Duct tape the corner where the cardboard is frayed. Tie a ribbon around the flap that threatens to bend back. Apply super glue to the seams and blow it dry carefully with pursed lips, the way you used to blow a kiss across the room to someone you were sure loved you and always would. Don’t shake the box. Don’t listen too closely. Don’t peak inside. Never open it. --- Melissa Flores Anderson has published work in swamp pink, Chapter House, HAD and Best Small Fictions 2025. Her debut short story collection All and Then None of You is out now from Cowboy Jamboree Press.    

A chicken takes my order. Clucks as she hunts and pecks the right keys. Bock-bock-bock. She mentions there’s a deal on chicken nuggets, but I pass. At the window, I can’t stop staring at her gorgeous white feathers, each tipped with a line of black. She looks fluffy and fine as she pecks the paper money from my hands then the coins. Her firm, horn-like beak grazing the soft meat of my palm. I thank her. Another chicken with a huge pompadour uses her beak to close a twenty-piece box of nuggets. At the stovetop there’s a Highland cow with long brown hair bunched into a hairnet, flipping cheeseburgers and blowing the bangs out of her eyes. She moos that her patties are one minute out. There’s a russet potato with a dozen eyes wearing a paper hat on fryer duty, crisping up his unluckier comrades. The window chicken passes me my meal without passing judgement. On the road, I scarf my cheeseburger. When I get down to the rind, I bite into the webbing of my hand between my thumb and forefinger. I don’t notice until two bites in. All I taste are calories.  --- Chelsea Stickle is the author of the flash fiction chapbooks Everything’s Changing (Thirty West Publishing, 2023) and Breaking Points (Black Lawrence Press, 2021). Learn more at chelseastickle.com.    

River on edge. Skylarks thumb the mudmotherbed. The sea’s whalemouth awaits sweetsweet heartrickles. Lose it. Floose it. Goneunder. O dear sweetsalt! Mudlarking. Larkskying. There—there goes the neverquitegone, brushing my face. Mud for my feet. And you—you wait.

It was hard not to notice her. On her knees and palms, she meandered unhurt through the river of feet on the busy Shoppers Street. Yet people moved on. That was when another pair of knees and palms collided with hers, bringing her course to a halt. “Looking for something?” he asked. “Duct tape.” “What happened?” “Lost it.” “Shame!” “And you?” “The manhole.” “Gone?” “Yesterday,” he said sheepishly. “Ah! I sealed it with duct tape yesterday.” “You what?” She blinked. “Why’d you do that? Now my pigeons can’t be fed, thanks to you!” “Don’t you paternalise me! It lets out sighs at night. They keep finding their way into my bedroom.” He let out a sigh. “Oh! See? Exactly that!” He stared. “So why the duct tape again?” “The sighs sounded muffled last night. Additional padding would fix it.” “…sorry for your pigeons, though.” “You should be. Their only remaining habitat…” “But those heavy sighs…” she protested. “Excuse me, did someone mention ‘heavy sighs’?” They swerved. A kid, in late teens, stood stooping. Around his neck hung a garland of seemingly empty bottles—all corked. “Already? A busy day, huh?” the man asked. “Yes, quite! All bottled up.” He seemed disturbed. “Can’t release them without the manhole. Daytime sighs harden after dusk.” “It’s pigeons’ air, kid!” “Shh…” she whispered, “it’s around here.” They knelt. Ears to the ground. A subdued flutter. The kid uncorked a bottle. A sigh whistled along the tape seams. She lifted the tape. The sighs slipped in. The man dropped some crumbs. The kid listened, ear to the street. “Still some left.” She frowned. “There always are.” Already, the bottles were refilling. The man looked at her pensively. “Tonight again, then?” She shrugged. “Coffee?” They joined the flow of feet. Beneath Shoppers Street, something continued breathing.

As if there was a way out! Ever!  The first arch of her eyebrows — the left raised slightly higher — pierced him and hovered. Down they fell, the arrow returning with what she sought.  “Words, anyway, are a waste of breath,” she’d say. Yet she knew how to know.  Arch after arch stripped him of disguises, rehearsed selves. Each lowering brought him out, leaving something of her inside: a movement, a habit, ways of seeing rain, squirrels, pain, silence.  “The way is open,” she announced one day, her arch gone. A smile curving. As if there was a way out. Ever.

I gnaw the squelching tennis ball in my merciful jaws. I mean no harm, tonguing its roughness between long lazy paws, striped by the righteous rays made from balcony bars. As easy as it comes, it goes, rolling and falling and bonking the scurrying man in shirt sleeves, his neck knotted, his skull beaming. He looked distracted by something someone growled at him in low tones, but he's flat angry now, hopping around, his face set hard as pocket toffee. Then he puts it together, as they do, fetching the hollow offending thing and looking up at me - a flaxen stone in a stream.  A Buddha in a custom leather collar.  A genuine good boy.  He shields his eyes, peering sunward, taking me in, his caustic scowl melting into cherub dimples, knowing it would be spiteful not to.  An axe to gentle joy.  A blasphemy.  He hurls the ball to the heavens with too-big-an-arc, sending me skittering and chomping and huffing as he misses the balcony and it bounces around him in spirals, trapped finally under a shiny loafer. Then, more mindful, muscle memory - that's it – as to a child, calmly underarm, clearing the curved lip of the banister, collected in reverent teeth. He salutes me and keeps on keeping on, his leash let out a notch. I whip my tail in gratitude and settle in my spot, gnawing it all over, nosing my next connection. --- Ian Johnson is a writer from North East England. His words appear in Trash Cat Lit, Bull, Underbelly, Scaffold, 3:AM, and Free Flash Fiction. He is a BotN nominee.  

