Ed Hopper Train Painting

welcome to the future of flash

read the freshest flash

enjoy our newest micro

Hometown Johnnies

By Myna Chang

It was the night Johnny came back to town, one of those pent-up summer nights when the sky trembled heavy with unshed moisture, weighing us down, the burden of it pressing us into the dust, and we wanted to scream let go! but heaven wouldn’t unleash that water, held it fist-tight, just out of reach,…

Late Lunch; Early Dinner

By Pamela Painter

We’re having a late lunch, five women, widows now, who have been meeting once a month for forty years. “Dress-up time” we call it because when you are our ages—86, 87, 91, and 93– few events encourage one to don a cape, drape a rope of pearls around a neck, or apply eye shadow if…

At My Job I Work the Robotic Arms

By Kati Fargo Ahern

On the line, I run a double-forklift. It’s a lot like a regular forklift, but the forks both spread out on either side and when they fan out, you have to catch the grooves of both pallets just so at the same time. And you have to do it FAST. Also, the balance point is…

Unfinished Equations

By Reneé Bibby

I stand at the kitchen window, calculating the parabolic arc a murmuration of birds makes against the ridge of conifers. He coalesces at my elbow, tipping his moon-face up to me, to the scratch of blue sky beyond the box of this house. No longer a boy-shaped smudge or a specter. You’re supposed to find…

Odds and Ends

By Brett Biebel

It was supposed to be chess club, but instead, it was Gambler’s Anonymous, and that’s what you get in Moline. That’s what you get in church basements. It might be fried chicken, or it might be stale donuts, and I should have left right then, but I didn’t. I stayed. I don’t know why I…

Send us your stories

Always Free. Always Open. Professional Rates.