Furnished Art House For Sale
by Toby Wosk Costas
Mid-century ranch features long narrow hall ending at rustic wood-paneled addition, in back.
Family photographs in glass cases lining each side of hall track interesting people 1901 to 1999 (after which sliding the heavy doors of glass to add or subtract people became a burden).
Tidy bathroom, on your right. A Museum of Travels – Hawaii to Mexico. Carefully selected artifacts dot the walls, each dusty and long forgotten. Like the trips themselves.
Moving forward and to your right, enjoy the kitchen wall homage to the masterpieces of cherished children, alongside alleged framed Picasso prints, all viewed as equally valuable. (Note: When the giant white Frigidaire door slams, all pictures move, just a bit. Some discount will be considered).
Passing white venetian blinds over front windows (always shuttered), we see 5” x 12” collage of magazine cut-outs on the back of front door, lacquered 50 years ago at Harper Elementary. Surprisingly cool. Feel free to touch, carefully.
Side-staring portrait of one dearly departed, painted by another dearly departed, guards entry to the living room. Olive green carpeting, some footprint indents, throughout.
Giant Pollock-esque painting hangs over the couch. Perfect for visiting couples to rest their heads while having a highball.
Oversize coffee table art books highlight the low coffee table in front of the couch. Mosaic tiles atop form a faux-Mondrian design. Note: Table doubles as a useful footrest. Buyer can also peruse equally enjoyable coffee table fare: giant tan leatherette photo album, family name stenciled on top with dime store press-on letters, silver. Some consonants missing, but you get the point.
Metal walker waiting nearby. Also for sale.
Toby Wosk Costas is an attorney recommitting to her creative writing roots, after all creative aspirations were blasted away through the intense study of things like commercial paper in law school. Choosing that road rather than a five-year Ph.D program in English, to family dismay, led to its own major fulfillment. But now, she goes back, tries to reconnect to the high of short fiction writing of her own and reading the amazing sentences of fellow travelers.
I Got Undressed For This
by R.K. West
The doctor, broad-shouldered with spiky white hair, stands in the room where I perch on a tiny exam table while his young female assistant takes notes. This was once a pediatric clinic, never intended for so many adults; I suspect there is not enough air for all of us.
He asks questions, doubts me, asks again with different words, but my answers remain the same. He sighs when I say I’m exhausted; everyone he sees is exhausted.
He says, “Maybe you need more sleep.”
I say, “I sleep until I can sleep no more.”
At last, he looks at me.
R.K. West is a Canadian-America writer currently living in the Pacific Northwest. rkwest.com
An Idle Fellow
by Kate Chopin
Now and then, we publish vintage stories from historic authors. This was originally published in 1893.
I am tired. At the end of these years I am very tired. I have been studying in books the languages of the living and those we call dead. Early in the fresh morning I have studied in books, and throughout the day when the sun was shining; and at night when there were stars, I have lighted my oil-lamp and studied in books. Now my brain is weary and I want rest.
I shall sit here on the door-step beside my friend Paul. He is an idle fellow with folded hands. He laughs when I upbraid him, and bids me, with a motion, hold my peace. He is listening to a thrush’s song that comes from the blur of yonder apple-tree. He tells me the thrush is singing a complaint. She wants her mate that was with her last blossom-time and builded a nest with her. She will have no other mate. She will call for him till she hears the notes of her beloved-one’s song coming swiftly towards her across forest and field.
Paul is a strange fellow. He gazed idly at a billowy white cloud that rolls lazily over and over along the edge of the blue sky.
He turns away from me and the words with which I would instruct him, to drink deep the scent of the clover-field and the thick perfume from the rose-hedge.
We rise from the door-step and walk together down the gentle slope of the hill; past the apple-tree, and the rose-hedge; and along the border of the field where wheat is growing. We walk down to the foot of the gentle slope where women and men and children are living.
Paul is a strange fellow. He looks into the faces of people who pass us by. He tells me that in their eyes he reads the story of their souls. He knows men and women and the little children, and why they look this way and that way. He knows the reasons that turn them to and fro and cause them to go and come. I think I shall walk a space through the world with my friend Paul. He is very wise, he knows the language of God which I have not learned.
Kate Chopin (1850-1904) was an American author of short stories and novels, best known today for her 1899 novel The Awakening. Her works were often criticized as controversial or immoral, and she did not have financial success with her writing, but after her death she was recognized as a leading writer of her time.
