Flash Fiction by M.V. Montgomery

COLD HARD FLASH

 

 

the best western

 

Two supernatural gunfighters face off in an Old Western town.  Sundance is a vampire sheriff and Slim is a skeleton outlaw.  I want you out of town by sundown, Sundance says.  I want you out of town by sunrise, Slim says.  How about a drink before we get started? asks Sundance.  No, no rotgut for me, says Slim.

 

 

the bodyguards

 

My bodyguards met your bodyguards and everyone got along fine.  All the bodyguards wore their short-sleeve dress shirts with shoulder holsters and shiny wing-tipped shoes. 

 

Then my bodyguards and your bodyguards decided to play a game of softball.  Afterwards, there was beer, music, and a barbeque.  The bodyguards squinted at each other over their aviator sunglasses, teased each other, showed off their muscles, and bragged that their team was the strongest.  A good time was had by all! 

 

Don’t you think we should try to get our bodyguards together again soon?

 

 

the fake escape

 

Two members of a Swedish gang kidnap a young unmarried couple.  Grabbing their captives, they flee police by jumping from an impossibly high bridge onto a cargo ship. 

 

Later, the two criminals blend into the crowd in a foreign city, wearing yukatas, while the couple has escaped to the U.S. and is observed in a movie theatre, furtively embracing in the surreal glow from the screen.  All appear to have found safe asylum.

 

Surprise ending, title: They had all died in that initial plunge.  A shot of blanket-covered bodies on the deck of the slowly moving ship.  

 

Well, I did say “impossibly high,” didn’t I?

 

    

fish story

 

At a fine restaurant, while seated out on the patio, I surprised my date by suddenly getting up and jumping into the goldfish pond.  Then, since I was already soaking wet, I began splashing about and flapping my arms like fins.

 

Just stop it, she said.  Stop playing koi with me!

 

 

just not done

 

I don’t know about presumptuous, but it just seems downright unlucky to approach the captain of a cruise vessel and say, “Excuse me, sir, but what’s your cap size?”

 

 

my relations with the cat woman 

 

We had to be very careful, you see, because of my allergies.  Difficult, very difficult.  We had to kiss through tissue paper and avoid any direct contact with claws.  I confess that I am a little squeamish in that way.  And then I had to be careful not to say anything to send her spiraling into a hissy fit—yes, now, that’s a pretty kitty.

 

 

right in front

 

I tossed and turned.  I wasn’t getting any younger, and when had been my last doctor’s appointment?  I did a skin check and was startled by a hard lump right in front of my face.  But this turned out to be my nose. 

 

 

spying on the neighbors

 

Over the years, I have been observing an elderly neighbor couple on the circle.  Finally, I think my suspicions may be justified.  The woman has been spreading out as she ages, her shape billowing like a melting candle’s.  The man looks like he is being sucked dry, his clothes hanging loose and his pants barely staying up.

 

Could it be—that she has been slowly feeding on him?!

 

  

wrong order

 

Trying out a new Mexican seafood restaurant.  The host shows me to a table in a corner by the kitchen.  A businessman sitting nearby greets me with a slight nod, then buries his face again in his Journal.

 

Imagine my alarm when two waiters suddenly burst out of the kitchen wheeling a large manatee on a gurney!  They bump into the man’s table, sloshing saltwater onto the fine linen tablecloth.  Outraged, the businessman tells them, I said, bring me a large MARTINI. 

 

 

 

 

M.V. Montgomery is a professor at Life University.  His short story collection Beyond the Pale will be released by Winter Goose Publishing in May 2013.

Flash Fiction by Anthony Ward

Playing On My Mind

 

“Did I tell you about the time I sneezed into a load of cocaine? I was with my girlfriend at this party thrown by one of her artist friends and they brought out this whole wad of cocaine. They were passing it around, and when it came to me I held it in my hands, just to take a look at it, I wasn’t gonna...anyway, I sneezed all over it and it went everywhere. They went hysterical and I was in hysterics. I got a much better high than they ever did I can tell you.”

He was describing a scene from Annie Hall. I’m not the biggest movie buff but I’ve seen one or two movies—so, evidently, had Bernie.

He used to tell us these stories and we would listen to them with great interest, not because we thought they were true, but because we couldn’t help but be intrigued by the fact Bernie thought they were true.

Did he think they were? I remember the first time I met him, he told me the story of when he and three of his friends went off in search of a dead body. How they had to outrun a train and fend off some older boys with a gun he’d stolen from his father’s cabinet. Of course I recognised what movie it was straight away.

“Stand by Me.” I said. “I’ve seen it about a dozen times.”

Bernie looked at me as if I had said something incomprehensible.

