Issue 116 May 2023

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Editorial: The Horror Issue

by Anna Yeatts

May 1, 2023

Emma and I are horror junkies. We bonded years ago over our shared love of beautifully-told horror stories that linger in your psyche long after you finish reading. But FFO receives far fewer horror submissions than other genres (if you’re interested in our submission stats, we’ve recently added those over on Patreon). We’ve hoped to publish a horror issue for some time, but we’ve never had enough horror stories in the queue at the same time to make that happen. But recently, the horror gods aligned, and this issue’s original stories landed in the same winnowing batch. 

The only event rarer than a horror-filled winnowing would be for me to accept a cat story.

I have this thing about cat stories. Don’t get me wrong. I have cats. I like cats. They seem to like me as long as I acquiesce to their demands and continue to provide a steady stream of kibble. But I just don’t like cat stories. The stakes tend to be low. There’s quite often a reveal where the reader learns that the point of view character is a cat. And there’s usually something catty about the tone—which makes sense because, hello, it’s a cat—but as a reader, I don’t find it engaging or interesting. Instead, it feels more like my cat throwing up a hairball next to my bed at 3AM and then yowling until I roll over so she can sleep on the pillow I so thoughtfully warmed up for her. Clearly, this is not my idea of a good time.

My feelings on cat stories are well-known by the FFO staff. So when “Skin the Teeth” arrived in slush, one of our assistant editors commented, asking if this would be the cat story that I actually purchased.

And, since you’re reading this editorial, “Skin the Teeth” by Sarah Cline is the cat story that finally broke through. Equal parts paranormal, psychological, and body horror, “Skin the Teeth” is a disturbing dive into compulsive hoarding. Round up the Hazmat suits and Lysol wipes for a shudder-inducing experience you won’t soon forget. (Available 5/5/23)

We’re also delighted to publish “The Invisible” from FFO alumnus, Kurt Newton. It’s a chilling look at self-help taken to toxic extremes that taps into the universal fears we all share—fear of separation, loss of autonomy, extinction, and ego death. (Available 5/12/23)

There’s one universal fear remaining, and that’s mutilation. (You didn’t think we were going to leave mutilation out of a horror issue, did you?) In “Unexplained” by H. V. Patterson, a woman inexplicably loses a finger and deals with the consequences. This story addresses the problematic way the medical community often ignores or ignores women’s health concerns. We hope you enjoy this slow-burn of body horror as much as we did. (Available 5/19/23)

Our reprint this month walks the line between dark fantasy and horror. We’re delighted to bring you “The Fox Spirit’s Retelling” by Wen Wen Yang. Originally published in Remapping Wonderland: Classic Fairytales Retold by People of Color (January 2021). (Available 5/26/23)

And this month, we’re offering an extra reward over on Patreon—”Tips to Survive the Slush Pile” by FFO assistant editor, Jawziya F. Zaman. If you’re interested in selling a story to FFO (or anywhere else), it’s an amazing resource for how the process works. We hope you’ll check that out!

If you enjoy learning more about our authors and the story behind their stories, consider becoming a Patron. As part of our Patreon rewards, we offer bonus content including recommendations to read more of their work in other publications, insights into their writing and editing processes, and more.

Thanks again for being a reader and supporter of Flash Fiction Online!

Enjoy!

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Skin the Teeth

by Sarah Cline

May 5, 2023

The woman from the county throws her shoulder against the bathroom door, and the hardboard coughs open, surrenders a narrow gap, then slaps into a mountain of plastic bottles filled with urine staling to lemon curry.

“Christ alive,” she whispers.

They think I’m in my death throes, now, having discovered the bathroom. Downstairs, the biohazard crew peels free sheafs of moldy wallpaper. Cats pelter helter-skelter, their dirty paws tickling my innards. And it’s bad in there, yes. Once the water gets shut off, the final descent begins.

That’s when I feel most alive. When I really have my grubby fingers knit into the house, and – with a heave – shoulder the mass of it onto myself, fleas and all, and become the house. Metabolizing the occupants. Growing.

Sounds cruel? Maybe. But we all know there are things in this world that grow stronger as another grows weaker. Call me a parasite. An evil spirit. A mental illness.

A force of rot.

After all, where a wound is left open, infection is sure to slip in.

Things that breed in sickness.

For my ilk, anything will do, though I am preferential to the taste of a weakening human brain, spongy and crowded. It tastes… like veal.

Delicious.

But after the glory, the fall.