Rope a Man Can Trust
by James C. Clar
The bell above the door jingled once, almost tentatively, as the man entered. “Can I help you, sir?” The shopkeeper asked as he looked up from his ledger. Dust drifted lazily in the wane afternoon light. The space was filled with shelves, the shelves laden with hooks, nets, lanterns; all the oddments required by the inhabitants of a small, lakefront village.
The visitor paused just inside, as though adjusting to something heavier than the relative dimness of the interior. His eyes, dark and brooding, moved across the shop until they settled on a coil of rope resting serpent-like among others in a corner.
“Is that good quality?” he asked as he pointed. His voice was low, controlled. At the same time, it carried a certain gravity that belied the mundane nature of the question.
The shopkeeper smiled, slipping easily into a practiced cheerfulness. “Of course. All the local fishermen shop here. They’d know, wouldn’t they?”
The man didn’t return the smile. He walked over and hefted the rope. His calloused fingers pressed into the fibers, testing them. They lingered as though searching for a certain quality or characteristic only he could fathom.
“Strong,” he eventually declared.
“The strongest I carry,” the shopkeeper replied with professional pride. “Won’t fray, won’t snap. It’s the kind of rope a man can trust.”
A flicker passed across the stranger’s face, something akin to doubt or, perhaps, regret. It vanished as quickly as it appeared.
“I’ll take it,” he said. His tone suggested resignation mixed with weariness.
“Excellent, choice,” the shopkeeper replied now with a satisfied smile that eclipsed his previous, more artificial one. It had been a slow day. He wasted no time gathering the rope and setting it on the counter. “That will be …”
Before the merchant could finish, the customer dropped a heavy leather pouch onto the scarred wooden counter-top with a thud. The sound echoed resoundingly, filling the small shop. A few coins spilled out in a bright cascade. Silver flared in the dim light as one rolled along the counter and stopped just as it reached the edge.
The bewildered shopkeeper looked into the man’s eyes. When he spoke, his voice was hesitant, uncertain. “Sir, this is far too much.”
“No matter,” the man said as he looked up. “Keep the change. I won’t be needing it.”
With that, the man placed the coiled rope over his arm and around his shoulder. He never gave the owner another glance as he turned to leave. The bell above the door jingled once again, more sharply this time, as he stepped out onto the dusty street. It seemed to the shopkeeper that the sound lingered far longer than it ought to have.
The retailer, amazed at his good fortune, looked down again at the pouch. Grasping it with what almost amounted to physical hunger, he loosened the cord all the way. The gleam from within reflected in his eyes.
“You won’t believe it, honey,” he called to the back of the shop as he scooped up a handful of the contents and let them spill lazily through his fingers as he counted. “Some damn fool just bought a length of rope for ….” he paused momentarily to finish. “Thirty pieces of silver!”
James C. Clar is a writer and retired teacher. In addition to his contributions to Sudden Flash, his work has most recently been published in Flash Digest, Bright Flash Literary Review, Freedom Fiction Journal, The Magazine of Literary Fantasy, After/Thought Literary Journal, 365-Tomorrows, Antipodean SF and Metastellar Magazine.
Debugged
by Jenny Morelli
It seemed innocent at first, all those tiny little bugs marching by, each with a crumb they filched from a chip I dropped, but as I watched them parade across the porch, they grew larger and larger, from the size of a rice grain to the size of my pinky to the size of my pen, then the size of my shoe.
They grew big as the thoughts in my mind as the words on this page, as the panic wedged sideways in my throat as they stood on their hind legs to the height of my door, as they pushed that door open and greeted me face to face, their heads swiveling left and right, their red eyes blinking, their mouthparts clicking as if trying to speak.
They surrounded me. Towered over me. Tilted their heads to inspect me as I tried to scream, tried to swat them away, tried to run through their legs and skitter across my floor filching crumbs in my path as they reached for the pest-control spray to shoo me from the house that was no longer mine, and all because I forgot to debug my computer.
