Debut Flash: 'Natural' by Leigh Ann LeBoeuf

Boom. 

He looked through the rifle scope with quiet calm as he watched the deer plummet to the ground.

“Now that’s how you do it, son,” his father cheered.

“He’s so calm,” his uncle said. “Like he’s been doing it all his life.”

They climbed down from the deer stand, and he walked toward his kill. Calm. Collected.

His father began showing him how to field-dress the deer to bring back to camp. The sounds were surprisingly calming. The sudden rip of flesh as the knife dug into the hide.

“Son. Why don’t you try?”

He took the knife from his father’s outstretched hand and continued the cut where his father had left off. He noted the arrangement of the animal’s organs and wondered what it looked like when the heart was still beating. He liked the way the blood felt coating his hands.

He pulled the hide off as his father instructed and began to remove the organs the way he’d been shown.

“Like a true natural, son. Great job.”

This was the most attention he’d gotten from his father in a long time. So this is how I make them love me, he thought.

He wiped his hands on his pants. The blood was already drying. He thought about next season for a long time. Then he smiled at the two men, because that was what they were waiting for.

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Leigh Ann LeBoeuf writes Southern Gothic fiction from the bayou country of South Louisiana, where her Acadian roots run deep. She lives in Houma with her family and two blue heelers.

 

'Shimmy' by Abigail Myers

Yesterday I saw a photo of myself that someone took from behind, back fat and terrible posture wrapped in my beloved green dress with its print of fall leaves and bunnies. But I ate hand-pulled noodles with friends in the evening, and later at the theatre, the woman on the stage cried, I’m fifty-five and I’ve never felt so fucking free, I’m not afraid of anything anymore. This morning my daughter climbed into my bed and told me about the older girl at the elementary school who already wears a bra. And in the afternoon I zipped up the mauve coat—I had waited and waited for it to go on sale—and walked to the school to pick up that same daughter, sipping the last of the iced macchiato. In my reflection in the door of the school, my legs looked thick as adolescent maple trees, all the sweetness of every iced macchiato and the tenderness of every noodle packed into my thighs that shimmied with every step. And they carried my body, undulating with age and luck, forward to meet her.

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Abigail Myers writes poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction on Long Island, New York. Her work appears in Best Small Fictions 2025 and has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, Best of the Net, and the Wigleaf Top 50. Her debut short fiction collection, The Last Analog Teenagers, is available from Stanchion Books. Keep up with her at abigailmyers.com.

 

'When We Traveled 1,200 Miles for Forest Bathing' by Beth Sherman

Tomorrow, after showering separately, we’ll dredge up the same old recriminations and regrets, the same talk-talk-talk about talking, our marriage a drab, uninteresting field off the highway – nothing to see. But today, we set aside our grievances for 90 minutes. We turn in our phones and pay attention to the woods, which our guide says will deepen our connection to the natural world. We watch the sun rappel up Vermont’s Green Mountains, squish mud beneath our boots, run our fingers over sycamore bark the texture of an elephant’s hide, listen to the haunting whistle of a hermit thrush, mindful of our breath, our transient, busy thoughts. We share each new discovery – monarch butterfly, chipmunk, thistles dozing in the sun – the ordinary turned astonishing. How could we not have noticed before? We’re dwarfed by the pines, sheltered by the blue bowl of the sky. Our fingers crisscross like shoelaces tied just right. Our hips nearly touch. We breathe in unison. The air is sweeter here, our words light as sparrows. When we come across the felled tree, we stare in horror. An elm. Destroyed in the last big storm, our guide explains. The tree lies on its side, as though dashed against the earth by a rageful giant. Trunk split in half. Leaves papery brown. Humongous, snaky roots pointing in the wrong direction. Dead. We study the gash wounds, wonder how something so big can be brought low. We’re about to keep walking when one of us – it doesn’t matter who although much later, we’ll try to recall — one of us points out slim green shoots hiding in the grass beneath the tree, whispers of life that might eventually become a sapling, growing in the shadow of the broken elm, struggling to find the sun.    

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Beth Sherman is the author of How to Get There from Here, a novella-in-flash (Ad Hoc Fiction). She has had more than 250 stories published in literary magazines. Her work is featured in Best Microfiction 2024 and 2026 and Best Small Fictions 2025. She can be reached @bsherm36.