“Seen what?” he asked looking at me like the stranger I was.

“The movie, Stand by Me. That’s...” I paused, uncertain of why this appeared awkward.

“Huh,” he shrugged, and then went on to tell me about the time he ate fifty eggs.

There are people, I’m sure, that can convince themselves they have lived a life they have not lived. Most of us like to think we are something more than we are. Some have been there done that without having to prove it to anyone. There have been times I might confess to having put myself in a film, especially those staring Natalie Portman, or where I get to take out my angst on the worlds ignorant, but I wouldn’t tell others these things as if they’d actually happened. We all like to indulge our fantasies and escape the mundane reality of our lives, but we don’t expect to live there in reality. Not like Bernie.

Bernie had an antiquated look about him. A look that said he could have known Huckleberry Finn and we’d have believed him. When you spoke to him it was like going to one of those drive thru’s where you speak into a box and you find yourself anticipating the delayed response, replying to you as if you weren’t there—as if answering a memory.

He described the time when he was stood on top of a yellow truck screaming into the abyss, pouring with rain. I recognised the scene immediately, and before I could return from the thought, it had encapsulated me. I found myself standing on that truck too screaming into the abyss.

“That didn’t happen! You’re stealing my scenes. You can live in your movies as long they don’t involve her.” I said.

One day he told me a story so incredulous it could only have come from a movie. But I couldn’t for the life of me figure out what that movie was. What movie was it? Had I seen it?

I found myself scouring the internet. Searching for new movies I hadn’t seen, old movies I’d never heard of. I was determined to figure it out, as if trying to discern the reality, but nothing fit the description.

Did it actually happen? Was it actually real? What did it matter to me?

 

 

Anthony Ward tends to fidget with his thoughts in the hope of laying them to rest. He has managed to lay them in a number of literary magazines including The Faircloth Review, Drunk Monkeys, Jellyfish Whispers, Turbulence, Underground, The Autumn Sound, Torrid Literature Journal and The Rusty Nail, amongst others.

Flash Fiction by Roo Bardookie

Murder in The Bush, Mist in The Air

          The lighthouse keeper saw it, but didn’t know what he saw.  Then in the ½ hour just before his true vigil, as he trained his eyes to go from the near dark to true dark, he saw some folks by the bathrooms, by the bushes.  It was the last time he saw two of them.

          The waves crash at this beach park, across from Sea Life Park, like the opening to the original Dark Shadows.  The crush here of water on rock is the dark symphony.

          He couldn’t talk the younger, weaker man into fucking or dick sucking.  So he went for the rape, only a rape, only a sodomy and breaking and entering his person.

“But damn him!”

“Damn him.”

          He would later tell the officers, the jury, the cell mates and God, that it was his fault for yelling no.  No infuriated him.

          He cracked him upside the head, fucked him, and choked him with a belt.

          In the sea salt air, it did not take long for a body to decompose.

          This was why the lighthouse keeper only saw one person leaving the bushes, by the bathrooms at the ocean park, across from Sea Life Park.

http://www.roobardookie.com/

Flash Fiction by Davis S. Pointer

Penosaurus

     Binary code stampede. Fiscal Cliff rescue. Buffalo grass, spirit world lap tops and national park museum concrete on the way. Pond water canteens filled with liquid gold flown off to gated community safe havens. I. II. III. The record producer told the poets that they were creating art that nobody wanted. Double candle lamps working triple shifts. The table of contents contained no Thanksgiving dinners or monetary compensation. At the bottom of the Fiscal Cliffs, writing and non-life inks on.



David S. Pointer has recent acceptances at “Stone Canoe,” Rattle,” and Mad Rush.” He writes from Murfreesboro, TN.

Flash Fictin by Jim Meirose

The Call                                                                                

It’s four a.m. and I’m in the office.  Haven’t been home for seventy two hours; big project at work. Need to call home. Oh, she knows I’m at work. It’s just I haven’t called in and have been here much longer than expected. Need to call home now.

Here’s a phone. The buttons are small. I put in the numbers—damn, I screw it up—I put in the numbers again, and—damn, I screw it up again. This phone is just too small and hard to use. For some reason it won’t let me use it. It doesn’t want me to get through. My fingers turn all thumbs when I go to dial it. God damn it—I will find another phone.

Run downstairs and around the corner—go down the stairwell—there’s an executive area there.  It is 4 a.m. No one will be there. I go to the secretary’s station—there’s a phone—but it has no buttons! When I pick it up, a voice says Yes?

I need to call home—I need to call home now—

Please provide your passcode or the last four numbers of your social.

I blurt out the last four letters of my social—who the hell has a passcode—

Connecting, says the voice.

Silence.

