FlashFlood

Saturday, 13 June 2026

'The Surprise Party' by Karen Crawford

Surprise! everyone screams when you walk through the door. And you are surprised! You haven’t seen these folks in years. Folks sharing stories of remember when, and such a shame.
And you nod and smile politely because your wife knows you hate surprises, and you slip away to look for her, to give her what for, and Surprise! You find her crying. Crying in the arms of your twin brother. Why is she crying in the arms of your twin brother? You haven’t celebrated a birthday with him in years. And why are they staring at a photo of you and her? Or is it him and her? And why are they sharing stories of remember when, and such a shame? And now you’re not smiling, and you don’t feel polite. And you try, again, and again, and again to reach for her arm. Surprised, when you can’t.

Karen Crawford lives and writes in the City of Angels. Her work has been included in Best Microfiction Anthology 2025, Gooseberry Pie, Fictive Dream, The Citron Review and elsewhere. She is a multi-Pushcart, and Best of the Net nominee.

'Gone, and All Forgotten' by Jon Fain

The kid in our class who looked like the famous actor was dubbed “Mistaken for Bacon,” which became “MFB” and then “Notorious MFB.” Years later, at a reunion, nobody knew what happened to him. At one point, I said MFB froze to death. Six degrees, get it, but nobody did.

Jon Fain’s publications include short stories in A Thin Slice of Anxiety, JONAH and Feign, flash fictions in Shooter Literary Magazine, Hawkeye and Bottle Rocket, micro fictions in Blink-Ink, Molecule and Sudden Flash, and a chapbook of flash fiction, Pass the Panpharmacon! from Greying Ghost Press.

'Gone, and All Forgotten' was previously published in The Daily Drunk, August 2020.

'The Note My Uncle Left' by Heain Joung

This is a story about my uncle and a note he left. An uncle I had never met or even heard of, so I can’t tell you much. I just don’t have any memories to draw from. The story started for me on a Saturday or maybe Sunday evening when I answered the phone, it was a call from the law, for my father. I handed him the phone. After a few minutes, he hung up and started to pack a small bag without telling anyone what was going on. Later I learnt that he was going to collect the body of my dead uncle who had been living on an island where he had died alone. No one had told me about him including my father whose brother he was. This is a story about him, but there just isn’t much to say. This is all I have, to tell you. There was a man I did not know. He went to an island where he knew nobody’s name, and nobody knew his. All he had when they found him on the side of the road was an old, crumpled up note in his pocket with my father’s name and address. I wonder why he went there. Maybe the wind and the sea had called him. I looked at a map of the island and tried to imagine his life but all I could find was a story full of emptiness.

My uncle went to an island.
He lived and died by the sea.
He left a note for his brother.
And this story for me.

Originally from South Korea, Heain Joung holds an MA in Creative and Critical Writing from Sussex University. Her short fiction can be found in Full House Literary, Flashback Fiction, FlashFlood Journal, Tiny Molecules, Gastropoda, among others. She is a Pushcart Prize nominee. Twitter (X) @heainhaven

'My Absent Heart' by L. Michelle Nichols

Robert Valentine knew when he cornered me on the playground when we were eight. He was a creep even then—pale, fish belly skin. Yellow eyes. His nose was running, and there was a snot bubble in his right nostril. He said we were going to play cops and robbers, and since he was the cop, he leaned me against the fence so he could frisk me. His little fingers were beneath my clothes instantly, but he didn’t feel the parts my mother hand warned me to protect. He pressed his hand to my sternum instead. He searched for the steady lub-dub, the persistent thump of my heart, but he found nothing because there was nothing there to find.

He stopped. Took a deep breath, tried again. He searched my entire torso, even my belly button. Then he turned me around and pressed his ear to my chest. He listened, straining against the other playground sounds, and I giggled, trying to diffuse the situation. I said, “You’re weird, Robert Valentine.”

He looked up at me, his chaffed lips parted. He said, “You’re dead, Corina Stanley.”

“Maybe,” I said, giggling again. I didn’t want to make too much of it because I didn’t want him to tell anyone else. So, I kissed him even though his nose ran. I kissed his eye lids, his nose, his chin. I kissed each cheek. I kissed him like my mother kissed my dad. I kissed him so he would keep my secret, but he ran from me. He ran screaming to the edge of the playground, and then he stood there alone, facing the parking lot. I don’t know what scared him more—my absent heart or my kisses—but he never told.

L. Michelle Nichols’s work has appeared or is forthcoming in Fractured Lit, Juked, PANK, Permafrost, Southwest Review, storySouth, and swamp pink. She lives in rural West Texas.