 

'The Roller Derby Girls Skate Circles Around My Teenage Heart' by Travis Flatt

They detune my stratocaster. They flat my Mustang. They butter my fingers. They tear open my bad boy mask and expose my self-image, circle closer and closer like sharks. They gnaw inward, the way certain fungi eat trees. They fog the edges of my mirror, tightening toward the center of my face down to the middle of my mustache where nothing grows. And here I thought I was hot shit.

Before each match, I’ll comb up my pompadour, but by the time I bike to the rink, my hair’s a limp, greasy center part. My leather jacket’s sweat-soaked; my English Leather’s evaporated to the scent of mom’s cats. 

I sit alone in the bleachers, slink past the front row of boyfriends and girlfriends, who recline smoking cigarettes, up past the parents. Say, “Excuse me, sorry.” Sit with little siblings, where the boys pinch the girls, and the girls play with paper pyramids that read the future.

Most evenings, I wake screaming, “That’s the Way (I Like It)” thumping in my ears, stink of the rink in my sinuses—armpit, corndogs—and cotton candy on my tongue. In my dreams, I fight them off with a trash bag of mixtapes through crisscrossing corridors of some labyrinthine high school.

In the fall, they open try-outs. I skate for the Roller Derby Girls. If you can’t beat them, join them; if you can’t charm them, disarm them. I make waterboy. They dress me up as some fuzzy thing with purple spots to pump the crowd between jams. I roll the rink at half time, hands clasped and raised by Roller Derby Girls to roaring applause. That’s all I ever wanted: to be greased wheels on waxed Northern maple, to unself myself and spin spin spin. 

 

 

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'All That Was Left to Do' by Matthew Jakubowski

It became clear one summer that a starling in the neighborhood had apparently learned to mimic the sound of a small child screaming. Those who heard it thought the child might be four or five-years-old. Maybe she liked to scream as she played or watched TV or screamed at the dog or the squirrels or her parents, or maybe there was something larger and darker going on in her world. 

It was generally unsettling and made the neighbors wonder why this little person’s scream was reaching them over the backyard fences, echoing between the houses and into the overgrown brush and trash in the alley behind their homes. 

Over time, hearing this scream as they tried to enjoy sunny days in their backyards, people began to think of the silly bird’s scream as a feature of the alley, not one of their homes. The alley after all was frightful, especially at night, bristling with broken glass thorns drug needles rusty nails and scrap metal dumped there illegally. No one wondered if the wild neighborhood starling was upset about the filth in their alley and many more alleys across the city. No one surmised that for the starling all that was left to do was scream and scream and teach the children how to let their world know exactly how they felt about it, too.

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Matthew Jakubowski's short stories appear in Doric Literary, Scaffold, Gone Lawn, JAKE, Necessary Fiction, Milk Candy Review, and the Best Microfiction anthology. He lives in Philadelphia and is online at mattjakubowski.com

 

'Lost Connection' by Sudha Balagopal

When Mother calls, Sonia itches to extricate from the repeated grievances: lazy nurse-attendant, unsympathetic doctor, thieving pharmacist, yet listens, therapist-like, although she, too, has problems she can't share―husband unemployed, leaky roof―because Mother'll remind her she could've married Jay, her choice, until Sonia's daughter interrupts and Mother calls the child disrespectful, demanding, at which Sonia grits her teeth, hangs up, only to berate herself: Mother's starved, memories her sole company, once-agile body gone, the inevitable looming, so hand over heart where aggravation and love tussle, she calls back, says cell phones are unreliable, somewhere, somehow, they lost their connection. 

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Sudha Balagopal has had two novellas-in-flash published by Ad Hoc Fiction, UK: Nose Ornaments and Things I Can't Tell Amma. Most recently, her collection, Family Matters, won the Santa Fe Writers Project Literary Award. Her stories have been included in Best Microfiction and Best Small Fictions.

 

'Philodendron' by Emily Hall

After he dies, his daughter places his taxidermied body in the bay window. Tilts him towards the sun like a philodendron. Rubs his leathery lips with Pabst Blue Ribbon. 

In death, so in life, she says each morning when she changes his socks. Although, in life, things had been much different. When he was still alive, she’d had it down to a science. The way he walked down a hall. The sudden swing of his words. The uncertain rhythm of her heart. 

Now, he’s all surprises. When she weeds in front of the window, he looks with interest at the marigolds and petunias. After dinner, as she washes dishes, he stays quiet while she sings along to showtunes. And sometime later, when a date swings by to pick her up, he watches as she glides down the front path, his brown eyes beaming with approval.  

