Broken Men On the Outskirts of Town
“Trebuchet,” flash fiction by Avitus B. Carle
https://electricliterature.com/trebuchet-by-avitus-carle/?mc_cid=44a6c790d8
#flashfiction
Disbelief by Ashley Hutson
https://jellyfishreview.wordpress.com/2016/05/31/disbelief-by-ashley-hutson/
parable #flashfiction #religion #violence #ironic
Sitting in church on Sunday morning, listening to a stirring sermon on "Getting Right with God," 85-year-old Grace Whitby realized she had concerns. She did not have much time left to get right with God. Remembering several episodes from her youth, she knew she would have to do something very good indeed to assure her place in Heaven.
Grace was inspired by a plan.
She went home and took out her gun, and lovingly concealed it in her handbag. Then, she set off for the local abortion clinic. Once there, she unobtrusively slipped inside, unnoticed by the busy doctors and receptionists. If any did see her, they probably assumed she was one of the volunteers, there to help counsel the clients.
Grace was able to take her position and shoot down several of the evil heathen before the cops arrived. In the ensuing insanity, Grace was accidentally shot dead. Yes! She was a martyr for her Lord.
Unfortunately for Grace, Jesus was His own martyr, and quite jealous of the position. Much to her surprise, Grace finds her immortal soul now resides in the Muslim Paradise, where she is constantly getting into trouble due to her lack of knowledge of the language and expected etiquette.
Lydia Davis Interview
https://lithub.com/if-lydia-davis-wasnt-a-writer-shed-devote-herself-to-climate-activism
Why You Can’t Buy Lydia Davis’s New Book on Amazon
Damn....
...but I want the ebook!
https://www.thenation.com/article/culture/lydia-davis-our-strangers-amazon-bookshop/
The Fall Smokelong Quarterly is out
We Go Hiking A Lot
Story by Alida Dean (Read author interview) September 18, 2023
My boyfriend’s ex-wife abused him. The first time he told me about it, I was giving him a ride to Salamanca, New York, so he could buy a forty-year-old dump truck. He stared out the window at the half-frozen Allegheny River and described how she’d tried to tear off his testicles. How she poured hot soup on him while he was sleeping. How she chased him down the road with her black Volkswagen Golf. He tried to assure me that because she had recently been hired as an Assistant Professor and didn’t want to lose her new job, she was unlikely to violate the restraining order he’d filed against her the previous summer. Still, I should be careful. Her license plate starts with H-S-X, he said.
When she was trying to run him over, he sprinted into the forest, and ended up staying there a long time. He ate huckleberries, acorns, drank water from a stream. He balled his shirt up into a pillow and slept on a bed of moss. Mornings, he chewed the stems of sassafras leaves to freshen his breath.
I have a history of punishing the wrong people. When I dropped him off at the gas station where he’d arranged to meet the owner of the dump truck, I was thinking I might not see him again. I liked him, but he was damaged goods. He set his metal tool box down so he could hug me goodbye with both arms. I felt his heart through his wool sweater. Da-dum, da-dum, da-dum.
The dump truck’s forty-one now. We go hiking in the Adirondacks, the Catskills, the nature preserve behind our house. Wherever we go, he leaves the trail to forage. I’ve watched him eat fistfuls of ramps, fiddleheads, bitter crabapples, even chokecherries, which are supposed to be poisonous. I always offer to share my trail mix, but he only stares at the combination of peanuts, dried fruit, and chocolate like he doesn’t understand.
Full issue Here
#stories #flash #flashfiction #literature
(Re)Introducing The Napkin Project
Sixteen years after the series last appeared in our pages, we sent cocktail napkins to ten writers we love. Here are the short works of fiction they wrote on them.
https://www.esquire.com/entertainment/books/a44466086/napkin-project-short-fiction/
(here's a new 100 word flash fiction written for a contest at sffworld.com)
BEMs
by
Kenny A. Chaffin
All Rights Reserved © 2023 Kenny A. Chaffin
They call them BEMs, bug-eyed monsters because eyes are the windows to the soul and they are the most religious reverent beings in the galaxy. Doing Gods work as they see it and is flaunted by human blasphemy they cannot and will not tolerate. We see ourselves reflected in their black iridescent orbs, their gelatinous skins and feel the shame for what we have done to the Earth in the name of progress, mastery, pride, and profit. We are frozen by the depth of those eyes and know this is best. For the Earth, we the infection will be removed.
