'That One Time You Loved a Mermaid' by Laila Amado

That one time you loved a mermaid the sea followed you everywhere. 

It leaned on your windows, clouds pressing against the glass, murmured about sunken treasures between the lines of late-night radio broadcasts. 

It roared in the road noise of a faraway highway, sloshed in the glasses of gin and tonic passed around in your favorite dive bar.

It dripped down the shower curtain, rolled to rest at your feet in a scattering of pearls and salt, greeted you in the night with the forlorn calls of lost tankers, when you lay sleepless by her side. In the darkness of the room, her curls on your pillow twisted and twined like ribbons of kelp. 

A sudden whiff of seaweed from the teacup told you she was on her way from the airport. 

A gust of cold wind in a closed room—all ice and brine—told you she was angry with you.

All staircases spiraled like ammonite fossils. 

One time, when you were lying together on the roof of your apartment building and the stars above looked like specks of sun glitter on the surface of the waves, you reached for her hand. “The sea is a graveyard,” she said. “No one to talk to but the shadows of long-gone whales.”

She didn’t love you back, of course. 

Every now and then, you go for a walk along the beach, steps tracing the soft curve of the coastline, and the sea recedes from your feet, forever shrugging away.

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Laila Amado is a nomadic writer of speculative fiction. She writes in her second language, has recently exchanged her fourth country of residence for the fifth, and can now be found staring at the North Sea, instead of the Mediterranean. The sea, occasionally, stares back. Follow her on Bluesky @amadolaila.bsky.social

'Octopus-Hearted' by Jude Potts

I wonder what would happen if I stopped wrapping myself in tentacles, protecting my solitary, sucker-scarred heart. What might we share, beyond stealthy cigarettes on a fire escape, smoke swirling skyward, ash dropping on my sneaks?

‘How’s tricks?’ I ask.

‘Tricky,’ your reply.

Sometimes that’s all we say, and it’s almost enough. My mouth fills with octopuses, I can’t get the right words out without tentacles tangling my tongue. 

‘Did you know, octopuses have three hearts?’ I keep my eyes on the spiralling smoke. If I were octopus-hearted, I’d risk saying so much more.

I watch your lips tighten around your cigarette, sending smoke signals I can’t quite read. Did your hand linger on mine as you passed me your lighter? Did you feel a spark as your fingers brushed my arm?  

Cigarette clasped in one hand, my other arm wrapped around my waist, I console myself I don’t have six more arms longing to reach out, brush ash from your chest, letting fingers linger on the top button of your checked shirt.

Tomorrow, I might ask you for a coffee. On the one hand, you could say yes and later break two of my octopus’ hearts with lies. On another hand, you might say no and immediately break them all. But octopus hearts allow octopus choices, so on one more hand, we’re sipping coffee in bed, a tangled knot of lazy limbs, your body as familiar as my own, our six octopus hearts full.

Love’s tricky with just one heart. Two hands leave me with binary choices. Ask, don’t ask. Yes. No. Love. Heartbreak. I bubble-wrap my lonely heart with tentacles.  I cling to cigarettes and sideways glances, watching smoke dance away, never catching fire. 

 

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Jude is bimbling through life, sometimes dabbling in flash fiction, focusing on wry, dry and sly looks at human failings (usually her own). She believes in the magical capacity of shared joy and humour to change the world and tries to contribute.

'Orange Blossoms' by M.E. Macuaga

The last thing I did for you, the only thing I could do for you, was peel you an orange. A little mikan mandarin, from the pile of sweet spheres brought by our neighbor Miyoko from her tree to your hospital room. I plucked one from the paper bag she left along with her regards, and, with its dry rustle still whispering in my ear, I dug my yellowing thumbnail into the soft bare button of the fruit. A fine mist of citrus oil sprayed us and we laughed, bright as the falling sun. Then you watched me from the bed, your gown as loose as your smile. My hands cupped the mikan and turned from each other like a prayer in reverse, a flower blooming as my thumb peeled back the skin to bare its orb. Rind removed from what it had so fiercely, gently protected. Heart tilting, I plucked the segments from their stem. 

There, one for you. 

Here, one for me. 

There, tucked inside, a baby one, naked and awakened now as you once awakened me. 

And here — a seed I set aside, away from your throat.

I think of your skin now, also loose beneath your gown, and your bones beneath your loosened skin, and pithy veins, so soft, and how I could help change your colostomy bag but had to blink my gaze away from the bumps of your spine when the mid-day nurse came to clean you. That’s my job, I’d thought, angry as I left the room for the privacy you wanted. But I had bigger jobs coming, didn’t I, jobs that became mine too soon. To peel you an orange on our last day. To see your loosening. To take that one seed we found, and plant it.

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M.E. Macuaga is a Japanese Bolivian storyteller and escape room addict whose diverse work can be found now/soon in HAD, The Cincinnati Review, Epiphany, Seventh Wave, Flash Fiction Magazine, Oyster River Pages, Luna Station Quarterly, and elsewhere. Her communities include Hedgebrook, Ragdale, Tin House, and Storyknife. Read more: curiousstoryprods.com & @memi_writes.

'That Summer' by Zary Fekete

She said the fireflies are dying. Not enough moonlight, she thinks, to guide them back to the swamp. Her fingers move over the cracked ceramic mug, too warm from the coffee that was never really coffee. But she won’t tell you that. She never tells you what she means.

She said she can smell them still. The ones that lived once, back when the wetland was alive with their hum. "That summer," she whispers, "before the dry winds made it all disappear." You nod. She’s always saying it, that summer. As if it was the only thing real.