In case you missed any of the pieces we appeared during the 2026 FlashFlood, here's an index to everything.  Sadly, the 'Blog Archive' sidebar list maxes out at 100 titles per day, so use this as your guide to the complete 2026 Flood.... Happy Reading!   2026 FlashFlood   *    *   *   *   *   *   * 'Whisper' by Karen Arnold  * 'Lunch' by Madison Ellingsworth  * 'Evergreen' by Athena Law  * Debut Flash: 'Bird Tag' by Nicole Savage  * 'Soybeans' by Jeremy Nathan Marks * 'Night Swimmers' by Karen Regen Tuero * 'Philodendron' by Emily Hall  * 'Lost Connection' by Sudha Balagopal  * 'All That Was Left to Do' by Matthew Jakubowski  * 'The Roller Derby Girls Skate Circles Around My Teenage Heart' by Travis Flatt  * 'When We Traveled 1,200 Miles for Forest Bathing' by Beth Sherman  * 'Shimmy' by Abigail Myers  * Debut Flash: 'Natural' by Leigh Ann LeBoeuf  * 'Territorial' by Shana Naugle  * 'The Hard Part' by Tatum Schad  * 'The Invisible Woman' by K.C. Selby  * '1993' by M.C. Schmidt  * 'All the Ways We Died' by Sumitra Singam  * 'Coffee Talk with Mr. Ackshually' by Jim Parisi  * 'At the Drive Thru' by Chelsea Stickle  * 'What if We All Woke Up with Amnesia?' by Corrie Haldane  * 'Denial' by Christy Hartman  * Debut Flash: 'Eight scenes of cherry blossoms' by Angeline Tyler  * 'Exposure Exhibition on Monday' by Carol Ann Parchewsky  * 'Key Finding' by Lisa Ferranti  * 'Chickenshits' by Jay Parr  * 'Cutting' by Tom Weller  * 'Thereafter' by Christine H. Chen  * 'Butt Dial' by Jan English Leary  * 'When my mother was at Lourdes' by Helen Kennedy  * 'Toaster' by Timothy C Goodwin  * 'The Question Bag' by C. Oulens  * Debut Flash: 'The Shopkeeper Who Stayed' by Vikesh Mirchandani  * 'The Pain Bar' by Sharon Hoffmann  * 'A Dance Of Dark And Light' by Jaime Gill  * 'My Miracle Boy' by Sandy Krausnick  * 'My Sister’s Body' by Finnian Burnett  * 'Terms and Conditions' by Rachel M. Hollis  * 'At the Margin' by Andrea Damic  * 'The Day I Finally Learned to Let Go' by Rathin Bhattacharjee  * 'Burying The Blue Ox' by Kellan Jansen  * Debut Flash: 'Things That Sing of Death' by E. Murray  * 'Smoke, Clacking, Bitter, Spaghetti Squash' by T.L. Tomljanovic  * 'A Fly in Amber' by Sylvia Petter  * 'How many bags of crisps for your melancholic soul' by Rachel Smith  * 'Dina in the Dusk' by Kendra Cardin  * 'A Boy, A Mother, Nature' by Mandira Pattnaik  * 'the history of truthiness' by Ben Starr  * 'Standing Still' by Laila Miller  * 'The Moment You Learned There’s No Such Thing as Grownups' by D.E. Hardy  * 'Heart' by Birgit Solvsten D'Alpoim  *  Debut Flash: 'Crusader' by Marinela Davies  *  'Star Signs' by Chloe Paige  *  'Lifting the Veil' by ME Kretschmer  *  'It was a time' by Vijayalakshmi Sridhar  *  'before the first bite' by Melissa Llanes Brownlee  *  'I’m no good with names, I tell the nice cleaner' by Sarah Masters  *  'Leopard Sightings' by Arti Jain  *  'The Guest We Never Met' by David Dumouriez  *  'The House That Called Her Mother' by Anatoly Loginov  *  Debut Flash: 'Memory is all the home you get' by Romi H.  *  'The Girl Who Found Her Feet' by Mileva Anastasiadou  *  'The Hereafter' by Sarp Sozdinler  *  'Orderings' by Hugh Behm-Steinberg  *  'All Aboard That's Getting On Board...' by Pam Martin-Lawrence  *  'It’s Time and You Know It!' by Sudha Subramanian  *  'Always the same ice-cream van' by Lesley Bungay  *  'Change' by Sukhjit Singh  *  'How I Refused to Let Your Mother and Your Cancer Ruin Our Marriage' by Sharon Boyle  *  'Act of Cleansing' by Cheryl Powell  *  Debut Flash: 'Springtime Blues' by Cameron  *  'Readying' by Kleopatra Olympiou  *  'Rescue' by Michael Pettit  *  'The Trumpeter in the Rain' by Liz Milne  *  'Open Palm' by Heather Emmanuel  *  'The Pressing Question of Bees and Their Knees' by Karen Jones  *  'Hard Work at the Soft Play' by Kristina Thornton  *  'Down From the Door' by Sarah McPherson  *  'Paper Warrior' by Joel Bryant  *  'Sailing Ban' by Petros Isaakidis  *  Debut Flash: 'Ablution' by Atiqah Ghazali-alKashif  *  'Confirmation Class' by Joanna Campbell  *  'Wind-up Shoes' by Ali McGrane  *  'Crows Remember, Don’t They?' by Stuti Srivastava  *  'Premonition' by Thomas McColl  *  'Thank you for applying to be my courtly lover' by Chris Cottom  *  'Waxing' by Lucienne Cummings  *  'Her mother’s apple strudel recipe' by Liz Berg  *  'Queen Mary’s Marmalade' by Christine Collinson  *  Debut Flash: 'Blank' by Izelle Du Pisanie  *  'Nothing Left That Recognizes Us' by Kumar Sen  *  'Dear Bunny' by Kerry Byrne  *  'Someone in the playground' by Catherine O’Brien  *  'Making a Margarita After Filing for Divorce' by James Montgomery  *  'Bad Blood' by Alison Woodhouse  *  'Fifteen Ways to Grieve your Mother' by Lee Irving  *  'The Xylophonist’s Tune' by Sherry Morris  *  'One for sorrow, two for joy' by Harshita Nanda  *  'Dry Stone Walls' by Slawka G. Scarso  *  Debut Flash: 'Green' by Chris Hutchings  *  'The Moths Have Been At Our Love' by Abigail Williams  *  '6' by Nick Black  *  'Post Partum' by Damhnait Monaghan  *  'Stop Wave' by Rachael Dunlop  *  'Mary Randall’s Back' by Alison Wassell  *  'Good Dog Above' by Ian Johnson  *  'Revolutionaries' by Savera Zachariah  *  'The Five Stages of Ecological Grief' by Rosaleen Lynch  *  'Welcome' by Liam Hogan  *  Debut Flash: 'Reiki' by Anna Sweet  *  'Stolen moment' by Tim Love    *  'Anchor' by Rashmi Agrawal  *  'What Floated Back' by Meg Pokrass  *  'Telegraph' by Sharon Telfer  *  'The Texan' by Bronwen Griffiths  *  'Dinomum' by Zoë Davis  *  'Still Life' by Nora Nadjarian  *  'Mbele' by Anselm Eme  *  Debut Flash: 'The Visitor at Blackthorn Station' by Yolanda Lynn Sheppard  *  'Three Cows: Midsummer Reflections in the Up-Meadow' by S A Greene  *  'How to Prevent a Breakdown' by Katherine Garrison *  'Mr Shem' by Jude Mason  *  'A Brief History of Atomic Time' by Fiona McKay  *  'I Miss Smoking' by Cath Holland  *  'Fingernails' by Gessica Sakamoto Martini  *  'Talking About Potatoes' by Ronald J Greig  *  'Magnolia' by Emily Devane  *  Debut Flash: 'The New Vicar' by John Keogh  *  'The frequency of your life self-cleaning cycle depends on spillage and usage patterns' by Cole  Beauchamp  *  'Raka Is Fine Being A Flask' by Shrutidhora P Mohor  *  'Reduce by Half' by Michael Murphy  *  'Lipstick' by Sarah Freligh  *  'Final Whistle' by Madeleine Armstrong  *  '15 Days Till Day-Care' by Roberta Beary  *  'Sandcastles and Snowmen' by Foster Trecost  *  'Flight Tourism' by Catherine Marina  *  Debut Flash: 'Garage Sale' by Suvarup Saha  *  'Discernments' by J. Edward Kruft  *  'Are We Happy Now?' by Tom O'Brien  *  'On the Fifth Morning After the Timeline Rupture' by Erin Bondo  *  'Choosing the Right Kitchen Tool for the End of the World' by Sara B. Fraser  *  'Swimming Lesson' by Elena Zhang   *  'Last Date' by Niles Reddick  *  'The Real Sound of Music, Hillview Rest Home, August 1992' by Kate Axeford  *  'Cheesecake Factory' by Mandy Lange *  'Lifetime' by Lisa Thornton    *  Debut Flash: 'Photo Day' by Joy DeSomber  *  'We Stop For Turtles' by Mackenzie Kelley  *  'Out of Habit' by Garima Chhikara  *  'Gravity Run Amok' by Louella Lester  *  'Death Is Just A Point In Space' by David Luntz  *  'Nothing Bad Happens' by Emily Rinkema  *  'Milo’s On Her Way' by Sarah Lynn Hurd   *  'The Cat Ate the Strudel' by Zoé Mahfouz  *  'Spring Sightings' by Maggie G. Daly  *  Debut Flash: 'gnome' by Emily Garland  *  'Hothouse' by J.D. Strunk  *  'It's Time' by Cally Ann Kerr  *  'How to Deploy an Antimemetic Field Device: Restaurant Edition' by Chris Clemens  *  'They Were the Years of Fat Water' by Myna Chang  *  'Cloud 10' by Keith Woodruff  *  'The Day I Finally Finished Writing My Novel' by Greg Hill  *  'The Final Toll' by JP Relph  *  'The Cartographer' by Shashi Kadapa  *  Debut Flash: 'Cityshell Resonance' by Natalie Mather  *  'Brandi says the Tooth Fairy Loves Her Best' by Emma Phillips  *  'Cheese Louise' by Chaz Osburn  *  'A Guide to the Cretaceous Fossils of the East Norfolk Coast' by Jenny Hart  *  'The Cradle Will Rock' by Mollie McLean  *  'Pentecost' by Fiona J. Mackintosh  *  'Trollbooth' by Stephen Connolly  *  '2:19 p.m.' by Chris Scott  *  'Just Another Life Experience' by Jessica Klimesh  *  'To Scale' by Nathan Willis  *  Debut Flash: 'Under the Bark' by EB Converse  *  'To Lose a Body' by Thao Vu  *  'January Candy' by Eileen Frankel Tomarchio  *  'Midnight Market' by Tammy L. Evans  *  'The New Year' by Gary Fincke  *  'One Day the Horses Disappeared' by David Henson  *  'Meeting Up with My Used-to-Be Best Friend at the Apple Fair in Early September' by Dawn Miller  *  'Sweep It Under the Rug' by Rachel Weinhaus  *  'Found Scraps of Masculinity' by Mike Keller-Wilson *  Debut Flash: 'Tagalong' by L.V. Leonhard  *  'Rewind, Rewind' by Linda M. Bayley  *  'Chihuahua Cow' by Thad DeVassie  *  'Little Mama' by Nicole Brogdon  *  Debut Flash: 'Unwanted Pitch' by Christian Todd  *  '917363' by Dan Schiff  *  'Step' by Kathryn Kulpa  *  'Initial Reactions' by Jane Claire Jackson   *  'Schrödinger’s Marriage' by Melissa Flores Anderson  *  Debut Flash: 'Centaurus A' by Olivia Woodcox  *  'Thaw' by Tracy Royce  *  'My Neighbor is My Future' by Stephen D. Gibson  *  'Ọwu Mịni Rẹma' by Meredith Chiwenkpe Asuru  *  'Wrestling with Genetics' by Robert Vaughan  *  'Unerasable' by Tracie Adams  *  'My Sister Begs for a Canary She Won’t Even Love' by Debra A Daniel  *  'Big League Chew' by Jesse Binger  *  'What Is Remembered' by Patricia Bender  *  Debut Flash: 'Fortune Telling is a Union Job' by Gwendolyn Hanson  *  'I miss my family in late afternoon' by Sarah Barbo Nielsen *  'Sweet, Ugly' by Nan Wigington  *  'Organ Donor' by Peter Beynon  *  'Coriolis Effect' by Mikki Aronoff  *  'Nothing to speak of' by Jude Higgins  *  'Night Shift' by Michael J. Ciaraldi  *  'Freytag's Triangle' by Mary Guterson  *  'Influencer' by R.K. West  *  'Girl as a Found Shell on the Beach' by Shareen K. Murayama  *  Debut Flash: 'No One Will Know Unless It Takes' by Jenna Martin-Trinka  *  'Cassandra said you shouldn’t make the coffee run to Bozeman today, ’cuz zombies' by Tom Walsh  *  'What Is Left Behind' by Monique Cuillerier  *  'Beating Odds and Keeping Time on Magnolia Street' by Jen Wyrauch Edson  *  'My Absent Heart' by L. Michelle Nichols  *  'The Note My Uncle Left' by Heain Joung  *  'Gone, and All Forgotten' by Jon Fain  *  'The Surprise Party' by Karen Crawford  *  'Thank You for Calling the Thoughts and Prayers Hotline' by Shantell Powell  *  'Dragonbeasts' by Alexandra Otto   *  Debut Flash: 'Don't write about the ceiling fan' by Anya Rosensteel  *  'Barometric' by Renuka Raghavan  *  'Gestalt (noun): a theory that a whole is different from and more than its disparate parts' by Rachel Abbey McCafferty  *  'New Shores' by Alex Grehy       