Jenny Morelli is a NJ high school English teacher who lives with her husband, cat, and myriad yard pets. She seeks inspiration in everything around her. She’s published in several literary magazines including Red Rose Thorns, Spillwords, Scars tv. This is her fourth poetry chapbook with Bottlecap Press. Check out her website for more: JennyMorelliWrites.com
A Leviathan’s Love
by Matt Hollingsworth
Lush valleys and placid waters, a boy in a boat with his father—who months ago told him his mom drowned in this lake—mealworms writhing in sawdust, the boy sucking his bleeding thumb, scarlet dripping off a fishhook, the father calling him worthless fuckwit, the boy crying, ripples from a gigantic fin in the water, splashing, rocking, jaws as big as the boat chomping on the screaming father, swallowing him, then silence, the leviathan’s glistening blue skin, its eye up close, familiar—the boy’s mom—a tear, a wink, and the creature submerges.
A boy in a boat, alone.
Matt Hollingsworth is a neurodivergent human and award-winning color artist for Marvel, DC, and Image Comics. His prose has been nominated for Best of the Net and Ellen Datlow’s The Best Horror of the Year and has appeared or is forthcoming in Interzone, Tales to Terrify, Uncharted, and Bourbon Penn. matthollingsworth.com Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/matthollingsworth.bsky.social
Roger disapproves. Of you.
By Michael Girardin
“Look at this guy!” Roger thought.” Flying down Granville, middle of the day, gotta be at least 40, middle of the road, traffic everywhere , on a skateboard! A fucking skateboard. Moron. I bet he combs his beard in the mirror and does action poses. I hope somebody hits him. Not real bad, just graze him, maybe break his skateboard. Make him cry. What’s the Cop doing? Nothing. Of course. What’s wrong with him? Stop this toolbox before he kills someone. Or himself. Come on, do something, anything, you’re a cop, hit him with your nightstick, dipshit.
Look at them. The robots. Glued to their phones. Nothing. Nobody sees or cares if it’s not on a screen. Jesus Christ could come back, riding Haley's comet, step down off the cross and make me a grilled cheese sandwich and they wouldn’t say boo. Yo! Pinhead! Pound that phone up your ass! Yeah. I’m talking to you. What are you going to do about it? That’s what I thought, move it along numbnuts. Oh, great, look at this guy. What, he’s gonna sit on the bench here? Beside me?? Fuck off goldilocks, my bench.”
Roger’s mind wandered while he waited for the bus. He was a man without a lawn to tell people to get off of and it had hardened his heart in his later years.
But that didn’t matter. It was time to testify.
Roger had the bench to himself, and there was a nice little crowd, waiting for their prospective buses. Seventy, but still nimble, he hopped up on the bench and began at full blast, as usual. A little man with a very big mouth.
“LISTEN UP PEOPLE AND LISTEN GOOD! UNDERSTAND THE TIME FOR LISTENNG IS DRAWING TO A CLOSE AND SOON IT WILL BE TOO LATE! PULL YOUR NOSES OUT OF YOUR PHONES AND YOUR HEADS OUT OF YOUR BEHINDS. IF YOU PAY ATTENTION AND ONLY IF YOU DO, THERES IS STILL A SMALL CHANCE FOR YOU TO AVOID HELLFIRE AND DEMON ABUSE. FIRST OF ALL, BEFORE I START LET ME JUST MAKE ONE THING CLEAR: JESUS WAS NOT A HIPSTER! EVEN THOUGH HE HAD A BEARD AND SANDALS! HE DID NOT WALK OVER A SEA OF IRONY. HE HAD NO NEED FOR KOMBUCHA OR SMOOTHIES. HE DIDN’T HAVE TIME FOR THOSE THINGS. HE WAS TOO BUSY SAVING THE WORLD AND HELPING BLIND MEN SEE. PLUS, JESUS HAD A JOB. A REAL JOB. JESUS WAS A CARPENTER, A WOODWORKER, A TIMBER TECHNICIAN. HE DIDN’T MAKE A LIVING PRESSING BUTTONS, COUNTING WIDGETS IN THE SKY. IT WAS REAL WORK. HARD WORK, MAN’S WORK”. By this time several people at the bus stop had turned around and were staring at Roger, most with clear expressions of loathing, a couple with stunned looks on their faces. They’d seen this in the movies but never in real life, on a real street corner. One young man with a backpack said in a clear resonant voice, "Please, can someone make him stop?” Roger was heating up.
