flash fiction

The actor has died thirty-four times. His first death, a grotesque slow-motion spearing in the midst of battle, was looped in a viral video and produced a glut of comments which were either laughing with or at him—he’d never conclusively determined, but he feared the...

When we heard that Mingming’s grandmother was coming to live with her, my sister and I asked our parents endless questions. Our Yeye and Nainai were faraway figures whom we saw once a year, after long flights. They held us in their insistent gazes and tested us on...

An old Bedford van passes you on the track to the *moussem. On top, penned but precarious, barely a bleat, goats. Good meat, you’re told. Behind you, the woman who shares your bed, the woman who wants to be your wife, she says. The woman who fucked your sister. Clawed...

She reached into the fridge for one of those individual tubs of yogurt designed to release the digestive tract. Her mother arrived and filled the house with reminders of her climbing age: thick orthopedic shoes by the door, prescription meds strewn across the bathroom...

The speaker made us choose: “Your house is on fire. Family and pets are safe. What one thing would you take with you?” He hunted us with his eyes. Shoes squeaked over the gym floor, echoing in the frost of our hypnotic teenage lethargy, “…just one thing…” The bell...

That spring before, the crows on their farm were Don Corleone, leaving the heads of baby rabbits on their patio. The oversized infant teeth were bloody shards over soft pink tongues. Alec had told Libby he’d researched it. Crows were actually more intelligent than...

— Another Misadventure of The Broken Boys — The boys started climbing at first light. In the crisp air, their breath had the thickness of fog. They huffed heavily, eyes on the ground, already weary of dragging their shadows. The plan was to hike the ridge and obtain a...

1/10 Grandma Kim had a rose-petal mouth. See the ballooned lips, half-inch creases trapping her mouth at each end. Such shapes are difficult to translate in their three-dimensional splendor on paper. She smiles, but a printed smile is not a living smile. I would like...

The receptionist, who I thought might be a robot, told me I could fill out the form online or else in the office with a No. 2 pencil. I chose the pencil. The hexagonal pencil, if you think about it, has a sophistication that only a highly advanced civilization could...

There used to be a village named for the future. It straddled la frontera like the saddles of the vaqueros who once lived there, whose bones are now particles of the Texas dust they farmed and irrigated a century ago. Before it went up in flames, the village sat on...