The magnolia comes into the room and asks me what I’ve done with her new shoes.  I shake my head, because no, I haven’t seen the magnolia’s new shoes and just how many shoes does a tree need, and do they have laces or buckles, and is there a specialist shop for that? The questions keep coming until the magnolia scratches her crown and flounces out of the room, trailing petals in her wake.  I feel bad when that happens, because the magnolia’s blossom is so lovely. Each flower is an elegant pink cup, the shape of a champagne flute, tall and proud, and when they fall, the flowers resemble tears, and the magnolia’s limbs look naked. I follow the trail of petals, picking them up as I go, and I place them in the fruit bowl. I lay them out delicately, so that they resemble a living thing once again, and the magnolia, who is sulking by the kitchen door, acknowledges my effort.  ‘It was silly really, buying shoes,’ she says.  ‘Not at all,’ I reply. ‘Together, we’ll find them. They’re probably in the cupboard under the stairs. Everything ends up there.’  The magnolia nods. ‘I can sense the wind,’ she says. ‘My petals are almost gone.’ I discern her mouth and eyes in the twisted bark of her trunk. She smiles sadly. This flowering is short, always too short. I wish I could pause time, somehow, but I know she must leave. When she goes, the magnolia casts a shadow that stretches across the rest of the afternoon, covering everything.  Later, I find the shoes were in the garden where the magnolia used to stand. I try them on, but they do not fit. --- Emily Devane is a writer from West Yorkshire. She has won prizes, including the Bath Flash Fiction Award, a Northern Writers' Award and a Word Factory apprenticeship. Emily teaches creative writing and works at The Grove Bookshop in Ilkley, where she runs the writing group and helps with events. 

