Fractured Lit is dedicated to finding flash fiction that lingers long past the first reading: stories that stay with the reader for days, months, or even years. We want to find flash with emotional resonance, characters we care about, who come to life through their actions and responses to the world around them. We’re searching for Flash that investigates the mysteries of being human, the sorrow and the joy of connecting to the diverse population around us. All stories read horizontally, but we want those that explode vertically, which leaves the conventional and the cliched far behind. Fractured Lit is a flash fiction centered place for all writers of any background and experience. Let us help you tell your stories, the stories we knew we’ve needed all along.
Not in the mirror. Not in between his uncle’s years-ago fingers. Not running all over town like Gogol. Just something he could hold in his hands for once in his life. He tried last month to see his heart. After so many years, he wanted to see the actual scars on it, the ones that…
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Stepmother locks Daughter in the basement, chain keeping her prisoner to the furnace. Daughter tries to reach the window where Mother might be, watching, waiting for a kiss. Mother is there until she isn’t. Until Stepmother pulls them apart. Until the policeman takes Mother away. In the window, there is Mother, lips pressed to the…
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They left the couch, a show about child prodigies gone insane in their twenties, and in her room he pulled loose her knotted drawstrings. Outside, snow. Frost clinging to power lines like cake piping, a blizzard fooling everyone and, for once, lingering. She breathed in and nodded, the hair under his palm short and prickly…
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