Sudden Flash
Satisfying Your Appetite For Yummy Bites of Micro Prose every Wednesday
Updated Publishing Schedule
We have reorganized a bit. Instead of a haphazard publishing schedule, we'll be posting new stories on Wednesdays. (Editorial content will appear on other days.) Set your clocks.
Flash Challenges
In the past, we've written about "Gimmicks" among publishers of flash fiction. These are special challenges to the author, such as writing a story with a specific word count, or embedding certain words in the story.
We have put together another list of sites that use restrictions and requirements to bring challenge and discipline to the craft of microprose.
Gooseberry Pie publishes pieces of exactly six sentences and no more than 400 words.
Five Minutes explores five minutes of a life in one hundred words
The Last Line is the companion to The First Line. There, all stories start with the same sentence. Here, they all end the same. Story length is 300-5000 words.
100 Word Story publishes stories of exactly 100 words.
A Story in 100 Words - guess what?
Flash Flood accepts submissions (up to 300 words) one week per year and then publishes a flood of stories on National Flash Fiction Day in June.
50 Word Stories are really short, but sometimes that's all it takes.
Backwards Trajectory publishes poetry and prose, up to 200 words.
Blink-Ink has been publishing stories of approximately 50 words since 2009.
Aster Lit publishes stories from writers aged 13-25. They publish prose up to 3,000 words.
Bloom publishes pieces of no more than 2,500 words by authors age 40 and older.
Persimmon Tree includes prose pieces under 3,500 words, and "short takes" of 250-500 words, all written by women over sixty.
Centaur publishes a small number of stories, up to 400 words, in quarterly issues.
The Citron Review publishes short prose, up to 1000 words, and micros, up to 100 words.
Paranoid Tree publishes pieces up to 400 words, online and on paper.
We have put together another list of sites that use restrictions and requirements to bring challenge and discipline to the craft of microprose.
Gooseberry Pie publishes pieces of exactly six sentences and no more than 400 words.
Five Minutes explores five minutes of a life in one hundred words
The Last Line is the companion to The First Line. There, all stories start with the same sentence. Here, they all end the same. Story length is 300-5000 words.
100 Word Story publishes stories of exactly 100 words.
A Story in 100 Words - guess what?
Flash Flood accepts submissions (up to 300 words) one week per year and then publishes a flood of stories on National Flash Fiction Day in June.
50 Word Stories are really short, but sometimes that's all it takes.
Backwards Trajectory publishes poetry and prose, up to 200 words.
Blink-Ink has been publishing stories of approximately 50 words since 2009.
Aster Lit publishes stories from writers aged 13-25. They publish prose up to 3,000 words.
Bloom publishes pieces of no more than 2,500 words by authors age 40 and older.
Persimmon Tree includes prose pieces under 3,500 words, and "short takes" of 250-500 words, all written by women over sixty.
Centaur publishes a small number of stories, up to 400 words, in quarterly issues.
The Citron Review publishes short prose, up to 1000 words, and micros, up to 100 words.
Paranoid Tree publishes pieces up to 400 words, online and on paper.
Finding Clarisse
by James C. Clar
Thunderstorms are somewhat rare on Oahu. The temperature seldom varies enough or quickly enough to goad the air into that particular form of violence. When they do come, they arrive with a kind of magnificence – loud, electric, otherworldly. Visitors often miss the magic. They grumble about the rain, about the loss of beach time. “Hey,” they say, “we get this at home.” Who can blame them? They came for sun and warm, gentle breezes, not Iowa weather disguised in a grass skirt and a lei.
Residents, on the other hand, know better. They grudgingly welcome the storm and the sharp crack of thunder riding the trade winds; the “liquid sunshine” and the jagged bolt of lightning ripping its way through a sky gone unaccountably black. It’s a reminder as well; the islands aren’t always soft.