In the staffroom, Kate plugs in a fan which swings from side to side, moving the stale air around. Beside her, a physics textbook is open, and she reads – An atomic second is defined as 9,192,631,770 oscillations of a caesium-133 atom. There is an orange on her desk and she peels it, inhales the bright, sweet scent. She reads about the transition between two hyperfine levels of the ground state of this atom. She is in transition between breaktime supervision and her final year French students. This atom must be at rest, at zero degrees Kelvin. Her foot taps as she refreshes her email; refreshes again. There are sixty seconds in one earth minute. Sixty of those in an hour. Twenty four hours in a full spin of the globe. One hundred and sixty eight (she imagines this in the voice of a darts commentator) hours in the space between one weekend and the next. Between an interview, and a possibility. The orange drips juice and her fingers are sticky on her phone as she calculates the number of seconds in a week. The app refuses to multiply the 604,800 seconds by the oscillations she’d read in the textbook. She agrees. Whatever it is, it’s too many to contemplate. She feels every single oscillation. Balances the needs of her students, and her desire for a promotion. Other factors: what her ex will have to say about it; are her children happy; does she need to worry about her pension or will the world have ended? She goes back and forth. The effect of waiting on the passage of time should be studied. Maybe it has been, she doesn’t know. Maybe it becomes quantum time. An oscillation of a caesium-133 atom, under observation, approaches infinity. She checks her email again. --- Fiona McKay is the author of the novellas-in-flash, The Lives of the Dead and The Top Road, and the collection Drawn and Quartered. Her flash fiction is in The Forge, Gone Lawn, Ghost Parachute, trampset, Peatsmoke, Fractured Lit and others. She lives in Dublin.  