'Beating Odds and Keeping Time on Magnolia Street' by Jen Wyrauch Edson

Grandpa’s grafted yet dormant avocado trees negotiated smoke-flared air, stuck between incinerator, brick wall, and the room Grandma and I shared. He warm-waxed their graft sites, checked his gold pocket watch. I never heard him yell until that Santa Ana-winded night. He boomed, as winged, scorched trash lifted, collapsed to ash. Burn you next, you don’t grow right, butt of his Chesterfield cross-examined night. Quiet, old man! He snarled, unaware we heard. Vodka burns things clear, right? He toasted the wall. He’s gone, his monologue chugged on, circular as indented zeros tracking his arms. Marks I’d question one day. Zeros are nothing, he’d say, turning away, watering those trees.

We called his stories math survival. Learn enough odds to bet smart. Buy insurance, he said. Left NC at 16. Dad stopped hitting me, preferred Mom, and my sisters. Little money, this watch, he lifted it, one-way Union Pacific ticket. I was free. Took his scotch—Terrible stuff, he coughed, cancer forever chasing his lungs. Got a locksmith job. One lock’s good, two’s better. Got Mom and the girls here, fast as I could.

Cooking breakfast one morning, we asked if he looked like his dad. He said he didn’t, That was the problem. Nothing more. We turned the hi-fi up, played kitchen pan band, danced to Miles Davis’s So What until he left to see to the trees.

I hope he sees he timed things right. Guacamole overflows Grandma’s fiesta bowl. Maybe he sees us, weeding, seeding, rolling dice, laughing when we burn the toast, talking it over with his trees. I hope he rests assured; Magnolia Street’s secured. Every lock’s checked twice; the bar’s fully stocked. We don’t play kitchen pan band; the stereo’s broken. Odds are we’ll fix it. His pocket watch says it’s about time.

Jen Wyrauch Edson from Palm Desert, CA, studies with SmokeLong Fitness, has words in National Flash Fiction Day's FlashFlood 2023, Best MicroFiction, 2024. Short-listed: SmokeLong Summer 2024. Long-listed: SmokeLong MMM, 2025. Fiction MFA from Antioch University, LA. Once, she taught poetry. Serves as judge for Antioch’s Dorland Mountain Arts writing competition.

'What Is Left Behind' by Monique Cuillerier

"It is time to leave, Specialist Stipes," the maintenance robot at Laurel's door said. "Your assigned ship departs this evening."

Laurel suppressed a sigh. Politically, she had not been opposed to either the robots' ascendancy or the subsequent decision that the humans would need to depart. But she still could not bring herself to finish packing.

"Our patience has limits, Specialist Stipes," the robot continued.

Laurel nodded as the door closed and sat down heavily on her bed. It was the robots' planet now and she knew it was time.

But she struggled with what she was leaving behind.

Like Sylvia.

Sylvia had loved Mars as much as she had loved Laurel. After her death, Laurel had felt that, if she couldn't have Sylvia anymore, at least Mars could. And she had mixed the dust of Sylvia with the dust of Mars.

But now that it was time to leave, the thought of this final separation was more than Laurel could bear.

Although she could still call to mind Sylvia's touch, her softness, those memories were increasingly fleeting and their intensity fading.

If only there was some way of taking Sylvia with her.

She abruptly sat up straight. Maybe she could. If not Sylvia, at least the possibility of her.

Energized, Laurel packed quickly. She did not have much time, but she could check her bags at the spaceport on the way.

The line moved slowly as the robot at the gate scanned each human's forearm and checked the result against the display, before allowing them to board the ship.

A shadow of sadness still hung over Laurel, but she held a vial of red dust in her pocket. It wasn't much, but it was Mars.

It was Sylvia.

Monique Cuillerier is a queer science fiction and horror writer living in Ottawa (Canada) with her cat Janeway. The parent of two grown children, she spends her non-writing time running, reading, and finding new things to take classes about. Her writing can be found at notwhereilive.ca

'Cassandra said you shouldn’t make the coffee run to Bozeman today, ’cuz zombies' by Tom Walsh

So like every Wednesday, you drive the 40 miles to Joe’s Diner and linger over re-percolated coffee and make small talk with what’s left of your Old Yellowstone Gang. You raise your glasses to salute the missing, and debate again where the zombies hide all day. You leave at dusk, later than you meant to, and halfway home get a flat and curse yourself for having no spare and you think about the coming night alone in the cab of the pickup with only a .357 on your lap and a half box of shells on the passenger seat. At midnight you feel thuds against the side of the truck. A bloody hand slaps the driver’s side window. Faces dripping flesh appear in the rearview mirror. You unscrew the thermos, tip a fresh pour into your Coffee is Life mug, inhale the bitter aroma, and think, Let ‘em come.

Tom Walsh writes these days from Cambridge, MA. His stories can be found in Emerge, Hobart Pulp, Lost Balloon, Bending Genres, HAD, Flash Frog, The Citron Review and elsewhere. He’s working on a flash-novel play about wildfire and fate. Say hi @tom1walsh.bsky.social.