The call from a concerned neighbor. The visit from the county. More calls, this time to loved ones. They come, sprinkle tears on my mildewing flesh, and retch in the yard. The psychiatrist tows in the estranged family, and with an unraveling of shouts and tears, it begins.

The Junk-Away trucks roll up at 6 sharp, and with hazmat suits and trash bags, they try to kill me.

“Oh Jolène,” the sister moans in the bathroom’s threshold as the crew pulls out the bottles. The sisters clutch each other, wan. Even Jolène seems surprised by it all, as if she hasn’t lived here for twenty years, watching our bond grow.

We had it good for a while, my Jolène and I. I gave her everything I could. And it was just enough, this healthy hoard, to make her feel together. Embraced.

Now she stands mute as these outsiders hack at the cords that bind us. They’ve been picking me apart for hours, picking us apart, but that – that bovine acceptance as she watches strangers shovel caked layers of cat shit from the tub into saggy garbage bags – that bothers me.

Others have screamed. Raged. Clung to the teeth and toenails of my temporary flesh as outsiders chuck it all into dumpsters. It’s inevitable, this dissection, but… I do like it better when they fight for me.

Death, I’m accustomed to. Last time it was the farmhouse in Texas, where my poor Kenneth puttered about in a yard crammed fence-to-fence with the rusted carcasses of Mustangs and Harley-Davidsons. I died there, as I died in Washington, and Florida before that. As I’ll die again today, though I gave it my all this time. What else could I have done?

Death does not bother me. There’s always the stirrings of new life. Always homes yawning, minds cleft. There’s always wounds, left open to fester.

Death is temporary, to one whose services are so greatly in demand.

But the betrayal. Why, in the end, the betrayal?

The house trembles with my anger. A weakening of the support beams. A hiss of dust from the vents. Why are you letting them do this, Jolène?

Where were all these people when Mike started hitting you? When Dad had his stroke and abandoned you? When CPS took Corinne away?

Did they protect you when, after everything, you found yourself alone?

No.

You solicited me from the dust. And at your call, like a faithful friend, I came. Wrapped you in walls the outside world could not penetrate. Brought the cats in to keep you company, and when they had their kittens, together we made room for them in the walls, in the attic. I never judged you, even when you couldn’t keep up with the bills. I never hurt you, never left you. Of whom else in your life can you say that?

Only I have loved you without reservation. You know that, Jolène.

“You are choosing things over me!” the daughter Corinne shouts, in hysterics after only 45 minutes of raking yellow newspapers and dead mice off the kitchen counters. Lightweight.

The cleaning crew has been at it all day. The living room, the bedrooms. 117 baby dolls. 2719 articles of clothing. 18 sewing machines. Luggage, toys, books. Trash.

Tears slide down Jolène’s cheeks, watching it all go. Slow amputation. For both of us.

Fine.

You can have her, doc.

But this isn’t over. Not yet.

My attention swivels. Mildew eyes blink open in the kitchen, fixed on the granddaughter. My poor Lela Antoinette.

Have you checked inside the refrigerator, Lela? You can reach it, now the bins have all been dragged outside. Yes, that’s mold on the back wall, what did you expect? Look closer. A plastic bag bruised with moldy scallops where something dark has sloshed against the inside. She pulls it out. Stares.

The dust in the house hovers as I hold my breath, and Lela wrenches open the freezer door. Screams. Covers her mouth.

Twisted carcasses. The ginger tabby, legs like broken chop sticks. The tuxedo tomcat, jaws caught forever in a snarl. The little calico, so much ammonia in the air that her eyes popped out.

Cats in bags. Cats coiled up, hair thinned. Scabby shells.

On the icetray, kittens, drained flat by fleas. Delicate husks, folded together like playing cards.

She didn’t mean for it to be this way, my poor Jolène. Didn’t want them to suffer. She’s saving them to be cremated. Honored. But never quite got around to it. Couldn’t quite let them go. Grasped too tight.

Lela stands, holding a liquified kitten in a plastic bag, and even with the cats’ phantom eyes on her, even then, the remnants don’t slip from her fingers.

PATREON EXCLUSIVE: Interview with Author Sarah Cline

FFO: What, for you, makes a piece of flash fiction memorable?

SC: For me, memorable flash fiction often conveys a single image, expression of character – maybe even a simple turn of phrase – that makes a lasting impression because it captures the imagination, or articulates for the reader a truth they’ve experienced in their own life.

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The Invisible

by Kurt Newton

May 12, 2023

First there were mindsets. Then there were constructs. Then archtypes. But, let me tell you, it’s all bullshit. The only thing that worked was the invisible.

