In This Issue

Our Inaugural Issue!

You can skip the details and just read stories, of course!

But if you want to know what’s coming, here it is. We have stories by an established pro, Bruce Holland Rogers, as well as an up-and-comer named Suzanne Vincent. And a Classic Flash from H.P. Lovecraft rounds us out.

You can tell us what you think, too, on the Flash Forum. Log in and discuss the stories, or, if you’re a writer, discuss your own works in progress.

All of this means that this is your new source for quality flash fiction—complete stories at 1000 or fewer words—starting right now. Read more

Flash 12/2007, #1: Bruce Holland Rogers

Reconstruction Work

Next to the casket, I leaned on my cane and admired the work my brother practitioners had done on Elizabeth Fordham Roth. She had died at 80, but she did not look a day over 60 and might have only been sleeping. Physical reconstruction. Cosmetics. Those are the easier mortuary arts. It is the work of an afternoon to sew eyelids shut with invisible stitches, to close a slack jaw, to smooth out wrinkles and rouge pallid cheeks back to seeming life. My branch of the discipline is far more subtle and is never finished in a single afternoon. Read more: HTML PDF

Flash 12/2007, #2: Suzanne Vincent

I Speak the Master’s Will

I’m in Hell. That must be what this is. I can’t fathom a god who would possibly interpret this as heaven, crammed in this damned steamer trunk; me and twenty three other Wayang Kulit shadow puppets, entombed with the smell of ox hide and musty bamboo.

I dream of a life before this one. A life in which I spoke a language other than the one the Master speaks for me. A life in which I could move my own vulgar arms, speak my own profane will, make my own damning decisions. I’ve been here so long I can’t remember what I did to deserve damnation, but a shadow of that life tells me I do. Read more: HTML PDF

Classic Flash #1: H. P. Lovecraft

What The Moon Brings

I hate the moon—I am afraid of it—for when it shines on certain scenes familiar and loved it sometimes makes them unfamiliar and hideous.

It was in the spectral summer when the moon shone down on the old garden where I wandered; the spectral summer of narcotic flowers and humid seas of foliage. . . Read more: HTML PDF

Coming Up in January: Jake Freivald

Don’t Miss It!

We’re sponsoring Liberty Hall’s end-of-year "flash challenge", and interviewing proprietor Mike Munsil.

Eric Garcia, the only guy I know who could pull off three complete novels about dinosaurs who disguise themselves as people, will provide us with a new story.

Plus more classic flash, more great art, and more stuff that hasn’t even been thought of yet! Read more: HTML