The dry wind pushes dust across the porch, sifting through the cracks of the faded wood. She watches it scatter, her eyes not quite focused. There’s a sound, the low rumble of a truck in the distance. You wonder if it’s the one that used to come to pick up the old barrels, or if it’s just another echo from the past.

But she’s still talking, her words like smoke in the air. She speaks of the swamp, of summers spent hiding beneath the cypress, of her father’s hands carving the world out of nothing, of waiting for the rains to come. She speaks like she hasn’t forgotten the sound of their laughter, like she hasn’t been left with the empty spaces in the backyard, with the patches of dirt where things used to grow.

You don’t ask her to stop.

You look down at your hands, remembering how they used to hold her once, tightly.

“Do you remember?” she asks, as if the answer’s in the wind. But the fireflies are gone, and you wonder if you ever really saw them at all.

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Zary Fekete grew up in Hungary. He enjoys books, podcasts, and many many many films. Twitter and Instagram: @ZaryFekete Bluesky: zaryfekete.bsky.social

Debut Flash: 'Molting' by Jenn Keohane

I zippered myself to Christina for years: playdates, sleepovers, whispered secrets about boys we thought we loved. I haven’t seen her since graduation.  

She breezes into Starbucks with a vibrant scarf and dangly earrings, her gaze on my grey sweater and sun-damaged face. We catch up on thirty years: her jewelry business, valedictorian son. My first stint in rehab, bedazzled lighter collection, cozy home. I leave out that it’s an Econoline van. Christina means well, I think, as she places a manicured hand on me. You’ve lost touch with the person you used to be. 

Which version? The nine-year-old with an imaginary dragon, buck-toothed tween dancing naked to Duran Duran, bleached-blonde dreaming of Broadway?

Once, in 9th grade, we double-dated German exchange students—hers handsome, mine homely. They slipped their magic hands into unexplored places. Suddenly, I had a new feeling to chase; I sprinted toward boys, and later booze, shedding my childhood skin that had grown too tight, numbing myself for decades. 

We finish our coffees, pretending we’ll do this again. She slips off her scarf—it’s from Barcelona and has good juju—and loops it around my neck. It’s tight, suffocating, like a noose, and she’s standing too close. But she’s right: the blue brings out my eyes. 

She hugs me, my first touch since that truck stop rendezvous. 

This could be the start of something new. 

The only thing I want is to twirl, naked and irreverent, with my imaginary dragon, but I don’t remember how anymore.

 

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Jenn Keohane has been writing microfiction since 2022. Though tragically unpublished at the time of this submission, she’s been an NYC Midnight finalist several times. She lives in sunny California with her husband. Their young adult children, now off the payroll, have thankfully flown the nest.

 

'Tenderhearted Optimists at the End of the World' by Diane D. Gillette

We huddle together on the front porch of the house we are currently squatting in. What flickering hope we have for survival will eventually expire with a shudder if something doesn't change. We are thinking that the well here still has water for now, but that the nonperishable food stash is beginning to dwindle. We have packets of seeds for a garden in our possession, but the gray cracked earth here will refuse to yield any bounty for us to consume. 

We constantly worry about scurvy and cuts that won’t heal. We worry that we never saw ourselves as the badass heroes of the post-apocalyptic movies we watched before they became less fantastical and more of a guide for survival. 

We do not voice our worries. We comment on how pleasant the breeze is. Marvel that the sun can still glitter in the sky when there is so much death below it. A deer wanders into view. We catch our breath and wait. It’s a thing of beauty despite its visible ribs, despite its frantic grabs at what little vegetation has managed to grow.

We have talked about this moment. How one of us — tenderhearted both — will have to spill the blood of an innocent if we’re going to survive. But the deer meets our gaze. Looks at us as if trying to place us. We reckon she has likely not seen any humans before. 

We stay frozen. Neither reaches for the weapons we keep at our sides now always, but don’t really know how to use. The deer moves on. We don’t talk about what didn't just happen. It will be minestrone from a can again tonight. 

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Diane D. Gillette (she/her) mostly writes short things, but sometimes she strings them together to make longer things. She lives in Chicago with her partner and cats. Read more at www.digillette.com.

'I am the Wedding Photographer Who Took These Photos.' by Ani Banerjee

I am the Wedding Photographer Who Took These Photos.

The yellow marigold garlands hanging in strands on the front door, twined with fairy lights in red. The bride’s father, blessing the bride before she is handed off to the groom. The bride in red and groom in white sitting half lotus on the floor, the priest and fire in front of them. The bride and groom walking around the fire, the inexhaustible witness to their union. The groom putting the red sindur powder on her forehead. The bride smiling, with the sindur powder dropping to her nose. The buffet table with a thousand items, wish I could capture the smell. The groom’s mother, looking frazzled, searching for something. She is looking under tables, lifting the tablecloth. Someone gave her a metal detector, and she is swishing the floor with it, like it’s a vacuum cleaner. Her kajal smudged on her face, had she been crying? Dancing to Bollywood music, the groom’s father kissing the bride’s mother, his hands squeezing her butt. The bride’s mother and the groom's father walking towards the door. The bride running towards them, holding her saree up. 

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Ani Banerjee is a retired lawyer and an emerging writer from Houston, Texas, who was born in Kolkata, India. Her flash fiction has been published in Swamp Pink, Lost Balloon, McQueen’s Quinterley, Dribble Drabble, and others and nominated for Best Small Fiction and Best of the Net.