Until now.

* * *

Annie stares in my direction. She pauses as I wave my arms. My throat is raw from calling her name. But she doesn’t see me.

* * *

Years ago, I thought I was being clever. I’d had it with all the soul searching and the psychological fence mending. I was an adult but still carried the baggage of my less than optimal childhood. My parents were flawed. My siblings were flawed. Hell, my first marriage was flawed. Because I was flawed. All the pain I’d suffered, all the unfairness I’d suppressed, all the rage I felt on a daily basis simmering just below the surface—all those dings and dents to my psyche were enough to put me on the scrap heap for life.

But I wanted to change. I knew I could change. But I just didn’t know where to start.

Then one day, driving to work, I glanced over at the empty passenger seat and thought: What if there was another me—an empty me—that I could give all this shit to? Just hand it over like an errant child to social services? Just say: Here—take it. I don’t want it anymore. I don’t want to see it. I don’t want to have to deal with it. Every piece of sadness, every burning ember of rage, every suicidal thought—here—now it’s yours.

And it worked. It took it. The invisible. That’s what I called it. I felt freed. I felt invigorated. I felt emboldened. Whatever was still feeding the old me, I removed from my life. Bad habits. Dark thoughts. Toxic relationships. I gave it all to the invisible.

Needless to say, my life changed. Divorce. A new place to live. A new way to be. Without anxiety, without fear. I had reached a point where the possibility for happiness was not just a concept for ridicule and sarcasm, it was a very real thing. I was alone, yes, but was I really? I had the invisible. It was there whenever I fell back into my old ways. To take away the second thoughts. To stop me before I spiraled. It was a process, but one that kept me moving toward that elusive of all destinations: a happier me.

* * *

Annie looks confused. There’s a weight in the air that shouldn’t be there. But I can’t warn her what’s about to happen. They begin the conversation.

* * *

Annie. She saved me. She saved me from myself. When she came into my life, it was as if we already knew each other. It was one of those magical alignments that don’t come along often, but when they do, it’s like a slap across the face from the cosmos. As if it’s saying: Here—I did all the heavy lifting. Here’s your opportunity. Now, don’t screw it up!

Lucky for Annie and I, we didn’t. We both saw it. We both saw each other the way two old friends see each other from across the room.

I can’t tell you how that felt. It was as if I came alive in that very instant. Everything I thought didn’t matter suddenly did. Everything I thought was just made up bullshit, was very, very real. Love was real. Beauty, grace, hope—all of it real. Life was indeed good.

* * *

The lights flicker. The flowers in the vase on the table shudder from an unseen draft. I try to get through to Annie, but the moment holds her captive. She must sense something bad is about to happen. Her life is about to change.

* * *

It was a whirlwind romance, a magical few years, and then the invisible returned. It missed me. It missed our exchanges.

I knew something was up when, this morning, I was driving to work and the safety belt warning alarm went off. Please fasten the passenger-side safety belt. But there was no one in that seat. No reason for the car to believe there was someone sitting there without their seatbelt on. And then I felt it. A darkness. A slowly opening pit of foreboding and unease that sucked at my psyche like a sinkhole, pulling me from one reality into another.

The invisible. It was back. It was letting me know it was time to pay up.

I had given it too much. I had filled the pit and made it whole, and like a vacuum satisfying the laws of physics, I was now the one sitting in the passenger seat.

* * *

Annie’s hands are shaking, she’s fighting back tears. She doesn’t understand. I’ve just told her this isn’t working anymore, that I need to leave. This me that isn’t me. The one who has taken my place.

She gets up and walks over to me. She slaps me across the face. She tells me to get out. Get out of her life and never come back. I do. That me that isn’t me. He leaves, taking my future with him.

Annie sits back down. The tears come. She’s crushed, as if all the world has suddenly fallen in upon her. I can feel her heart breaking bit by bit. I sit in the chair next to her and try to console her. But my arms wash right through her. I’m desperate. I want so badly for her pain to go away.

I whisper in her ear. “Give it to me. Let me take it. All of it.”

Her sobbing stops. She turns to me. It’s as if she can see me. And I begin to feel it. My emptiness begins to fill. So much pain, so much hurt, so much anger. I take it all.

And I will continue to take it, until she no longer needs me. Then it will be my turn to give back.

PATREON EXCLUSIVE: BONUS INTERVIEW WITH AUTHOR KURT NEWTON

FFO: What’s the most difficult part of writing a flash piece?