“MOST OF YOU PROBABLY HAVEN'T HEARD OF THAT. HARD WORK. LOOK IT UP ON YOUR GOOGLER. ONE TIME, WHEN HE WAS WORKING JESUS HIT HIS THUMB WITH A HAMMER. KNOW WHAT HE SAID WHEN THAT HAPPENED? HE SAID, 'JESUS CHRIST MY GODAMNED THUMB!' JESUS DIDN’T HAVE TIME FOR FANCY TALK. JESUS TOLD IT LIKE IT IS AND LIKE IT WAS.” At this point the backpack guy had had enough and said, “Christ, can’t somebody stop this guy?" A murmur of agreement flowed through the small crowd. Emboldened the kid barked out, “Hey buddy, Jesus called, said to tell you the bus to Crazytown doesn’t run on Mondays.” The crowd tittered its approval.
Fuel meet fire. Roger was luxuriously furious. The way he liked it.
“AGAINST ALL REASON AND LOGIC JESUS LOVES YOU. FOR ME THE JURY IS STILL OUT. I MEAN, LOOK AT YOU. CONDEMNED AND ON YOUR WAY TO BEING ROASTED LIKE A SUCKLING PIG. BUT ITS NOT TOO LATE! IT’S NOT TOO LATE! IT'S NOT TOO LATE TO SAVE YOURSELF! PLEASE LISTEN! PLEASE. YOU HAVE TO DO ONE THING AND ONE THING ONLY! ALL YOU HAVE TO DO IS…” Roger stopped, paused, and looked to the left, squinting.
His tone changed, “BUT I'M SORRY! MY BUS IS HERE ! I'LL LEAVE YOU WITH THIS: WHEN YOU'RE ROASTING IN HELL, DON’T FORGET, IT'S ONLY FOREVER!”
He leapt off the bench like an angry Leprechaun on a mission, elbowed his way to the front of the line, scampered onto the crowded bus and shamed a pimply teenager out of the seat he was occupying in the senior/ handicapped section. He stared him down like Moses stared down the Red Sea.
Once the bus started rolling, settled into his rightful seat, he yelled out, even louder,” ARE YOU SAVED? HAVE YOU HEARD?” Instantly the bus driver shot back, “Hey don’t think I don’t remember you, pal!. We are not going to go through this again! Zip it or beat it! “
Roger zipped it and settled into the rhythm of the ride.
For the first time today, Roger had a smile on his face.
Michael Girardin is a veteran actor living in Canada.
Equilibrium
by Mark Sabourin
She called to him. “Too far,” he heard, “Larry, come back.” Ahead, the sea wrinkled beneath the midmorning sun. Released from the current’s insistent tug, he swam a languid breast stroke. Ahead, a retreating cruise ship bobbed and shrank toward a distant horizon, a thousand kilometres of open sea, then Cuba.
A dozen years ago they’d both ignored the signs, “Danger,” “Strong currents.” They were drunk. They’d picked their way over the rocks to the water’s edge and smoked a joint. Then, they’d stripped and pushed through the heaving surf to the point where the sea’s flow and ebb met on equal terms, one pulling them back to shore, the other urging them out to sea. They’d hung there as if the currents should decide.
This time, they’d padded along a sandy patch into water no more than knee deep, swinging their son between them like a pendulum, and Larry stared out to the pinnacle where the waves broke and the cove opened up to the sea. “This is far enough,” she’d said. Jeremy laughed as his legs swung through the surf, and they laughed with him. They swung him higher and higher, till he cried out when his foot struck a rock. They retreated to shore and examined the scrape on his instep, the two of them.
“Mommy, I want to go back,” Jeremy sobbed.
She took him in her arms. Larry looked past them at Rastas, the Bob Marley bar. A half dozen hurricanes must have blown through, and still it stood exactly as he remembered it.
“Back where?” Larry asked. “The water? The hotel? Home?”
“Larry!” Her voice called again over the water. Fainter. Shrill.
He filled his lungs, dropped his head and dove. He kicked and pushed and was swallowed up by the grey ocean. He kicked hard and felt the fire rise in his lungs until he hung, suspended, neither rising nor falling. He hung still as a moment, surrounded by a fog of water. East, west, forward, back – he had no reference point, no clear direction, so turned to the ocean floor. He looked for rocks that marked a rise in the seabed, and sand that marked its fall.
Mark Sabourin took a 30-year hiatus from fiction writing to earn a living writing as a business writer. With that taken care of, he's back. His "The Law of Gravity" appeared in The Antigonish Review, #99. He is hard at work on a novel.