Kenny A. Chaffin = 6/17/2023
Brilliant Silence
by Spencer Holst
Two Alaskan Kodiak bears joined a small circus where the pair appeared in a nightly parade pulling a covered wagon. The two were taught to somersault, to spin, to stand on their heads, and to dance on their hind legs, paw in paw, stepping in unison. Under a spotlight the dancing bears, a male and a female, soon became favorites of the crowd. The circus went south on a West Coast tour through Canada to California and on down into Mexico, through Panama into South America, down the Andes the length of Chile to those southernmost isles of Tierra del Fuego.
There a jaguar jumped a juggler, and afterwards, mortally mauled the animal trainer; and the shocked showpeople disbanded in dismay and horror. In the confusion the bears went their own way. Without a master, they wandered off by themselves into the wilderness on those densely wooded, wildly windy, subantarctic islands. Utterly away from people, on an out-of-the-way uninhabited island, and in a climate they found ideal, the bears mated, thrived, multiplied, and after a number of generations populated the entire island. Indeed, after some years, descendants of the two moved out onto half a dozen adjacent islands; and seventy years later, when scientists finally found and enthusiastically studied the bears, it was discovered that all of them, to a bear, were performing splendid circus tricks.
Reprinted from Flash Fiction, edited by James Thomas, Denise Thomas and Tom Hazuka
Ellipsis Zine statement
This bird has flown
When I set up Ellipsis over five years ago, it started life on Twitter. It was my go-to place to publish content and socialise digitally. Since then I’ve made thousands of digital friends and several real-life friends through Twitter. Ellipsis wouldn’t be where it is now without Twitter.
It has never been perfect but it was a great space to be in, especially the literary community, but unfortunately, billionaire owners like to run things diffrently and the re-instating of toxic accounts, banning journalists, etc. is not a place I want to be.
So, for now, it’s time to log out. I’m not deactivating the Ellipsis account, it’s on hold until things settle down. And hopefully they will. I’ll still be publishing three new flashes each week but, for the foreseeable future, I won’t be logging in to Twitter; there’ll be no updates, posts or interactions there. If you need to get in touch, you can drop me an email or interact via Ellipsis’ other social networks. All new content and posts will be linked there: Mastadon, Facebook or Instagram.
See you on the other side.
Steve
Flash Fiction...
Bulletproof by Claire Taylor
A week before kindergarten starts, the school sends an updated safety protocol. All students will be outfitted with bulletproof shields. They will be taught how to hold them over their bodies as they crouch beneath their desks. This solution is insufficient, the school admits, but it will save lives. It will buy time. They are working on building panic rooms large enough to house a hundred frightened children each. These spaces are expensive, but our students’ lives are priceless. They are accepting donations for this effort. The letter arrives along with a list of school supplies. Crayons and scissors. Two bottles of Elmer’s glue. Sterile gauze for packing wounds. Would any parent like to volunteer to lead a course in bullet extraction? ...
DON’T TRUST A GUY WHO PROMISES YOU THE MOON
"Shadow on the Moon," flash fiction by Brenna Hosman
https://electricliterature.com/shadow-on-the-moon-by-brenna-hosman/
Micro, Sudden, Flash, Short-Shorts: A Brief Survey of Even Briefer Fiction
Gary Lippman Explores Condensed Storytelling
https://lithub.com/micro-sudden-flash-short-shorts-a-brief-survey-of-even-briefer-fiction
Because I Wanted to Engage and Challenge my Students
https://www.smokelong.com/because-i-wanted-to-engage-and-challenge-my-students/
