Editorial
Editorial: Upkeep of the Menagerie
This issue marks the second full year I have been at the helm of Flash Fiction Online, and while the world at large feels unmanageable and unpredictable, I feel like we’ve done as well as can be expected for a small arts organization. In 2024, we succeeded in transitioning the magazine under the umbrella of [...]
Literary
Homonyms
She had no idea why it hadn’t happened. The hare was used to seeing her world change from green, brown and white to purely white, for snow to fall and for her to merge with the snow, to be hidden by it and camouflaged from her enemies. As usual, her coat had shifted already. It [...]
Fantasy
Ornithogonia, or Five Featherings
The first time you plucked a feather from your lover’s skin, you did so laughing.I laughed with you, my laugh as true as yours was false, and—though you could not hear me, Korone, my sweet-bitter girl—I think you knew I was watching, didn’t you? Your shadow. Your once-and-always goddess.Your only goddess, you told me once, [...]
Literary
Shedding the Weight
I.Uche leaves before cockcrow and returns at sundown, work clothes and feet bathed in cement and mortar, a sprinkle of white sand in his brunette hair, the front part compressed by the headpans he carries to build other people’s houses. But everyone thinks our house would collapse on them if they stepped in. Who would [...]
Science Fiction
Reflexive Benevolence Imperative
If Mx Milia N weren't so intimate with their fishship, they wouldn't have noticed anything amiss until they were in a rush to depart. The immense ichthycraft streamed through the upper-atmosphere of 82G-Eridani's gas giant as easily as it had any other in their decades together: its interior high-boned hallways glowed with bioluminescent vitality, its [...]
Literary
Growing House
On a chaise longue in the shadow of our fountain, Mother popped peanuts into her mouth and gave herself a pedicure.“Peg-Peg is getting very fat,” she said. “He just stares at his stone girlfriend.”I opened my eye a slit and looked down. Our frog, Peg-Peg, sagged on the ground. His bulbous eyes stared up at [...]
Fantasy
Small Prayers for the God of Sow Thistle Hill
Linnea’s done it all properly: incense and banners, a white bull done up with ribbons. Mostly white, I should say. It had a brown spot behind one ear. I watched her paint the spot white, in the pre-dawn hour when no one else was looking. She pricked the soles of her feet afterwards, in penance. [...]