I am sorry to tell you this by text
by Kara Gillies
but I am breaking up with you. It is not because we have wildly divergent aspirations, although your dream of a monster mansion and burgeoning bank balance conflicts with my minimalist style and critique of late-stage capitalism; nor is it because we have different tastes in movies, with you fueled by endless remakes of the Fast and the Furious while I snuggle in the comfort of Hallmark holiday specials, even in the Spring. It is not at all because I favour sleeping on my own, star-fished across the bed’s full breadth, not coveting half the covers at 3 am. It’s not because I am tired of picking up your discarded socks or half-drunk cups of coffee or fragile self esteem. It is not because I found a crisp business card tucked into the inner pocket of your grey suede handbag embellished with a handwritten number that I did not call and that was not answered by a woman with a voice like 30-year-old Scotch who stumbled when asked how she knows you; it is not that this bombshell ignited memories of my mother yelling at my father through tears and smashed plates and slammed doors, one of which did not hit his ass on the way out; and it is certainly not related to my therapist’s assertion that I have an avoidant attachment style and tend to walk away from conflict.
It is simply because I feel I am too young for this commitment and have decided to keep my options open.
Kara Gillies is a former sex worker and current non-profit leader in Vancouver, Canada. She is new to creative nonfiction and is dipping her toes into micro and flash.
Forensics
by R.K. West
They say that it isn’t possible to get rid of blood, for two reasons: first, it is pervasive, spreading out and soaking in, penetrating the corners and crevices, leaving tiny drops and flecks on unexpected surfaces; and second, it resists cleaning, undefeated by ordinary sprays and detergents, made even worse by bleach or ammonia. The only way to get rid of blood is to confound it with more blood. The two bloods will blend together, much the way decaf and espresso in the same cup create a single confusing beverage.
Using my own blood would be counterproductive, so I must turn to one of the neighbor’s chickens, and I am surprised when this makes me feel both squeamish and guilty. As the blood drains from the headless little feathered corpse, contaminating the red-brown puddle in the kitchen, I realize, with regret, that it is not enough, and another bird must be sacrificed. The carcasses go into the trash bins, where, of course, they will be quickly discovered, but I plan to answer questions about them the same way I will answer all the other questions: "I don’t know."
R.K. West is a Canadian-American writer who lives next to the Columbia River.
Credit: Originally published online at Six Sentences.
Let There Be Light
by James C. Clar
In the annals of Oneida County there appears an entry dated February, 1901: Fire at the Grand Hotel. Loss considerable. A clerk’s sentence, thin as a matchstick. Yet I have found that some lines, when struck, ignite. From this one I have imagined the following episode. Whether it be history, parable, or some hybrid creature of smoke and memory, I cannot say. I submit only that each generation risks betrayal by the miracles it inherits too quickly. Modern technology, like its primordial precursor, fire, need only be misunderstood once.
The name of my story’s protagonist is uncertain. I will call him Elias Ransom, only because that name appears twice in the guest registry of the wedding that drew him to the city.
Elias came from the North Country, that antique and reticent province where winter lingers like a creditor and innovation arrives with the hesitancy of an unwelcome guest. In his village, darkness was dispelled by candles and kerosene lamps. Although held at bay, Night there was never truly defeated.
By contrast, Utica proclaimed its modernity with noise and flame. Streetcars clanged their passage like armored insects, and the buildings climbed upward not out of faith or ingenuity but out of hubris.
Elias arrived in the afternoon, and found himself lodged at the Grand Hotel. The structure’s rather pretentious name belied its modest three stories. A young bellman in a collar starched to the stiffness of authority greeted him.
“Wedding guests are on the second floor, sir,” he said. Elias followed, feeling as though he had entered not a hotel but a mechanism, something wound tight and humming.
In the room, the bellman turned a small brass knob. Light leapt forth, not kindled, not coaxed, but summoned. Elias nodded, barely concealing his confusion. The bellman lingered, hand extended, in expectation.
“Will there be anything else?”
“No, thank you,” Elias replied. Unsure what to do about the bellman’s hand, he reached out and shook it.
Alone, Elias studied the lights. No wicks, no visible fuel. The flames hovered inside glass globes like captive ghosts. He accepted this as one accepts a rumor: provisionally, and with unease. Finally, he reasoned it to be a municipal improvement of the kerosene lamp.
That evening he attended the wedding. Elias celebrated with determination, as though by indulging fully he might prove himself equal to this new world. Returning to his room afterward, he prepared for bed. When he reached for the lamps, he did what long habit dictated. He approached each one and blew. The spectral flames vanished. Satisfied, Elias crawled under the covers and slept.