KN: Trying to keep the story from drifting away from its center. The trick is to find that anchor and write only what relates to that anchor. In a way, it’s writing from the outside in. A flash piece can borrow from the past, and hint at the future, but it must remain in the moment in order to be successful. Open too many windows and the reader is looking this way and that. Close those windows and the reader is forced to focus only on what’s in front of them.
 

Unexplained

by H. V. Patterson

May 19, 2023

One second: I have ten fingers

The next: I have nine.

I’m sure you’re picturing the scene: the bright, sharp smell of blood. Emergency surgery. Months later, a morbidly funny story to tell at the office Holiday party, the jagged scar a ring branded into my flesh.

But that isn’t what happens.

I’m chopping carrots for dinner. My husband, Bashir, is on his way home, and Ruya is playing with her Legos in the living room. I’ll never forget the feeling of my capable fingers curled around the knife’s handle. The surety of my hand as it moved up and down, the soothing staccato clap of the blade hitting the cutting board.

The knife doesn’t slip. There’s no fountain of blood. My left ring finger is simply gone between one blink and the next, as if it’d never been. Where my finger should be, there’s only a smooth expanse skin unmarred by scar tissue or any wound.

My wedding ring clatters to the counter, the only concrete evidence of the sudden, impossible absence. The two-carat diamond winks up at me from its nest of tiny rubies.

I’m still looking from the bloodless knife to my wedding ring, to the smooth space where my finger isn’t when my husband arrives.

* * *

The first doctor thinks we’re lying. When Bashir brandishes pictures of our wedding day, our wide bleached smiles, my ten fingers curled around a bouquet of pink roses, he waves dismissively.

“Photoshop.”

“It’s not!” Bashir snaps. Ruya presses against my side for comfort, and I pull her into my lap. She’s five, but small for her age.

“There’s no sign of recent trauma or scarring,” the doctor says. He doesn’t look at me. He has barely glanced at me this entire appointment. “It’s my professional opinion that your wife always had nine fingers.”

“My name is Amanda,” I say.

“Fingers don’t just disappear,” he continues, still not looking at me.

“But that’s what happened!” I say.

“Get out of my office,” he tells Bashir, disgust visible. “Don’t waste my time.”

I pull on my glove, and we go. Ruya reaches for my left hand as we leave. I jerk it away as if my loss is contagious. I offer her my right hand instead, but I can’t erase the hurt from her honey-colored eyes.

* * *

The next doctor is sympathetic. She believes that I believe “my own truth.” She tells Bashir to wait in the lobby and asks me probing questions about domestic abuse. When I angrily tell her that there’s no abuse, that I’m just trying to figure out what happened to my fucking finger, she smiles tightly and recommends a psychiatrist.

* * *

I used to love my hands. I kept them immaculate, moisturized and manicured. Now, I can’t bring myself to care for them. My skin is chapped, my polish chipped. My wedding ring gleams on my middle finger, an uncomfortable fit over the gloves I wear to shield myself from the curious eyes of strangers and startled exclamations of friends.

Ruya stops asking about my finger. When we’re crossing the street, she only reaches for my right hand.

Between the unending cycle of laundry and dishes and errands, I scroll through Reddit threads. I lurk on message boards devoted to demons, UFOs, witchcraft, government conspiracies. I read about flesh-eating bacteria, leprosy, parasites which hollow out their insect hosts from the inside. Nothing like my own situation.

* * *

“Are we wrong?” I ask Bashir one night, months later. “Did we somehow imagine–all of this?”

He holds me while I cry.

“Don’t let them gaslight you,” he says. “We both know the truth.”

“It’s impossible, though! Everyone says so.”

By now, we’ve seen a dozen specialists. None of them believe us.

“Just because they have medical degrees doesn’t mean they know what they’re talking about,” Bashir says.

I settle against his shoulder, sniffling snot and tears onto his pillow. He grabs his phone and starts pulling up photos. This has become a ritual on bad nights. The two of us examining the past, enlarging pictures, tracing the two-dimensional lines of my ring finger, proof it was really there. We stay up late, scrolling through pictures, evidence of a shared life, a shared reality.

* * *

I dream of mangled toes and pulled teeth. I dream my hair falls out, turns to wire, strangles me. I dream my rib cage deflates as my ribs vanish, one by one.  I dream I cut my fingers off with a carving knife and they turn into limp carrots. I wake gasping. Bashir holds me while I weep with gratitude. Minus one finger, I am still here.

* * *

Three years later, life is almost normal. We’ve stopped seeing doctors. My nightmares are gone.