Late one afternoon, during just such a storm, I felt something – something strange, something portentous – pull me outside. Living alone and with no real obligations to speak of, I was free to indulge such impulses. The usually bustling streets of Waikiki were awash and all-but deserted. Rain hammered the Ala Wai Canal, now invisible behind a curtain of water. Palm trees flailed like tortured animals. The usual dry susurration of their fronds had become a rasping chorus, insectile and urgent. The distant lights of Moiliili and St. Louis Heights on the mountainside to the north shimmered like a dream half-forgotten, distorted and surreal.
I was soaked within seconds, wandering without direction up and down the grid of streets that ran between Ala Wai Boulevard and Kuhio Avenue. Thunder cracked overhead as I trod the faded heart of Waikiki. Then, in the flash of a particularly vicious bolt of lightning, I had the proverbial epiphany. I knew what I had to do.
I began entering condo buildings, dripping pools of water in the foyers as I pressed intercom buttons more-or-less at random. In the old days, you’d need a doorman’s permission to enter. I wondered how I would have managed back then.
“Clarisse, is that you?” I’d ask in a disembodied voice.
“Wrong unit, brah. No ‘Clarisse’ here.”
Not everyone was so polite.
“Get lost, asshole. You gotta try harder than that!”
So much for Polynesian hospitality. I pressed on, literally and figuratively.
Eventually, I came to a mid-century building with windswept palms, a coral walkway, a porte-cochere like something out of a vintage postcard or travel brochure. I chose a button. I was more deliberate this time. The name below the intercom had faded and was illegible.
“Aloha, Clarisse, are you home?”
There was a pause. Then a voice. It was tinny and uncertain.
“Yes. Who’s there?”
“It’s me. Eddie.”
“Eddie? I don’t know anyone named Eddie.”
“That’s all right,” I replied. “I really don’t know anyone named Clarisse. But I’ve been looking for you a long time.”
A drop of water ran from my forehead and down my nose.
Silence. Then, after a moment or two …
“I guess I’ve been looking for you, too. Come on up.”
I heard the click of the lock releasing. Before stepping inside, I turned around and looked back. The rain had stopped. The sky was clearing. The tang of iodine hung thick in the air, along with the scent of ginger and plumeria. People were beginning to reappear. The streets gleamed, swept clean by the storm. The run-off flowed into the drains and, inevitably, merged with the warm, amniotic waters of the Pacific.
━━━━⊱༒︎ • ༒︎⊰━━━━
James C. Clar is a teacher and writer who divides his time between the wilds of Upstate New York and the more congenial climes of Honolulu, Hawaii. Most recently, his work has appeared in The Sci-Phi Journal, Bright Flash Literary Review, Antipodean Sci-Fi, The Literary Fantasy Magazine, The Blotter Magazine and Freedom Fiction Journal.
Thunderstorms are somewhat rare on Oahu. The temperature seldom varies enough or quickly enough to goad the air into that particular form of violence. When they do come, they arrive with a kind of magnificence – loud, electric, otherworldly. Visitors often miss the magic. They grumble about the rain, about the loss of beach time. “Hey,” they say, “we get this at home.” Who can blame them? They came for sun and warm, gentle breezes, not Iowa weather disguised in a grass skirt and a lei.
Residents, on the other hand, know better. They grudgingly welcome the storm and the sharp crack of thunder riding the trade winds; the “liquid sunshine” and the jagged bolt of lightning ripping its way through a sky gone unaccountably black. It’s a reminder as well; the islands aren’t always soft.
Late one afternoon, during just such a storm, I felt something – something strange, something portentous – pull me outside. Living alone and with no real obligations to speak of, I was free to indulge such impulses. The usually bustling streets of Waikiki were awash and all-but deserted. Rain hammered the Ala Wai Canal, now invisible behind a curtain of water. Palm trees flailed like tortured animals. The usual dry susurration of their fronds had become a rasping chorus, insectile and urgent. The distant lights of Moiliili and St. Louis Heights on the mountainside to the north shimmered like a dream half-forgotten, distorted and surreal.