Connecting? Connecting to what? I have not given my phone number.  This is useless. I slam it down. I run through a long corridor to an area where there are many cardboard boxes stacked.  There’s a phone there—a dial phone—with a lock on it! There are many cubicles—many desks—many phones. I pick one up. There’s a dial tone—and I try to type in my home number but I have the same problem I had with the first phone—I can’t dial right—the keys are too tiny for my sausage like fingers.  Time is passing—she’s angry, I know she’s angry.

Frustrated, tired of all this, I step into the living room.

She is going out the front door onto the porch naked, for all to see.

She is going to humiliate herself. I call out to her.

No—don’t go out on the porch naked—

It’s wrong to go out on the porch naked—

I will call—you will see!

You will see—

She goes out on the porch naked and bends over to fold some clothes she has laid out there. No! I cry—but she seems not to hear me. The sun beats down. I may as well not be there. I am not there, I tell myself—this is not happening—and at last my phone call goes through. I am leaning on a grey filing cabinet in a room teeming with people. I know she is on the phone but the din of the people makes it pointless.  I yell I’ll be home soon and she says something I can’t make out—and I hang up, all impotent, turning a dark grey inside.

Jim Meirose's work has appeared in numerous journals, including the Fiddlehead, Witness, Alaska Quarterly review, and Xavier Review, and has been  nominated for several awards. Two collections of his short work have been published and his novel, "Claire", is available from Amazon.

Flash Fiction by Mark Hudson

A real tough librarian

I went to the Skokie library with my friend Chris.

I live in Evanston, but heard the Skokie library is nice.

It has a really wide selection of books.

I strolled through the aisles amazed at the selection.

I picked out an art book, and a book on castles

for a giant painting I'm working on. Then we

went to check the books out. There was a man

ahead of us. Sounded like he was checking out

travel DVDS for his wife. The man said to the

teenage male librarian, "My wife can watch these

while I watch football." The librarian said,

"I would personally rather watch hockey."

The man said, "Oh, I hate hockey!" and walked off.

We got to the front. I started checking out books.

Chris began to talk to the librarian about hockey.

The librarian said, "Yes, sometimes in the winter

I go to Michigan and play ice hockey. I like it

because you get to hit somebody." I never

heard of a tough librarian. On the way out,

my friend Chris said, "I was about to yell at

that old man. How can you put down hockey?"

I was just glad to get my books. But I've

had them a week and I've barely looked at them.

Too bad the hockey players are on strike.

And too bad my tv only gets like two channels.

Guess I'll have to keep reading and writing.

 

 

 

Mark Hudson is a published poet, and 2012 has been his most successful year.  He had two poems published in Reckless Writing, five poems published in creature features, one poem published on-line by A.J. Huffman, his poems can be found on-line at Illinoispoets.org and baseballbard.com.

 

 

Flash Fiction by April Salzano

Assault by Baby

            “Omg! This lady behind me in line at Starbucks just hit me with her baby!” I text my friend. This is one of those you’re-so-not-going-to-believe-this messages. Such things are urgent, ephemeral, and often require an ignoring of the rules, such as signs that read We will gladly take your order when you are finished with your phone call with the picture of the only available picture of a cell phone in the click art program, the archaic flip phone inside a circle with a red diagonal line through it, indicating something serious like contraband.

            If she’s done it once, she’s done it four more times by the time I get a reply: “what? like wielding her baby like a baseball bat and hitting you with it?”

            “No, but that’s damned funny too. This baby she’s assaulting me with hasn’t even been born yet. She’s pregnant.” I hit send then continue with a new message. “Obviously her depth perception is off. I mean, I know it’s a hard load to bear and she probably can’t even see her feet she’s so big, but surely she can see me?! I’m waitin for my latte and she just.keeps.bumping.me with her damn baby!” Send. “I’m gettin pissed! I’m gonna slap her!”

            “Let me get this straight. u are pissed at a fetus?”

            “Lofl. Well, sorta. I mean, it’s not the kid’s fault its mother needs a decaf latte so bad she’s willing to knock patrons out to get it.”

            “U sure she’s gettin decaf?”

            “Well, no. Should I ask her??”

            “Eff that! She’ll probably go into labor and you’ll never get your latte. And you obviously need one if you are contemplating kicking a pregnant woman’s ass.”

            “Good point. Ttyl.”

April Salzano teaches college writing in Pennsylvania and is working on her first (several) poetry collections and an autobiographical work on raising a child with Autism. Her work has appeared in Poetry Salzburg, Pyrokinection, Convergence, Ascent Aspiration, Deadsnakes, The Rainbow Rose and other online and print journals and is forthcoming in Inclement, Poetry Quarterly and Bluestem.