'Hero Complex' by Timothy C Goodwin

You’ve got your cigarette-stained drunks at the Dixie Tavern, your ex that riles you into a fevered pacing after seismic phone calls but still scores you dime bags, your manager at TGI Friday’s who shares his coke with you in the office; but you’ve also got me, who cleans your dogs' shit in the kitchen when you’re too stoned to walk them, who drained the back yard of dead brush and sun-bleached garbage to try and trap you in sunrises and sunsets, who pays your rent, so you have a place to sleep it all off so you can do it all again. You've got me, who keeps saying No when you beg me to meet your bar friends, No when you’re asking if I want to celebrate nothing in particular with cocktails, No, no, and no, my magic word that will get you to admit how much I’m doing for you, so I can get my own fix. 

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Timothy C Goodwin has work included in Trash Cat, HAD, Twin Pies, Dishsoap Quarterly, BULL, JAKE, and elsewhere. He is also the cohost of the Tiffin Inn Writing Workshop podcast, and lives in NYC.

'The City at Sunset' by Cheryl King

Under the cover of twilight shadows, we frolicked past the garden gates, where vines intertwined like our linked hands. Past the brick porches of stone homes stacked together like children’s building blocks.

Past Mrs. Herrington’s cottage, crammed between brownstones and clotheslines. Up the cobblestone hill and around the stucco corner and past the bakery with its tendrils of sugar chasing our noses.

“Where are we going?”

Your hat tumbling down and away, you squeezed my hand harder.

“You’ll see!”

Up the patterned cathedral steps and around to the alley overgrown with ivy and stray cats, down the narrow pathway between Mr. Barbora’s flat and the quaint bistro with pineapple umbrella drinks.

Through archways and gateways, past pink doors and yellow windows, under faded awnings and vibrant flags, over dwarf hedges and toadstools.

Past horn blasts and bicycle bells and dog barks and mamas calling their children inside.

Past music drifting from windows and whistles rising from kettles and squeals bursting from babies. 

Around winding corners, through torchlit tunnels, under walkways spilling cascades of flowers. Past porches and patios and pergolas, and one building after the next, so close together their doors opened onto one another and waved hello.

When we reached a moss-covered footbridge, the river’s aroma upon the air, you announced, “Almost there.”

And, like the city’s bon voyage, the stone gave way to grass, and the grass rolled toward trees, and the trees opened up to blue, blue water with the orange stripe of the setting sun, and all we could hear were the gulls and the wind and the river and their sundown orchestra.

We sat arm in arm, catching our breath but losing it too, and there was nowhere else I would rather be – the city at our backs and the future floating freely out ahead.

 

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Cheryl King is a dyslexia therapist and writer with two published historical fiction books.

'Primers for young readers: Flick and Jane go to school' by Cheryl Markosky

My name is Flick. My friend is Jane. Tomorrow, we go to school.
Mother says I will go across the road. Jane a long way away.

“Why?” I ask Mother.
“Because she's Catholic."
“Surely this is an accident," I say.
“No,” Mother says.

“Can I go with Jane to her Catholic school?” I ask Mother.
“No,” she says.
“Why not?” 
“Because you are not a Catholic,” Mother says.
“What is a Catholic?"
“Someone who has lots of babies."

Jane has a baby doll called Bess.
“She will have more babies,” says Mother.
“Will they be accidents?” 
“Yes and no,” says Mother.

“Can I go to school with Jane and have babies that are accidents?” 
“No,” says Mother.
“Why not?” 
“If you go to Jane’s school and sit on the swing you might have an accident, you might get pregnant."
“What is pregnant?” I ask.
“Having a baby,” Mother says.

I like the idea of pregnant, of having a baby like Bess. Bess has blue eyes and blonde hair like Jane. I have brown eyes and brown hair.

Mother says I must not sit on the swing at Jane’s long way away school and be pregnant. Mother says I am a Protestant. 
“Do Protestants sit on swings and have babies like Catholics?” I ask.
“Yes and no,” Mother says.

I am confused. 

“Catholics and Protestants sound the same," I say.
“They are not,” says Mother. “Catholics have more babies.”
Catholics have many Besses. I want to be a Catholic. Mother says no.

I want to sit on the swing at Jane’s school. I want an accident. I want a Bess. I want Jane.

My name is Flick. My friend is Jane. Tomorrow, I go to school. I go to school across the road. Jane goes to school a long way away.

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Cheryl Markosky has had teensy stories published in New Flash Fiction Review, Janus Literary, Retreat West, The Molotov Cocktail, Mslexia and others. She writes about fathers turning into centaurs, Grandma's shrunken head decorating a tiki bar, a dog in season and more...

