Flash Fiction by Ken Seide

Memory Pillow

 

 

“Sleep well?” she asked.

“Yes, but strange dreams,” I said.

“How’d you like the memory pillow?” she asked.

“What? What’s that?” I said.

“It conforms to your head and neck,” she said. “It’s my daughter’s. I took it off her
            bed.”

“Has she been to Tzfat?”

“Yes, it’s one of her favorite places. Have you been?”

“No, but I remember it now.”

 

 

Ken Seide is the pen name of a resident of Newton, Mass. His short stories have appeared in Poetica and Cyclamens and Swords. His poems have appeared in Poetica, Kerem, Voices Israel, Muddy River Poetry Review, and other publications.

Flash Fiction by Leilanie Stewart

Twenty Questions

 

“I can’t get it. I give up!”

Andy stared at his wife. “After nineteen questions?”

“It’s impossible with you.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

Shirley smirked. “You should know.”

“Huh? How is 'belly button fluff' any harder than 'naked mole rat'?”

“See? It’s always a war with you – I’ll never win. You think of the most obscure topic.”

“You could’ve played along – for just one more question!”

“Played along? Forget nineteen questions; this was nineteen years – of hell!”

Shirley got up. Nineteen years. After nineteen years of marriage, a nineteen year old wisp of a girl had got between them. He didn’t know she knew. He liked to play games. He wouldn’t win this game. She wouldn’t let him.

Nineteen questions. Nineteen years of hell. A nineteen year old girl. Nineteen steps to the door.

“It was only one more question,” Andy yelled.

Only one more step. Shirley walked out the door. She shut it hard behind her.

 

 

 

 

Leilanie Stewart’s fiction has appeared or is forthcoming in Carillon, Monomyth, Blood Moon Rising, Wufniks, The Crazy Oik, Sarasvati, The Pygmy Giant, Linguistic Erosion, Stanley the Whale, The Neglected Ratio, The Absinthe Literary Review, Ariadne’s Thread and Mad Swirl. By day she runs a creative writing workshop for teenagers, and by night she writes and promotes her work at spoken word events. She currently lives in London with her husband, writer and poet, Joseph Robert. More about her writing can be found at www.leilaniestewart.wordpress.com

 

Flash Fiction by Nancy Purcell

Wasted Lovers                            

           He left home the summer prior to his senior year; not because of bad grades, but because of bad friends. It was the music that stitched them together, his guitar in particular; his long fingers born to create magic. 

           Pot was his first date, then uppers became his steady. But it was his marriage to heroin that got under his skin.

           Two years later, on a grey January morning, our dog moaned by the bedroom door. I pushed away bed-covers and followed him to the basement door. I flicked the light switch, grabbed the railing and tread slow-steps toward my expectation: the boy, our long gone son, had broken in and returned to his early music spot. Propped against the wall, he looked ragged and used up, the needle still in his arm.

           Close by, leaning against a chair, was his guitar, the only thing he'd valued more than life.

Nancy Purcell's publications include RiverSedge, The MacGuffin, Pangolin Papers, Troika, LongStoryShort, The Square Table, DiverseVoicesQuarterly, among others. Her work has been included in anthologies and on the "Writers' Radio Show" station WAWL, Chattanooga, TN.   She served as a NC Writers Network/Elizabeth Squire Daniels Writer-in-Residence, Peace College, Raleigh, NC under the direction of Doris Betts. She facilitates a Creative Writing adult education program at Brevard College, Brevard, NC. and quick-coaches aspiring writers. Nancy also served 7 years as Transylvania County's representative for North Carolina Writers Network.