Mrs Eleanor Easton, a woman of habit, rises. 6.21 a.m. She dresses, as always, immediately: nightclothes on chair, twenty toe touches, floss, avoid mirror. In the kitchen: flick on kettle, wholemeal slice in toaster, pretend electricity works. At the table: nibble limp bread, sip cold tea, re-read five-day-old newspaper. Suddenly: she stands, chair aclatter, swings wide the back door once leading to her garden –  Desdemona roses, blue delphiniums, delicate sweet peas and catmint, towering hollyhocks, heady honeysuckle – and lets out a scream so long, so loud, the void echoes it back. The clock: still 6.21 a.m. --- Erin Bondo grew up in rural Ontario, Canada on the unceded and unsurrendered territory of the Anishinabek and now lives in Scotland. She has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and placed or listed in a number of competitions, including the Bridport Prize, Bath Flash Fiction Award and Welkin Prize. She has work published or forthcoming with Kelp Journal's The Wave, SEXTET, WestWord, NFFD, Flash Fiction Festival, and others. Find her on Bluesky @erinbondo.com

And one morning she has simply had enough of her life, its smallness and its hardness, and she lays down the skin she has worn like a mask for a decade and brings out from the attic the parts of herself she has almost forgotten, untouched for so long - heart marking time, eyes piercing shadows, mouth that conjures laughter like a spell - and she closes the door for the last time and looks out at the land rising up to the sky as though for the first time and the mountain shimmers and she smells rain on leaves, hears rain on leaves, tastes rain on tongue, and she shoulders her pack and doesn’t look backwards even for a moment and a bird calls like a memory and her scarf is cool against her skin and her rage at all the wasted years is hot in her cheeks and she lets it be, lets it breathe, doesn’t smother it, and she has only a little money in her pocket but she knows these woods, knew them as a child, knows them now after all and she sets her foot on the path and the mountain waits. --- Sarah McPherson loves folk tales and myths and finding the weird in the everyday. Her flash fiction has been widely published, nominated for Best Small Fictions, longlisted for the Wigleaf Top 50, and selected for Best Microfiction 2021. Find her on Bluesky as @summermoth.bsky.social or at https://theleadedwindow.blogspot.com/.  

