Flash Fiction
Pia’s Daughter
Mother bathed and dried the others and laid them on the bed beside me. Even the one who tried to get away. Pale flesh scrubbed for glory. Clean, clean, clean, clean, clean. Satan would never get us now. I’d said … Continue reading
A City Without Roofs
Our tour guide, Antonio, waits outside, smoking a cigarette, while we snake our way through the bathhouse. It is one of the only buildings left in this fire-blasted town that still supports a roof. Tired of standing in line, … Continue reading
The Slades
Knee-deep in the yarrow and saw grass, I’m sweating it out on Old John Slade’s property. After school. 75 cents an hour. Bobby Slade cuts me a check every other Friday. “Avoid running that tiller into the slops, boy,” Bobby … Continue reading
Abstract Math and Honeyed Apples
It has been said that Alan Turing committed suicide by eating a poisoned apple, but his mother, daughter of a railway engineer, disagreed. The thing about dwarves is that they’re often tardy. When you spend your days with ore, uncountable … Continue reading
Order
She rushes to the diner after class, changes in the car. Her first table is a man alone in the back booth. His dark hair is parted precisely. Crisp white shirt. Polished shoes. Movie star eyes. He orders a salad, … Continue reading
If You Hold Yourself Upright
It had her since birth. Enough was wrong with Lucy’s heart that, even after the doctors dug in, rearranged, and patched everything up, her pulmonary valve leaks now, four decades later, at her niece’s Bat Mitzvah party. Uncle Sy and … Continue reading