I was born with a birthmark that looked like a bruised flower. It trailed along the left side of my face, from hairline to where neck and shoulder met. I grew accustomed to open stares, sidelong glances, and children being chastised for pointing.
Welcome to our Contemporary Flash Fiction category, showcasing bite-sized stories from a diverse mix of emerging and established literary voices. These quick reads, each under 1,000 words, offer a snapshot into modern life, relationships, and the human condition.
Despite their brevity, these stories pack an emotional punch. They capture poignant moments and thought-provoking insights that linger long after the final word. From slice-of-life vignettes to surreal and speculative tales, the styles and themes are as varied as the authors themselves.
We've curated works from some of today's most promising up-and-coming writers, eager to make their mark on the literary landscape. But you'll also find new flash fiction from acclaimed authors you may already know and love.
Whether you're looking for a quick fiction fix on your coffee break or a palate cleanser between longer reads, these short shorts are sure to intrigue, entertain, and satisfy. Dive in and discover a world of contemporary storytelling talent, one flash at a time.
- Helping Me Up by Bruce Ransom
- “Hi” by Lauren K. Sweeney
- A Job of Work by Salvatore Difalco
- A Narrow Bridge by Avital Gad-Cykman
- A Quick Twist by Patrick Hanford
- Alien bloom 982
- Ant Death by Lorna Wood
- BLACK HOLE by Alex Khansa
- Buy it Now!
- Catching Up 2143
- Chasing Zero by Jean Ryan
- Cold Shoulder by Hugh Cartwright
- Dear You By Angela Carlton
- Delivery by Denis Bell
- Disclosure optional by Keith Nunes
- Don’t Look For Us by Christine LaChance
- Encounter With a Talking Head by VM Landi
- Escape by Murdock O’Mooney
- Falling Out by Lenka Miklosova Vrazda
- Footloose by E. W. Farnsworth
- Full Moon Nights by Roopa Raveendran Menon
- Girl with Pearls in Her Eyes by Fanni Sütő
- Heart of the Matter by Loretta Martin
- I Knew You’d Come Back to Me by DD Creed
- Jacobs Shadow by Kate E. Lore
- Looking for the Unseen/Seen by Anshika Arora
- Miracle Stain Remover
- Missing Pipes, Nuts and Screws by Adaora Ogunniyi
- Monday the 28th of August
- My darkest fear! by Wendy Montoya
- My Daughter’s Best Friend by Michelle Reynolds
- Night of Fire and Glass by Justin Bendell
- Nobody Shall Sleep By T. Dem
- Open Hands by Angela Townsend
- Retreat by Jack Coey
- Saving Alice by Angela Carlton
- Some Freaks Sleep When They Go To Bed by Scott Pomfret
- Strutters’ Ball by Barry Basden
- Stuck Between the Pages by Julia Vellucci
- Swallowed by Angela Carlton
- Switching Gears by LB Sedlacek
- Telekinesis for Beginners by Michelle Lee
- The Birds Weep by Steve Carr
- The Birthmark by Loretta Martin
- The Closet by Doug Dawson
- The Cold Sausages in my Neighbourhood by Owain Evans
- The Deceased’s Wife by Charles Milton Lee
- The Feral Nature of Werewolves, A History
- The Guitar Man and the Pigeon by Ben Westerham
- The hunt for the desired ratio by Marie Hanna Curran
- The Magic Spot
- The Manhattan Club by John RC Potter
- The Message on Emily’s New Phone by Charles Lee
- The Rusted Swing Set by Sheila Good
- The Shine of a Sinful Heart by Ximena Escobar
- The Soldier Who Loved Dogs
- The Storm by Kristin Leprich
- Them By Meg Pokrass
- Thief by Kristy Gherlone
- Things That Recede with Time by Lauren Howlett
- Time Window by Doug Dawson
- Trapped In A Bottle by Ruben Michael Molina
- Trick of the Light by Dan Caine
- You Complete Me by Adele Evershed
The Deceased’s Wife by Charles Milton Lee
Three elderly women stood huddled in a corner of the funeral home, whispering and glaring at the deceased’s wife.
Monday the 28th of August
Today is the worst day I have ever experienced. But it’s not over yet. It’s not going to end for thousands of seconds. Thousands of raw, grating seconds. I know, I’m the one with the problem. Not you. You have coping mechanisms. Your brain has worked out that to experience every second of every day would quickly lead to
Night of Fire and Glass by Justin Bendell
The freaks are out again tonight. I hear them howling. I hear branches cracking off trees. There were out last night, too. It has been warm and heat draws them to the streets. It’s been like this since the war, or since the raids, but really it started with the slave ships.
Footloose by E. W. Farnsworth
It was dark, and the party was going to start on the other side of the freshly-plowed south pasture anytime. Bob impatiently stomped through the damp earth toward the Thompson Farm.
Telekinesis for Beginners by Michelle Lee
At the ripe age of 21, Ariel lives in failure of that first step. She’s filing papers now, an administrative assistant at the Dropbox headquarters in the heart of Silicon Valley. She watches the computer engineers check in and out behind the front desk on the third floor, and all day this plagues her with a sense of inadequacy. She thinks about her upbringing in an upper-middle class
Disclosure optional by Keith Nunes
A middle-aged guy in a dark jacket and a patterned shirt sitting at a bar, a woman of a similar age in a deep purple dress walks over and sits next to him.
Trapped In A Bottle by Ruben Michael Molina
The sun sizzled the soft tanned skin of Alison Bailey, as she lay comfortably on her favorite azure beach towel; the soft gurgle of the ocean tide lulling her into a peaceful slumber. The beach was a place that Alison visited when felt the world shatter around her, when the gratifying constants of her
The Storm by Kristin Leprich
My brother speaks to me in a hushed tone, as if the shaking echo of a louder voice might break the sight in front of us. We sit on top of the tallest hill in our plain Midwestern subdivision, surveying the damage
The Magic Spot
The Magic Spot: A story inspired by Giorgio de Chirico’s “The Melancholy of a Beautiful Day” He lay in the grassy median of a road which bounded one side of a large inner-city university. How he had come there, nobody knew. From his looks, though, his path had been a cruel one. His body showed the signs of a life wracked by insupportable pain. His face was hollow and sallow,
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