In case you missed any of the pieces we appeared during the 2026 FlashFlood, here's an index to everything.  Sadly, the 'Blog Archive' sidebar list maxes out at 100 titles per day, so use this as your guide to the complete 2026 Flood.... Happy Reading!   2026 FlashFlood   *    *   *   *   *   *   * 'Whisper' by Karen Arnold  * 'Lunch' by Madison Ellingsworth  * 'Evergreen' by Athena Law  * Debut Flash: 'Bird Tag' by Nicole Savage  * 'Soybeans' by Jeremy Nathan Marks * 'Night Swimmers' by Karen Regen Tuero * 'Philodendron' by Emily Hall  * 'Lost Connection' by Sudha Balagopal  * 'All That Was Left to Do' by Matthew Jakubowski  * 'The Roller Derby Girls Skate Circles Around My Teenage Heart' by Travis Flatt  * 'When We Traveled 1,200 Miles for Forest Bathing' by Beth Sherman  * 'Shimmy' by Abigail Myers  * Debut Flash: 'Natural' by Leigh Ann LeBoeuf  * 'Territorial' by Shana Naugle  * 'The Hard Part' by Tatum Schad  * 'The Invisible Woman' by K.C. Selby  * '1993' by M.C. Schmidt  * 'All the Ways We Died' by Sumitra Singam  * 'Coffee Talk with Mr. Ackshually' by Jim Parisi  * 'At the Drive Thru' by Chelsea Stickle  * 'What if We All Woke Up with Amnesia?' by Corrie Haldane  * 'Denial' by Christy Hartman  * Debut Flash: 'Eight scenes of cherry blossoms' by Angeline Tyler  * 'Exposure Exhibition on Monday' by Carol Ann Parchewsky  * 'Key Finding' by Lisa Ferranti  * 'Chickenshits' by Jay Parr  * 'Cutting' by Tom Weller  * 'Thereafter' by Christine H. Chen  * 'Butt Dial' by Jan English Leary  * 'When my mother was at Lourdes' by Helen Kennedy  * 'Toaster' by Timothy C Goodwin  * 'The Question Bag' by C. Oulens  * Debut Flash: 'The Shopkeeper Who Stayed' by Vikesh Mirchandani  * 'The Pain Bar' by Sharon Hoffmann  * 'A Dance Of Dark And Light' by Jaime Gill  * 'My Miracle Boy' by Sandy Krausnick  * 'My Sister’s Body' by Finnian Burnett  * 'Terms and Conditions' by Rachel M. Hollis  * 'At the Margin' by Andrea Damic  * 'The Day I Finally Learned to Let Go' by Rathin Bhattacharjee  * 'Burying The Blue Ox' by Kellan Jansen  * Debut Flash: 'Things That Sing of Death' by E. Murray  * 'Smoke, Clacking, Bitter, Spaghetti Squash' by T.L. Tomljanovic  * 'A Fly in Amber' by Sylvia Petter  * 'How many bags of crisps for your melancholic soul' by Rachel Smith  * 'Dina in the Dusk' by Kendra Cardin  * 'A Boy, A Mother, Nature' by Mandira Pattnaik  * 'the history of truthiness' by Ben Starr  * 'Standing Still' by Laila Miller  * 'The Moment You Learned There’s No Such Thing as Grownups' by D.E. Hardy  * 'Heart' by Birgit Solvsten D'Alpoim  *  Debut Flash: 'Crusader' by Marinela Davies  *  'Star Signs' by Chloe Paige  *  'Lifting the Veil' by ME Kretschmer  *  'It was a time' by Vijayalakshmi Sridhar  *  'before the first bite' by Melissa Llanes Brownlee  *  'I’m no good with names, I tell the nice cleaner' by Sarah Masters  *  'Leopard Sightings' by Arti Jain  *  'The Guest We Never Met' by David Dumouriez  *  'The House That Called Her Mother' by Anatoly Loginov  *  Debut Flash: 'Memory is all the home you get' by Romi H.  *  'The Girl Who Found Her Feet' by Mileva Anastasiadou  *  'The Hereafter' by Sarp Sozdinler  *  'Orderings' by Hugh Behm-Steinberg  *  'All Aboard That's Getting On Board...' by Pam Martin-Lawrence  *  'It’s Time and You Know It!' by Sudha Subramanian  *  'Always the same ice-cream van' by Lesley Bungay  *  'Change' by Sukhjit Singh  *  'How I Refused to Let Your Mother and Your Cancer Ruin Our Marriage' by Sharon Boyle  *  'Act of Cleansing' by Cheryl Powell  *  Debut Flash: 'Springtime Blues' by Cameron  *  'Readying' by Kleopatra Olympiou  *  'Rescue' by Michael Pettit  *  'The Trumpeter in the Rain' by Liz Milne  *  'Open Palm' by Heather Emmanuel  *  'The Pressing Question of Bees and Their Knees' by Karen Jones  *  'Hard Work at the Soft Play' by Kristina Thornton  *  'Down From the Door' by Sarah McPherson  *  'Paper Warrior' by Joel Bryant  *  'Sailing Ban' by Petros Isaakidis  *  Debut Flash: 'Ablution' by Atiqah Ghazali-alKashif  *  'Confirmation Class' by Joanna Campbell  *  'Wind-up Shoes' by Ali McGrane  *  'Crows Remember, Don’t They?' by Stuti Srivastava  *  'Premonition' by Thomas McColl  *  'Thank you for applying to be my courtly lover' by Chris Cottom  *  'Waxing' by Lucienne Cummings  *  'Her mother’s apple strudel recipe' by Liz Berg  *  'Queen Mary’s Marmalade' by Christine Collinson  *  Debut Flash: 'Blank' by Izelle Du Pisanie  *  'Nothing Left That Recognizes Us' by Kumar Sen  *  'Dear Bunny' by Kerry Byrne  *  'Someone in the playground' by Catherine O’Brien  *  'Making a Margarita After Filing for Divorce' by James Montgomery  *  'Bad Blood' by Alison Woodhouse  *  'Fifteen Ways to Grieve your Mother' by Lee Irving  *  'The Xylophonist’s Tune' by Sherry Morris  *  'One for sorrow, two for joy' by Harshita Nanda  *  'Dry Stone Walls' by Slawka G. Scarso  *  Debut Flash: 'Green' by Chris Hutchings  *  'The Moths Have Been At Our Love' by Abigail Williams  *  '6' by Nick Black  *  'Post Partum' by Damhnait Monaghan  *  'Stop Wave' by Rachael Dunlop  *  'Mary Randall’s Back' by Alison Wassell  *  'Good Dog Above' by Ian Johnson  *  'Revolutionaries' by Savera Zachariah  *  'The Five Stages of Ecological Grief' by Rosaleen Lynch  *  'Welcome' by Liam Hogan  *  Debut Flash: 'Reiki' by Anna Sweet  *  'Stolen moment' by Tim Love    *  'Anchor' by Rashmi Agrawal  *  'What Floated Back' by Meg Pokrass  *  'Telegraph' by Sharon Telfer  *  'The Texan' by Bronwen Griffiths  *  'Dinomum' by Zoë Davis  *  'Still Life' by Nora Nadjarian  *  'Mbele' by Anselm Eme  *  Debut Flash: 'The Visitor at Blackthorn Station' by Yolanda Lynn Sheppard  *  'Three Cows: Midsummer Reflections in the Up-Meadow' by S A Greene  *  'How to Prevent a Breakdown' by Katherine Garrison *  'Mr Shem' by Jude Mason  *  'A Brief History of Atomic Time' by Fiona McKay  *  'I Miss Smoking' by Cath Holland  *  'Fingernails' by Gessica Sakamoto Martini  *  'Talking About Potatoes' by Ronald J Greig  *  'Magnolia' by Emily Devane  *  Debut Flash: 'The New Vicar' by John Keogh  *  'The frequency of your life self-cleaning cycle depends on spillage and usage patterns' by Cole  Beauchamp  *  'Raka Is Fine Being A Flask' by Shrutidhora P Mohor  *  'Reduce by Half' by Michael Murphy  *  'Lipstick' by Sarah Freligh  *  'Final Whistle' by Madeleine Armstrong  *  '15 Days Till Day-Care' by Roberta Beary  *  'Sandcastles and Snowmen' by Foster Trecost  *  'Flight Tourism' by Catherine Marina  *  Debut Flash: 'Garage Sale' by Suvarup Saha  *  'Discernments' by J. Edward Kruft  *  'Are We Happy Now?' by Tom O'Brien  *  'On the Fifth Morning After the Timeline Rupture' by Erin Bondo  *  'Choosing the Right Kitchen Tool for the End of the World' by Sara B. Fraser  *  'Swimming Lesson' by Elena Zhang   *  'Last Date' by Niles Reddick  *  'The Real Sound of Music, Hillview Rest Home, August 1992' by Kate Axeford  *  'Cheesecake Factory' by Mandy Lange *  'Lifetime' by Lisa Thornton    *  Debut Flash: 'Photo Day' by Joy DeSomber  *  'We Stop For Turtles' by Mackenzie Kelley  *  'Out of Habit' by Garima Chhikara  *  'Gravity Run Amok' by Louella Lester  *  'Death Is Just A Point In Space' by David Luntz  *  'Nothing Bad Happens' by Emily Rinkema  *  'Milo’s On Her Way' by Sarah Lynn Hurd   *  'The Cat Ate the Strudel' by Zoé Mahfouz  *  'Spring Sightings' by Maggie G. Daly  *  Debut Flash: 'gnome' by Emily Garland  *  'Hothouse' by J.D. Strunk  *  'It's Time' by Cally Ann Kerr  *  'How to Deploy an Antimemetic Field Device: Restaurant Edition' by Chris Clemens  *  'They Were the Years of Fat Water' by Myna Chang  *  'Cloud 10' by Keith Woodruff  *  'The Day I Finally Finished Writing My Novel' by Greg Hill  *  'The Final Toll' by JP Relph  *  'The Cartographer' by Shashi Kadapa  *  Debut Flash: 'Cityshell Resonance' by Natalie Mather  *  'Brandi says the Tooth Fairy Loves Her Best' by Emma Phillips  *  'Cheese Louise' by Chaz Osburn  *  'A Guide to the Cretaceous Fossils of the East Norfolk Coast' by Jenny Hart  *  'The Cradle Will Rock' by Mollie McLean  *  'Pentecost' by Fiona J. Mackintosh  *  'Trollbooth' by Stephen Connolly  *  '2:19 p.m.' by Chris Scott  *  'Just Another Life Experience' by Jessica Klimesh  *  'To Scale' by Nathan Willis  *  Debut Flash: 'Under the Bark' by EB Converse  *  'To Lose a Body' by Thao Vu  *  'January Candy' by Eileen Frankel Tomarchio  *  'Midnight Market' by Tammy L. Evans  *  'The New Year' by Gary Fincke  *  'One Day the Horses Disappeared' by David Henson  *  'Meeting Up with My Used-to-Be Best Friend at the Apple Fair in Early September' by Dawn Miller  *  'Sweep It Under the Rug' by Rachel Weinhaus  *  'Found Scraps of Masculinity' by Mike Keller-Wilson *  Debut Flash: 'Tagalong' by L.V. Leonhard  *  'Rewind, Rewind' by Linda M. Bayley  *  'Chihuahua Cow' by Thad DeVassie  *  'Little Mama' by Nicole Brogdon  *  Debut Flash: 'Unwanted Pitch' by Christian Todd  *  '917363' by Dan Schiff  *  'Step' by Kathryn Kulpa  *  'Initial Reactions' by Jane Claire Jackson   *  'Schrödinger’s Marriage' by Melissa Flores Anderson  *  Debut Flash: 'Centaurus A' by Olivia Woodcox  *  'Thaw' by Tracy Royce  *  'My Neighbor is My Future' by Stephen D. Gibson  *  'Ọwu Mịni Rẹma' by Meredith Chiwenkpe Asuru  *  'Wrestling with Genetics' by Robert Vaughan  *  'Unerasable' by Tracie Adams  *  'My Sister Begs for a Canary She Won’t Even Love' by Debra A Daniel  *  'Big League Chew' by Jesse Binger  *  'What Is Remembered' by Patricia Bender  *  Debut Flash: 'Fortune Telling is a Union Job' by Gwendolyn Hanson  *  'I miss my family in late afternoon' by Sarah Barbo Nielsen *  'Sweet, Ugly' by Nan Wigington  *  'Organ Donor' by Peter Beynon  *  'Coriolis Effect' by Mikki Aronoff  *  'Nothing to speak of' by Jude Higgins  *  'Night Shift' by Michael J. Ciaraldi  *  'Freytag's Triangle' by Mary Guterson  *  'Influencer' by R.K. West  *  'Girl as a Found Shell on the Beach' by Shareen K. Murayama  *  Debut Flash: 'No One Will Know Unless It Takes' by Jenna Martin-Trinka  *  'Cassandra said you shouldn’t make the coffee run to Bozeman today, ’cuz zombies' by Tom Walsh  *  'What Is Left Behind' by Monique Cuillerier  *  'Beating Odds and Keeping Time on Magnolia Street' by Jen Wyrauch Edson  *  'My Absent Heart' by L. Michelle Nichols  *  'The Note My Uncle Left' by Heain Joung  *  'Gone, and All Forgotten' by Jon Fain  *  'The Surprise Party' by Karen Crawford  *  'Thank You for Calling the Thoughts and Prayers Hotline' by Shantell Powell  *  'Dragonbeasts' by Alexandra Otto   *  Debut Flash: 'Don't write about the ceiling fan' by Anya Rosensteel  *  'Barometric' by Renuka Raghavan  *  'Gestalt (noun): a theory that a whole is different from and more than its disparate parts' by Rachel Abbey McCafferty  *  'New Shores' by Alex Grehy       