The gas that gave life to the lamps, however, refused to slumber.
Hours later Elias awoke, disoriented. He reached for his pipe; the familiar briar worn smooth by years of use. He struck a match.
Witnesses claimed to have heard a sound like thunder waging epic battle with itself. The walls split asunder and the windows surrendered their glass to the street. However briefly, the Grand Hotel achieved the luminosity of a small sun.
Astonishingly, Elias Ransom was found alive beneath a collapsed beam.
“It’s nothing short of a miracle,” said the fireman who dragged him free. “Not a scratch on him. Still had his pipe, too.” The Grand Hotel was rebuilt with electric lights, which were deemed less fickle than gas. Elias lived another fifteen years. Those who knew him claimed he had acquired a peculiar habit: before extinguishing any light, he would pause, as if listening for something sinister beneath its glow. He never again slept anywhere but home, where the darkness, at least, behaved as expected.
James C. Clar is a writer and retired teacher. In addition to his contributions to Sudden Flash, his work has appeared most recently in Bright Flash Literary Review, Flash Digest, After/Thought Literary Journal, Freedom Fiction Journal and The Yard Crime Blog.
Defiance
by NR Schmidt
Jeremy Hockman’s first tattoo was given on his friend Marcus’s bed, during a house party, while Marcus’s parents were out of town.
It was done with a real tattoo gun, bought by Marcus’s brother DeAndre, and stolen by Marcus while DeAndre was on a date to the skating rink.
It was shittily drawn Sonic the Hedgehog, if it can be called that, which proved that even a professional’s tools cannot cure the shake in an amateur’s hands.
There are other things that come with training, like wound care and bedside manner.
When Marcus was done, he bounced his friend off the bed and yelled, “Next!”, his voice wafting over the deep stereo beats and smell of keg-beer.
Jeremy walked off with fourteen-year-old swagger, proud of his ritual completion.
Three days later, Sonic was infected and started to leak sticky white pus.
It was probably because Jeremy had followed a group of girls down to Lake Michigan and jumped in at the Point.
That night, he made it home, opening the swing door in the back just so much so it didn’t squeak, and got into bed, his mother sleeping off her bottle of wine in her favorite chair.
As the days passed, he hid his wound under baggy jeans. He didn’t scratch even though it itched like hell. He spread some playground mud on his pants so the pus wouldn’t show through.
And he thought he was fine.
Until the fever started.
And his PE coach made him go to the office because he was limping.
And they made him go to the hospital.
And they made him roll up his pants.
And they made him show them his leg, now swollen and purple.
And at the next house party Marcus threw, Jeremy got there late and struggled to get his wheelchair through the door.
NR Schmidt is a writer originally from America's West Coast.
Miracle Pill
By M.D. Smith IV
After an aimless stroll through the park, where pigeons strutted with more romantic confidence than I’d ever possessed, I returned to my apartment on a crowded sidewalk. I found a note slipped into my jacket pocket, like fate delivering me a business card or a secret confession. It looked rubber-stamped and slightly crooked:
A new pill that lets you be the man you want to be. Women can’t resist.
Below that, in smaller print, an address on Thirty-Fourth Street—the side of town where paint is peeling, and streetlights flicker like they’re tired of living. At the bottom: Results guaranteed or your money back.
Through college and into my early twenties, I had been a spectacular failure with women. I collected polite rejections the way some men collect baseball cards. I had heard every variation of “you’re sweet, but…” known to humankind.
The address led to a narrow storefront wedged between a pawnshop and a tattoo parlor. A hand-lettered wooden sign read: “Miracles for Sale.” I chuckled at such modesty.
Inside, incense hung in the air like cheap fog. Behind a desk sat a woman dressed as a gypsy fortune-teller, complete with jangling bracelets and a dramatic patch over one eye.
She slid a tiny bottle toward me. “It alters your pheromones,” she said. “Like animals in the wild. One pill under your tongue. It will last seven days.”
“One pill?” I asked.
“One,” she emphasized.
I handed over three hundred dollars, telling myself desperation is just courage wearing ragged clothes.
Outside, curiosity overpowered caution. Instead of one pill, I popped three beneath my tongue and waited for magic to bloom.
It bloomed.
The first woman I passed stopped mid-stride, inhaled as if she’d caught the scent of fresh bread, and smiled at me like I was the last lifeboat on earth, and walked closer to me with her hand out.
