telling her, ‘You Are Loved.’ But then she withdraws her spoon and angles the mug to her lips. As she swallows, thoughts of far-flung jungles emerge, where coffee beans ripen, where buildings have fans, and local people sway as they pass by arms linked with elegant partners. 

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Anniversary

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by William Cass

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Carl pulled on his brown cardigan, gripped his cane, and left the house.  It was just after 6am, the charcoal sky ink-washed over rooftops to the east.  At the end of the driveway, the old man paused.  He looked to the left at the streets he’d grown accustomed to taking on his morning walks, then pressed his lips into a thin, tight line, blew out a breath, and turned right.

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Imitators

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by Chey Dugan

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I was admiring the aristocratic Grande Dame portrait on a Tuesday afternoon; a day when the Abruzzo Museum of Art History is hauntingly inactive and I’m free from the perturbed looks I get from the usual late-week crowd. I’m reluctant to admit, but somewhere along my embryonic development my Pavlovian wires got crossed and because of these ritual Tuesdays, I could just exist in my oddity. I would thank myself at the end of the week for getting this out of my system.

I was deep within myself and sure I was alone until you interrupted and said, I like what you’re doing with your face.

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Seed

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by Kylie Wang

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Boom.

The creatures in the underbrush scattered as another tree fell, her arms cracking when she hit the ground. The giant had stood tall and proud despite— or rather because of— her age, with her leaf-crowned head facing up to drink in the sunlight, but that didn’t change the way she keeled over and collided with the forest floor: heavy, like a vault door slammed shut.

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