 

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Emily Hall's prose has appeared in places such as Passages North, 100 Word Story, Gooseberry Pie Lit, and Cherry Tree. She has a PhD in English from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, is a prose editor for Pictura Journal, and lives in NC with her husband.

'Night Swimmers' by Karen Regen Tuero

They were the night swimmers dutifully doing their laps in this pool in Buenos Aires on this warm evening because they would never be this young again.

Each time they descended to the pool, in the high rise’s elevator, they could check the backs of their heads in the bright 360 degree mirrors. How much less hair on this ride than on the last? they’d joke to each other. Sixty three years old was not fifty three. But it also was not seventy three, they agreed. 

Focus on the moment, she told herself. Maybe meditation is the answer. Her late father, ahead of his time, had taken up that. 

Was he as scared as she was of what was ahead? she wondered.

I’m sorry I never asked you. I was busy with my life. 

But he never blamed her, she knew. He had been the one who taught her to swim, she thought as, cap on, she dove into the pool. 

 

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Karen Regen Tuero has published short fiction in North American Review, New World Writing, Gargoyle, Lunch Ticket, Potomac Review, Iron Horse, and elsewhere. She holds an MFA from Sarah Lawrence College. For links to many of her published stories, go to: https://linktr.ee/kregentuero

 

'Soybeans' by Jeremy Nathan Marks

F sat on the outside steps. There was no shade but inside was much worse. Several operators had fainted and one had been sick at his machine. F lit a cigarette and stared across the fields. The factory was surrounded by brown soybean fields in all directions. It reminded him of his time at the farm upstate.  

F went back inside. The foreman, in shirt sleeves and with a pencil tucked behind his ear, marched up to F and started shouting in his face, as was his habit. F noticed a gold crucifix dangling from the man’s fat neck. He seized it, breaking the chain. Then he tucked the tiny Jesus in his pocket. The foreman’s face turned deep red. He started cursing F’s religion, diet, and personal hygiene. Without a second thought, F flattened the foreman with a jab to his face. 

F turned and left the building. No one called after him or tried to stop him, though he was certain he heard applause in the distance. 

Outside, the heat was terrific. F strolled to the edge of the fields and plucked a bean pod from a stalk. He bit the end off the pod and chewed on the seeds. They were very flavorful. F had watched the sprayers douse the field many times and he wondered whether that mattered now. 

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Jeremy Nathan Marks lives in the Great Lakes Region of North America. Recent poetry/prose pop up in places like Studio One, Fifty Word Stories, The Medley, 365 Tomorrows, CommuterLit, and a variety of other spots. Jeremy works in adult education.

 

Debut Flash: 'Bird Tag' by Nicole Savage

The sky is bright and welcoming today, calling for me to sit outside and enjoy its company. It is early spring, and the season has sprinkled a light dusting of pollen on everything like pixie dust. The birds sing their songs and chase each other around from phone line to phone line in an elaborate game of tag. The trees make abstract art with the light shining through their branches, splaying it out onto the pavement for my enjoyment.

It is harder to see things as they are, to resist metaphor. The birds are not playing tag, they are being territorial. Everything is trying fiercely to survive, and I go and trivialize their efforts with literary devices, even now I anthropomorphize. I think it is my way of trying to survive. I need to believe that nature plays my childhood games.

I don’t want the wind to just blow, I want it to play with my hair, to be imbued with significance, to likewise make me of significance.

The sky is clear and vibrant today, so I decide to enjoy it. It is early spring and there is a fine coating of pollen on everything that sits outside for more than a minute. The birds are active, territorial, and full of song for their mating season. The light shines through the trees, splitting into countless thin beams. I have to focus to be able to differentiate them, lest they all blend together. I squint my eyes at the spectacle of scattered energy. For no good reason, I’ll pay attention.

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Nicole Savage (she/her), is a writer and medical student from Memphis, TN, seeking to deepen her understanding of humanity through the arts of medicine and language

 

'Evergreen' by Athena Law

Without its glittery ornaments the small pine tree looked sad, its now-sparse branches drooping under the last string of fairy lights. I can take it from here, I said, stroking the yellowing needles. 

The mantel clock chimed the half hour; nearly midnight. Nearly time. Outside, snow fell on the silent night, streetlamps bathing gold across the white. The rectangular glow of a front door as it opened across the road. 