I felt the rise in my pants. This is what I’ve been missing.
But then another. And another. Within minutes, women were turning, circling, drifting toward me as if I were gravity itself.
Compliments flew. Hands brushed my arm. Phone numbers were written across my palms. Someone kissed my cheek. Someone else hugged me so tightly I gasped to draw a breath.
The crowd thickened. Laughter sharpened into shrieks. My miracle bloomed into a siege, and my rise now deflated. I broke into a run, dodging grasping hands, my heart pounding like a kettle-drum. The swarm followed, a tidal wave in perfume.
Gasping, I ducked into an alley and hid behind a horrible-smelling dumpster until the noise drifted away. Then I sprinted back to the shop and burst through the door.
“You’ve got to help me!” I shouted.
The woman looked up calmly. “Did the pill not work? Want a refund for the unused portion?”
“It worked too well,” I said. “I took too many. I need an antidote.”
Her single visible eye sparkled. “Oooh,” she purred, turning slowly toward a shelf behind her. She lifted another tiny bottle with one pill in it.
“This one,” she said, sweet as fresh honey, “will cost you three thousand dollars, and sorry, no checks. Cards have a ten percent surcharge.”
M.D. Smith of Huntsville, Alabama, writer of over 350 flash stories, has published digitally in Spillwords, Flash Fiction Magazine, Flash Phantoms, and many more. Retired from running a television station, he lives with his wife of 64 years and three cats. https://mdsmithiv.com/
The Diamond
by Jenny Morelli
I didn’t notice its absence right away.
We were halfway to work and I was mindlessly spinning with my thumb the empty prongs of my engagement ring.
My stomach churned. My breathing shallowed. Vision tunneled into a shard-sharp clarity.
I stopped talking midsentence; tried to recover, to fix my face into some semblance of normal because my husband, cluelessly driving and talking, the man who spent several paychecks’ worth of money on the diamond, could not know about this.
I knew he’d understand it wasn’t my fault.
I knew he’d love me anyway.
I knew he’d forgive me for such a material and superficial loss because that’s what unconditional love is, but still.
I had to find it and searching in our impossibly dark car was not an option. My mind whirled at a dizzying speed of where it could be: the toilet, the sink, the garbage, litterbox, garage floor, car floor, driveway, until we arrived and I leapt from the car with a peck on his cheek and a mumbled ‘I gotta pee’ so he wouldn’t see the look on my face, the fear in my eyes.
Throughout that day, I showed my everyday facets of teacher, colleague, counselor, friend; tenaciously taught as my mind spun and my thumb spun that empty-pronged ring on my finger round and round as if I could spin it back into existence, and that is how I made it through the day and through the drive back home without fazing my husband.
When we pulled up to our house, I bolted from our car to check the driveway and the garbage, the litter, toilet, sink, cursing up a storm before giving up with a huff, admitting defeat as I unpacked my bag of folders and binders, lunch foods and snacks, and there it was.
At the bottom of my pink canvas bag, a brilliant beacon beamed under the grimy glass kitchen light. That damn diamond sat in my bag all day as clueless as my husband of the panic I’d endured from sunrise to sunset, and that was when I vowed to never again wear jewelry outside my house even though, when I told him, he understood it wasn’t my fault.
He promised he’d have loved me anyway. He forgave me for worrying about such a material and superficial loss when our love is unconditional.
Sometimes you don’t notice the absence of a thing, but I’ll always feel the presence of our love.
Jenny Morelli is a NJ high school English teacher who lives with her husband, cat, and myriad yard pets. She seeks inspiration in everything around her. She’s published in several literary magazines including Red Rose Thorns, Spillwords, Scars tv. This is her fourth poetry chapbook with Bottlecap Press. Check out her website for more: JennyMorelliWrites.com
The Family Buddha
by Huina Zheng
In our family safe there was a Maitreya Buddha statue of pure gold, about the size of a kitten. My mother told me that one of our ancestors had served as a eunuch in the imperial palace in the late Qing dynasty. When the Eight-Nation Alliance invaded the Forbidden City, he risked his life to carry the statue out of the palace and bring it home. This Buddha, she said, would bless and protect our family.
I never understood how, if our ancestor was a eunuch, he could have left descendants. Nor did I understand why, if the Buddha protected us, our family had remained so poor generation after generation. What I did know was that the statue had escaped the war with the Japanese, survived the famine, and endured the Cultural Revolution. No matter how hard life became, my grandparents would rather chew tree bark than even consider selling it.