I was soaked within seconds, wandering without direction up and down the grid of streets that ran between Ala Wai Boulevard and Kuhio Avenue. Thunder cracked overhead as I trod the faded heart of Waikiki. Then, in the flash of a particularly vicious bolt of lightning, I had the proverbial epiphany. I knew what I had to do.
I began entering condo buildings, dripping pools of water in the foyers as I pressed intercom buttons more-or-less at random. In the old days, you’d need a doorman’s permission to enter. I wondered how I would have managed back then.
“Clarisse, is that you?” I’d ask in a disembodied voice.
“Wrong unit, brah. No ‘Clarisse’ here.”
Not everyone was so polite.
“Get lost, asshole. You gotta try harder than that!”
So much for Polynesian hospitality. I pressed on, literally and figuratively.
Eventually, I came to a mid-century building with windswept palms, a coral walkway, a porte-cochere like something out of a vintage postcard or travel brochure. I chose a button. I was more deliberate this time. The name below the intercom had faded and was illegible.
“Aloha, Clarisse, are you home?”
There was a pause. Then a voice. It was tinny and uncertain.
“Yes. Who’s there?”
“It’s me. Eddie.”
“Eddie? I don’t know anyone named Eddie.”
“That’s all right,” I replied. “I really don’t know anyone named Clarisse. But I’ve been looking for you a long time.”
A drop of water ran from my forehead and down my nose.
Silence. Then, after a moment or two …
“I guess I’ve been looking for you, too. Come on up.”
I heard the click of the lock releasing. Before stepping inside, I turned around and looked back. The rain had stopped. The sky was clearing. The tang of iodine hung thick in the air, along with the scent of ginger and plumeria. People were beginning to reappear. The streets gleamed, swept clean by the storm. The run-off flowed into the drains and, inevitably, merged with the warm, amniotic waters of the Pacific.
James C. Clar is a teacher and writer who divides his time between the wilds of Upstate New York and the more congenial climes of Honolulu, Hawaii. Most recently, his work has appeared in The Sci-Phi Journal, Bright Flash Literary Review, Antipodean Sci-Fi, The Literary Fantasy Magazine, The Blotter Magazine and Freedom Fiction Journal.
The Disciple
by Oscar Wilde
And when they saw that the pool had changed from a cup of sweet waters into a cup of salt tears, they loosened the green tresses of their hair and cried to the pool and said, `We do not wonder that you should mourn in this manner for Narcissus, so beautiful was he.'
"But was Narcissus beautiful?" said the pool.
"Who should know that better than you?" answered the Oreads. "Us did he ever pass by, but you he sought for, and would lie on your banks and look down at you, and in the mirror of your waters he would mirror his own beauty."
And the pool answered, "But I loved Narcissus because, as he lay on my banks and looked down at me, in the mirror of his eyes I saw ever my own beauty mirrored."
━━━━⊱༒︎ • ༒︎⊰━━━━
Oscar Wilde (1854 – 1900) was an Irish author, poet, and playwright, one of the most popular and influential playwrights in London in the early 1890s. Today, he is well-remembered for his novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray.
Just for fun, we occasionally publish vintage stories from historic authors.
When Narcissus died the pool of his pleasure changed from a cup of sweet waters into a cup of salt tears, and the Oreads came weeping through the woodland that they might sing to the pool and give it comfort.
And when they saw that the pool had changed from a cup of sweet waters into a cup of salt tears, they loosened the green tresses of their hair and cried to the pool and said, `We do not wonder that you should mourn in this manner for Narcissus, so beautiful was he.'
"But was Narcissus beautiful?" said the pool.
"Who should know that better than you?" answered the Oreads. "Us did he ever pass by, but you he sought for, and would lie on your banks and look down at you, and in the mirror of your waters he would mirror his own beauty."
And the pool answered, "But I loved Narcissus because, as he lay on my banks and looked down at me, in the mirror of his eyes I saw ever my own beauty mirrored."
Oscar Wilde (1854 – 1900) was an Irish author, poet, and playwright, one of the most popular and influential playwrights in London in the early 1890s. Today, he is well-remembered for his novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray.
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