Addisyn couldn’t sleep the night before she was scheduled to rotate back to Earth. She slipped into her uniform and wandered the quiet hallways of the base. Without meaning to, she found herself standing outside Pappy’s enclosure, idly stirring her chamomile tea. The sugar was long since dissolved. She just liked watching the tea go… Continue reading Baboon Fingers on Glass
Category: Flash
Practical Life Advice from Bathtub Dan
Bathtub Dan learned the hard way: if you are taking a bath with a woman, memorize her last name. Just in case. Because she’ll be pissed if you don’t know it. Most women have a first name and a last name. Not Madonna. Not Beyoncé. Was it a singer thing? What about Grimes? Dan wasn’t… Continue reading Practical Life Advice from Bathtub Dan
Things Nora Didn’t Know
Nora pushed the empty mayonnaise jar around the tiled floor of Luca’s apartment with her nose. She didn’t know it, but Luca had named her for the woman who had broken his heart. Nora—the whippet, not the woman—had found him slumped on a stone bench in Oaxaca’s central plaza as the October sun crept over… Continue reading Things Nora Didn’t Know
A Reason for the Moon to Return
Vernon didn’t see the cricket coming. He’d figured he’d while away the lonesome lockdown hours teaching himself to pick a banjo, so he swept the faded floorboards in his bedroom, faced a wooden chair to the window, and set to. It was slow going at first but Vernon didn’t mind, he didn’t want to teach… Continue reading A Reason for the Moon to Return
Friend of the Bottle
She sits at the oak desk with eyeliner and gin, with lipstick and eyeshadow. The silk stocking she’s not yet donned sits next to the plate of lime wedges she had the foresight to slice after reading the letter and before unstoppering the bottle. She sits at the oak desk and ignores all that’s on… Continue reading Friend of the Bottle
Four Thousand Kilometers Above Jupiter
I named the spider Billy. I was supposed to kill him—sacrifice is the term in the experimental protocol—after the experiment was complete, but I didn’t want to. I didn’t even finish the experiment. Why bother? Whatever electromagnetic event wiped out comms with the transport ship took out my exterior cams too, so I’ve been flying blind… Continue reading Four Thousand Kilometers Above Jupiter
Teddy the Tortoise
Teddy the tortoise had been roaming the ward longer than anybody else. Not even Audrey the elderly orderly knew who named him—or why he wandered the garden paths at night. Ann never admitted, not even years later, that she was behind it, but someone—let’s just say it was Ann—started sticking candles on Teddy’s back on… Continue reading Teddy the Tortoise
The Underside of the Fern
It wasn’t seeing the fern that had Liz worried. She knew the fern well. She knew every plant, every fallen log, every crossing of the creek that wound through the birch forest near the old farmhouse she shared with her grandmother. Had been watching it grow for years. But she wondered why she was looking… Continue reading The Underside of the Fern
Special Delivery
The mailboxes were Cliff’s brainwave. He called ‘em antioxidants because he read in some newsletter that clutter was a cancer that killed co-living spaces deader than doornails, so after downing his morning kombucha he zipped down to the free store and scooped up four used ones. Used mailboxes purchased for zero dollars are liable to… Continue reading Special Delivery
A Steamy Day and a Missed Connection In Honduras
Thoughts after one journey and before another “Tell me,” she said, “why gringo women wear such ugly shoes.” She said it in Spanish, her tongue forming the precise syllables that I envied and still failed to produce after years of practice. Her name was Viviana, and she was my Spanish teacher. We were practicing my conversation… Continue reading A Steamy Day and a Missed Connection In Honduras