But I was different. I believed this Maitreya Buddha could haul me out of my mud-soaked life. Again and again I urged my mother to sell it so we could move into a bigger place, so we wouldn’t have to set out basins to catch the rain leaking through the roof of our top-floor flat during typhoons. Besides, she needed money for her illness.
Yet even in the final stage of cancer, trembling with pain, she still shook her head.
“This is a family heirloom,” she said. “Take good care of it. One day you must pass it on to your son.”
After she died, I rushed to open the safe and gathered the gleaming Buddha into my arms. At last I would be able to pay off my gambling debts. At last I could live the life of the rich. Immediately I heard, in my ears, the crisp clatter of casino chips. I could turn money into more money and win a fortune.
But when the jeweler took it, he scraped it lightly with a blade. He lifted his eyelids and said expressionlessly, “It’s gilded. Inside it’s copper.”
Huina Zheng is a writer and college essay coach based in Guangzhou, China. Her work appears in Baltimore Review, Variant Literature, Midway Journal, and other journals. She has received multiple nominations, including for the Pushcart Prize, Best of the Net, Best Small Fictions, and Best Microfiction.
Sundae Morning
by R.S. Nelson
The sun shone brightly in the small southern California town’s blue sky. The fall wine festival was in full swing. A local band plucked their guitar strings and happy couples strolled by, holding wine glasses. Families walked together, enjoying their Sunday family time. Tourists came in and out of the gift shops, carrying bags in different colors and sizes.
A four-year-old sat in her stroller, under the shade of a tree. Her dad pulled off his cap and wiped the beads of sweat from his forehead. The girl’s six-year-old brother, a stern-looking boy, imitated their father.
“Are you guys ready for lunch?” the dad asked.
“I want ice cream!” yelled the girl.
An elderly woman walking by gave a startled jump.
“I want ice cream too,” whispered the boy.
“Sure, we’ll get it in a bit. But first, we need to eat something. Do you guys want a hamburger?”
“No,” said the girl, crossing her tiny arms over her chest.
“I want a hamburger.”
“You see, your brother wants one,” said the dad, smiling.
The girl frowned in defiance. “I want ice cream!” she screamed from the top of her lungs.
Passersby stared at the trio. A young woman in a tracksuit looked at the girl and wrinkled her nose as if she had smelled something rotten.
The dad sighed and rubbed his forehead. He then saw a dog approaching and smiled. The white, fluffy body was attached to a pink leather leash. Its tiny legs trotted toward them. “Look, the doggie wants to say hi,” he said, stretching a hand to pet the dog, who sniffed his shoes before moving closer to the girl.
She twisted in her seat. “Ahhh.”
“It’s just a little doggie. Isn’t he cute?” the dad asked. But the girl turned away, making her blond curls bounce.
The animal licked the man’s hand while the boy petted the dog’s head, before being pulled away by its owner. The girl’s eyes followed the animal until it became a distant spot.
“I want the doggie,” she said.
“It was cute, right?”
“I want the doggie. I want the doggie. I want the doggie.”
“Stop, sissy!” said the boy, smacking his hands on his lap. “It’s gone.” The girl started crying.
The dad jumped up from his seat. “How about that hamburger, huh? Who wants a hamburger?”
“Me,” said the boy, jumping up from his seat too. The dad gave him two thumbs up. “You got it, buddy.” But the girl’s cries didn’t stop.
“I don’t want a hamburger,” she said, her red lips in a pout.
“But you love hamburgers,” pleaded the dad.
The girl cried even louder.
“Okay, okay,” he said, bending over to be at eye level with her. “What do you want?”
“I want Mommy back,” she whispered.
The dad paled, his hands holding his legs steady. He looked at his son, whose eyes were glued to the ground, and then looked around — at the couples walking by with their wine bottles, the Sunday families passing them by, at the world that keeps on turning. His eyes stopped on the sign across the street, a giant ice cream sundae with a cherry on top.
“Who wants ice cream?” he asked.
R.S. Nelson is a Latina writer who lives and finds inspiration in Southern California. Her work has appeared in over twenty publications, including BULL, Flash Fiction Magazine, SciFiSat, Twin Bird Review, and the podcast "Tales to Terrify." Find more of her work at: rsnelsonwriter.wordpress.com or contact her at rsnelsonwriter.bsky.social
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