I saw a family of bears. Two bigs, one small. Up the side of the hill like brown, hulking shadows. I didn’t see any bears. The night was still. Pine trees poking the stars. It was noon. The sun burned the back of my neck. I clambered over orange rocks. The wolves howled. The wolves curled in their dens. There have never been any wolves. People who live in the mountains see ghosts dancing with feathers, spirits of thousands unsettled in valleys and canyons. People who live in cities hear them hollering, twirling, cursing. The ghosts ride on the tops of train cars, silver and cold, tossing beads and candy into the night.  When I was a child, I rode a horse. It bucked me off. I broke my back. When I was an old woman, I rode a horse. I glided over the earth. I pulled the reins and the animal went where I wanted it to go. I kicked its sides and it flew, hooves over desert, pounding time into the dry surface. I didn’t have to kick it. The horse knew when I wanted to go faster and it knew when I wanted to slow down.  The winter bit my chin like a lover mocking me. Icicles hung from the bottoms of bridges. Fish pushed against the frozen under-tops of lakes, lips opening and closing. I saw two mockingbirds making love. My second-grade teacher said love is an act. I saw the birds do it. My back cracked like knuckles. I danced a perfect plie. I saw a family of bears. Two bigs, one small.  --- Lisa Thornton is a writer and nurse. She has stories in SmokeLong Quarterly, Pithead Chapel, and other magazines. She has been nominated for Best of the Net, the Pushcart Prize, and Best Small Fictions. She lives in Illinois and can be found on Bluesky and Instagram @thorntonforreal.  