'Disenchanted' by David Galef

And I, an old citizen of Elvenbloom, a village ruled by two irascible warlocks named Jack and not-Jack, its citizens composed of those who work magic and those worked upon, the morning air misted with spells of transformation, boy bewitched into cabbage, girl into swine, and dusk lit by counter-spells of restoration, though not always complete (boy retains green ears, girl grunts), parents of an unruly child hoping for a changeling, the market folk purveying everything from birth charms to deadly relics and supernatural fava beans, the blacksmith and baker at times aided by blue and green fairies, at other times frustrated by trolls, the town well inhabited by a frog prince who croons “Kiss me!” with no takers, the local school presided over by a witch who has punished bad students with a hundred years of detention, the public library loaning out grimoires and thaumaturgy treatises, the annual Festival of Mirth with its forced cachinnation, the doctor with the devil knows what in his bag, the lawyer who speaks with a serpent’s tongue, the therapist offering necromancy sessions for dissatisfied couples, youth lying entwined on the village green in summer while experiencing the enchantment of youth, the pharmacy advertising a drastic sale on love potions, talking cats roaming the streets though without much to say for themselves, dogs who are just dogs, the town not far from the Lair of Oom, where the dragons noisily mate every spring, the moiety of us all too often bewitched, bothered, and bewildered—I long for a municipality with a just and equitable system of government, a democracy in harmony, presided over by elected officials and a board of impartial judges with no hint of invisibility—but that, I know, is a magic wish that will never come to pass.

 

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David Galef has published a dozen books, including My Date with Neanderthal Woman (Dzanc Short Story Prize) and How to Cope with Suburban Stress (Kirkus Best Books of 2006). His latest is Brevity: A Flash Fiction Handbook, from Columbia University Press. He’s also the editor in chief at Vestal Review.

'Gameplay' by Emily Rinkema

My boyfriend’s thirteen year-old daughter challenges me to a game of Scrabble as her father, my lover, makes my favorite dessert, a berry pie that’s more bitter than sweet. She confidently places her first word, GOOSE, and her father says something celebratory. She gives me the look she’s been practicing for months, a look she first flashed when her father flirted with me in the restaurant where I work, a look that says, “He’s mine, bitch.”

I know that look from both sides and I know who he’ll choose every time.

I drink my wine and play the word FLING and then rack up the points, word after word: CHERUB and MOVE and NYMPH on a triple letter, and I keep eye contact with her, this creature who’s still young enough to cry when she loses, but old enough to do it in her room, who will soon cross lines she isn’t even aware of, who will learn to express her anger in a way that’s invisible to the world, but visible on her body, and I lay JEZEBEL onto a double word and lean back and watch her place tiles that open the board wide, that set me up for QUEEN down the left side triple word, and I can see her holding in her tears, the physical pain of it on her little face. 

She has so much to learn, and I know I won’t be around long enough to teach her.

“Pie,” her father says, placing a perfect slice in front of me and kissing the top of my head, and she knows I’ve won, that she never had a chance, and even though she hates me for it, I can see in her glassy eyes that she’s grateful, at least, for the clarity.   

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Emily lives in northern Vermont, USA. Her writing has most recently appeared in Milk Candy Review, Flash Frog, Ghost Parachute, and Wigleaf, and she won the 2024 Cambridge Prize and the 2024 Lascaux Prize for flash fiction. You can follow her on X, BS, or IG @emilyrinkema.

Debut Flash: 'Graduation' by Sarah Padgett

As everyone tossed their graduation caps in the air I looked up to see a sea of royal blue come hurling down around me. I was still clutching my cap and had yet to throw it upwards because I was struck with some unshakable and heady feeling I couldn’t put a name to. Then about half a second later I threw up my graduation cap and it was as if time had been suspended and my hat floated up there just long enough for me to realize what the feeling was. It was the complex fear of growing up mixed with the giddy uncertainty of what the future held. I gave everyone around me some kind of last look like they were about to evaporate into the ether of the real world. Some of them I would see again in sparse surprising ways and others really would just blend into some kind of vapor and disappear after that.

 

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Sarah Padgett is a lifelong writer hailing from Texas but currently living in Michigan.

 

'A Normal Tuesday' by Louise Hurrell

I stepped in from the cold night air. Familiar sounds rushed towards me: excitable football pundits, the held breath of the crowd. Blue light pooled at the living room door. I shucked my coat, swapped my Mary Janes for slippers, and padded through. You were sitting in your usual spot on the sofa, eyes glued to the screen. You didn’t look away when you asked: 

‘How was work today? Anything interesting?’.  

I wanted to tell you the truth: how I drove to the office; how I got out, turned and walked away. Left the car in its bay. My heels chirruped against the pavement; wildflowers bloomed between the cracks as I passed. I strolled for hours but my feet never tired. I waltzed straight to the harbour, hopped in the first empty boat and untied the ropes. I sailed across the globe. I learnt new languages, sucked exotic fruit. I snuck inside the Library of Congress and memorised every single book. Ask me to quote any poet – Mackellar, Lorca, Limón - and I could. I travelled alone to the North Pole. I discovered the cure for the common cold. I greeted the people of Atlantis and dragged the Mary-Celeste from her hidey-hole. I toppled whole dictatorships. I invented a rail service that actually ran on time. I sang, danced, slurped, swallowed, stroked, poked, sniffed, whiffed, until the Earth held no more secrets. Then I cupped the sun like a clementine, peeled the pith with my teeth and ate the segments, spitting out star-seeds onto the sky’s dark tablecloth, the same stars you grunted at disinterestedly when I pointed them out to you last night, and not the fact you had forgotten our anniversary.   

I wanted to tell you all this. Instead, I shrugged.  

‘The usual, really,’ I said, ‘Nothing much’. 

 

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Louise Hurrell (she/her) is a writer from Dundee, Scotland. Her work has appeared in Oranges Journal and The Circus Collective. She likes to wander art galleries in her spare time.