Thinking about this, they grow wide-eyed and speak so fast that the windows become flecked with child spittle. How can they have made themselves so ridiculous by dreaming?
Category: fiction
Kaleidoscope — Jenna Clake
The horoscope said: You are a fish. You will come to understand this. She found this funny because it seemed like something more suitable for a fortune cookie, and because she had once had a boyfriend who, during arguments, told her that she kissed like a koi carp.
Three from Color Wheel — Salvatore Difalco
Underscoring the onset of nausea on the pier, feelings of self-loathing
also bubble up to the surface. “I get seasick in the bathtub, man,”
declares a ponytailed dude in Plymouth pink.
Good and Beautiful — Laura Eppinger
Henri is at least good for catching the scent of socio-political turmoil in the air.
The Sea People — Euan Currie
I often fantasise about tipping the cabinet forward until the plastic drawers slide out and spill their contents in a wave of plastic. I tell myself they should be recycled or reused. But in the fantasy it all just spills out and keeps on spilling.
Something You Can Feel in Your Teeth — Hannah Stevens
Neither of them talk much in the morning. Somehow things are more difficult in the early hours. She feels more fragile, more lost, more oppressed by the narrow confines and the lack of light.
Scheherazade — Lydia Waites
He studies me for a second before facing the road again, his jaw set. My breath is caught in my throat. I clear it, arranging my thoughts. It was just an outburst, a loss of patience: I am safe.
Fiachaire — Shannen Malone
“We can’t take it all,” her brother had said, tossing memories in a bin bag like kittens for drowning.
FLASH FICTION – Edvige Guinta
I told no one. Not my parents, not my older sister, not my little brother. I locked myself in the bathroom while my mother stirred tomato sauce and tasted spaghetti (we did not like al dente).
On Visiting My Elderly Parents After Lockdown — Mark Czanik
A sprinkling of much needed rain has fallen overnight, and some of the roses have left broken mosaics of red and yellow petals on Dad’s newly cut lawn. Ideal conditions.
FLASH FICTION – Lizzie Holden
The water is so clear, the sunlight snakes across the rocks on the seabed, I can see the relaxed mottled skin of her arms below the ripples of surface, her arms leisurely open and close like silky breath.
Midnight Games – Madeehah Reza
It’s not that she wasn’t happy for her sister, far from it. Nadia only wished she could hold on to her for a little longer.
Porridge 