and we are at the pub with our nonchalant and devil-may-care attitudes attention-seeking fun-filled underaged and indestructible with our skirts too short our boldness mountain-high loud unapologetic exaggerated trash-talking lip-smacking larger-than-life eyes glowing as we drink drink drink and flirt flirt flirt sitting in dark boots beside the bar our fake IDs splashing our acne-covered faces our asymmetrical shapes and growth spurts and awkward limbs and our brains on overdrive or is it the booze fluctuating our centres of gravity our knees touching our hands and legs interlocking under tables hiding insecurities behind hubris as we leave the smoky indoors a brisk winter air striking us right across our cheeks and we are breathless our breaths drenched—milky vapour and the happy tears—freezing diamonds with our motor-control impaired our feet trudging unsteady through the fresh snow still laughing—our speech slurred and we wink and nod falling backwards in the blue shaded fuwa-fuwa clouds making angels in the dead of night with the tips of our noses red our fingertips numb while snowflakes seep through the darkness landing on our faces as we hold onto dear life our childhoods fleeting our futures unwritten our identities work-in-progress yet here and now for each other always for each other our secrets shared our dreams entrusted always lifting each other up and we relish it—this era and in this manner we mature transform evolve step by step marking the years through the fissures of our in-flux carapace   --- Andrea Damic, artist/writer/editor, lives in Sydney, Australia. Her debut collection of art, poetry, and prose, All the Losses, was published in Febuary 2026 through Alien Buddha Press (Amazon). In her imaginary free time, Andrea can be found fiddling with her website Words and Art – dribbles, drabbles, poems and art.  

A chicken takes my order. Clucks as she hunts and pecks the right keys. Bock-bock-bock. She mentions there’s a deal on chicken nuggets, but I pass. At the window, I can’t stop staring at her gorgeous white feathers, each tipped with a line of black. She looks fluffy and fine as she pecks the paper money from my hands then the coins. Her firm, horn-like beak grazing the soft meat of my palm. I thank her. Another chicken with a huge pompadour uses her beak to close a twenty-piece box of nuggets. At the stovetop there’s a Highland cow with long brown hair bunched into a hairnet, flipping cheeseburgers and blowing the bangs out of her eyes. She moos that her patties are one minute out. There’s a russet potato with a dozen eyes wearing a paper hat on fryer duty, crisping up his unluckier comrades. The window chicken passes me my meal without passing judgement. On the road, I scarf my cheeseburger. When I get down to the rind, I bite into the webbing of my hand between my thumb and forefinger. I don’t notice until two bites in. All I taste are calories.  --- Chelsea Stickle is the author of the flash fiction chapbooks Everything’s Changing (Thirty West Publishing, 2023) and Breaking Points (Black Lawrence Press, 2021). Learn more at chelseastickle.com.    

 On her way back from the shops, she tripped over nothing, and fell flat on the pavement.  A young man wearing shorts, despite the autumn chill, stopped to help. He squatted down and asked if she was okay. ’Think so,’ she said, attempting to get up. He hoisted her to her feet.  ‘My gran used to have lots of falls,’ he said, kindly.” Still went out though.’ ‘I didn’t “have a fall’, I fell,' she said . He looked baffled. ‘I was an English teacher,’ she explained. ‘Cool,’ he said. He collected up the vegetables that had spilled on to the pavement and put them in her bag. She leaned against a  garden wall to catch her breath. His arm was  tattooed  with the message ‘God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change.’ He saw her looking. She used to know the rest of that prayer once.  Something to do with courage and wisdom.  ‘Life’s hard  isn’t it?’ she said.  He nodded. ’Any damage done?’ She patted her knee where a dark stain had spread though the denim.  ‘Just a graze,’ she said, although her hand smarted and her legs felt wobbly. ‘Nothing to speak of.’  ‘You take care, lady.’  He strode off, texting, not looking where he was going.  He’s not afraid of “having a fall”’, she thought. A  glossy heritage tomato she’d bought as a treat still lay in the gutter.. She couldn’t risk bending down to pick it up.  But the sight of it lying there, next to an empty crisp packet, made her want to cry. --- Jude Higgins' is a widely published flash fiction writer, whose collection Clearly Defined Clouds was published in 2024. She founded Bath Flash Fiction Award and is Director of Flash Fiction Festivals UK and the short short fiction press, Ad Hoc Fiction. judehiggins.com

Bluesman howls at the paper moon, slinks down stinking back alleys with his beat up electric and air force duffel he tells folks was his fighter pilot Grandaddy’s, real hero shit, man, so what if he got it at the Army Surplus, if Grandaddy never saw action, he was still an angry son-of-a who drank himself to death. Bluesman splashes his busking cash on diner breakfasts, over-easy eggs and bottomless coffees, ‘cause he ain’t dying hungry, and Bluesman’s got no home since his parents died and his bitch of a sister ran off, and yeah, maybe he’s a bit messed up, you know, in the head, but some days are clear glassy ocean, man, until the memories start sifting like sugar powder sand, and those are the nights he wakes up screaming. Bluesman likes riding the rails, buses, subway lines, anything that keeps him moving, ‘cause when you stop, when you get cold, that’s when shit gets dangerous, man, so just keep rockin-rollin-ridin’ till you can find a beautiful woman to take you home, but Bluesman don’t mind, so what if he sleeps some nights under the bridge, he’s a Bluesman, this life chose him. Bluesman ain’t scared of nothing, except maybe starving, or never seeing home again, the lake an unbroken mirror, pine trees piercing pitch night sky, and the stars, I swear man, more stars than anywhere on earth, where he’d sit out on the deck with his kid sister just looking up, and the howling wasn’t so loud back then, he could pretend everything was fine, just fine Sis, man, do those marigolds ever smell like Ma, and maybe someday they’ll do it again, if she’d just say he was right, that none of it’s his fault, maybe then he could forgive her. Maybe he already has.

A splash. Herons scattering. Feet pounding. Cattails parting. Cries. The doe keeps her fawns close.