I’m humming to myself as I clean the kitchen. Bashir is upstairs putting Ruya to bed. He screams. It’s a high, despairing shriek, like a rabbit caged in a hawk’s talons.

I bolt from the kitchen, up the stairs, down the hall, into Ruya’s bedroom.

She’s sitting upright in bed, hands held rigid in from of her. Ten fingers. Relief surges through me. But then, she lowers her hands.

“Mom?” she says. “Is that you?”

Her mouth moves. Her nostrils flare. Her eyebrows crinkle with confusion. But where her eyes should be, there’s nothing but smooth, blank space, like an unfinished drawing.

“I can’t see anything, Mom,” Ruya says, reaching for me.

There are no words to offer her. I step forward and embrace her as Bashir dials 911. Ruya can no longer cry, but I have tears enough for both of us.

The Fox Spirit’s Retelling

by Wen Wen Yang

May 26, 2023

The legend is only partially true. I did bathe in the river and the farmer did see me there in human-skin. I had hidden my fox-skin well. I am not the hu li jing of the western legend who they kidnapped, whose fox-skin they stole. One human poet called it devotion that she returned nightly to her husband. She was devoted to her fox-skin as one is devoted to one’s hands.

When humans carved their way into the forest and turned trees into their homes, we determined some use for their village. Some of us can walk upright and sit in human-skin for hours in service to those who cannot. Madam Snake is too old to hunt rabbits. The ghosts want new clothes but cannot wait until the new year.

The farmer knew me from the market. This young man had shoulders as wide as his plow. He bought my herbs and tonics for aching muscles. I learned that he worked his land alone, that he considered it his because his grandfather had passed it down. I did not tell him that the land before his grandfather’s time belong to everyone, not just humans.

When he glimpsed me in the river, I considered leaving the village entirely. The humans had pasted wards across every threshold, stopping weaker spirits from entering. Walking under the new wards felt like my bones were trying to erupt from my skin. Shamans had blessed these papers, but the magic came from the ink, made from the burnt bones of spirits.

Nightly, I added a stroke to render the wards’ magic impotent. One vengeful ghost had come through and chased her husband down their well. The humans thought grief had driven him to the same well where they had found his wife’s broken body.

At the river, I imitated a succubus’s laughter. Water ran down my leg and caught the sunlight. I’d never seen a man disrobe so quickly. No wonder the Woman Spider never starved for mates and meals.

I remember the strength in his hands. I once bandaged them with honey to prevent infection when his ox bit him. These hands had plastered wards across his wagon.

Afterwards, when we were drying on the grass, he asked me to be his wife. Once seduced, would he remove the wards? Would he share his land with the demons who had lived there before his grandfather’s time?

The sounds of men shouting in the distance startled us.

“It’s the hunt,” he said, searching for his pants. “There is a beast in the forest, luring men with a baby’s cries. It eats our hearts and livers. But if we eat it, we will be immune to poison.”

I escaped before he found his shirt.

The legend would have you believe an invader of our home could seduce a fox spirit into hiding her true nature. The poet laments that when he found her fox-skin, she abandoned him.

That night, I smeared every ward in the village with ash and pig’s blood. I poured the blood onto the floor of my shop and splashed it across the walls. All of us who had lived in the village ran. We crossed paths with demons seeking to eat a holy man for immortality and tree spirits eager to water their roots with human blood.

Two new moons later, I had our son.

He has his father’s shoulders, but we share the same fur. His is dark, soft as shadows. I’ve seen him sit in the inbetween-skin, pulling on his fox-skin and watching his reflection in the water. His human features melted into pointed ears and a bushy tail. Jagged tufts of white fur circle his right foreleg where a trap caught him when he was a cub. Each trap steals an acre of our safety while the humans hide behind their wards.

The legend ends with the human’s forgiveness because the hu li jing is his son’s mother. I will not seek forgiveness. I will walk into the village in human-skin again and tear the wards down. My son will meet his father. I will ask the farmer if he would eat his son’s flesh.

Previously published in Remapping Wonderland: Classic Fairytales Retold by People of Color, January 2021. Reprinted here by permission of the author.

PATREON EXCLUSIVE: BONUS INTERVIEW WITH AUTHOR WEN WEN YANG

FFO: What other work of yours would fans of this story most enjoy?

WWY: I expanded this flash into an urban fantasy short story in “The Huli Jing of Chinatown”, published by Zooscape. Locus magazine called it “stunning”. I spent more time on the ‘marginalized but passing’ implications, and ‘my community is under attack’ as it was written at the start of the increase in anti-Asian violence.

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