I gently unwound the tangle of wires and tiny bulbs, only losing a few more needles in the process. The moment the last strand came free the tree breathed out, a brief puff of resiny mist. 

The clock chimed the three-quarter hour. Movement out in the street as several of my neighbours carefully shuffled their own trees down to the kerb. 

Mine wept, oozing fragrant tears as I pulled the nails and the boards from the base of its trunk. It quivered as I smoothed off the rough bark around the base. Hefting it over my shoulder, I carried it down the front path.

Together we stood, waiting and watching. A whistle, which meant a minute to midnight. Wordlessly, we all stepped into the road and lined up our trees. Bedecked artificial versions stared back mutely from behind frosted windows. 

See you next year, I whispered against the drifting snow, and my tree shook a branch—already lusher and almost glossy in the lamplight—to drop a single green needle into my hand.  

On the stroke of midnight, limping on its weeping stump, it joined the silent procession of pines, spruces and firs moving through the snow-bright night, heading home.

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Athena Law is an award-winning short fiction author & poet. She lives on a hill in the idyllic Sunshine Coast hinterland in Queensland, Australia, where she collects pencils and has all her best ideas at midnight. www.athenalawauthor.com.au

 

'Lunch' by Madison Ellingsworth

An afternoon of eel fishing. Uncle Harry hooked four, reeled them in, and yanked them into the boat. I held the wiffle ball bat and smacked at them without looking. I felt the plastic make contact with their rubbery bodies, and listened to Uncle Harry grunt with exertion as he gripped the rod. 

The last one got tangled up in the line. A big knot. Uncle Harry cut the line at the rod's base with a knife as thick as my thumb. The eel smiled up at me with pinprick eyes that were all pupils. Uncle Harry balled the eel and string and blood and eyes up in his hands and threw them overboard. As it sank into the dark, I felt the eel watching me.

I sat on the rotted out seat with the hole in the middle while Uncle Harry sculled us back. Water sloshed out of the eel bucket with each grunt. The blood on the metal boat bottom streaked like rust, and crushed cans floated atop the bloody sea.

Three eels, Uncle Harry said, but just one would fill your belly. He grunted with laughter. I pinned my bat between the boat and bucket as water splashed onto my feet. My grunt was not quite a laugh—more like its nephew. Uncle Harry couldn't tell the difference with the contents of the cans pumping through him. 

Water splashed over the lip of the boat, and the cans kissed my ankles, filled with nothing but bloody love. Uncle Harry grunted and grunted as the shore reached its fingers out to us. I tried to forget the big knot settling on the mud down below. But, somewhere down there, I knew the eel was still smiling up. 

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Madison Ellingsworth is a writer and ceramicist based in Portland, Maine. She has work forthcoming in several magazines, including Salt Hill Journal and Milk Candy Review. Her chapbook, Seven Stories, was published by Sand and Gravel Press in March 2026. More of Madison can be found at madisonellingsworth.com.

 

'Whisper' by Karen Arnold

In spring, I waded into water so cold it might have stopped a second heart. I let you go, released the soft ash of cremulated bone that was all I had left of you. The sea held me up, rocked and shushed me as you went out into the water like smoke. I shivered on the shore, wet through, brined and rimed with tears and sea salt, the knowledge of your silence bubbling through my veins.

On a summer afternoon, deafened by the fireworks of dahlias, I watch butterflies tremble on purple fingertips of buddleia, listen for you in the soft breath of roses and cut grass. I play back your last voice note until I want to smash my phone with a rock.

In the autumn I stood on the edge of another shore, under a sky purple with thunder heads, waiting for a storm to break. The grasses on the dunes hushed and whispered and the wind stroked the back of my neck just the way you used to. Above my head I saw the smoke of you and the pattern of you, in a murmuration of starlings wheeling through the air in the blaze of a burning copper, four o’clock sky. I thought I might hear your voice in the beating of all those tiny wings and I cried when I could not make out your words.

On a winter night white with frost and sharp-edged loss, when the air is still, paused, suspended in silence and you have been gone for a year, I stand beneath a star burning, year turning sky and I think about your voice, the space where it used to be, memory moving through me like a tide.

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Karen Arnold is a writer and child psychotherapist. She came to writing later in life, but is busy making up for lost time. She is fascinated by the way we use narratives and storytelling to make sense of our human experience.