Flash Fiction Friday: The Case of the People vs. Pandora

I. Long, long ago in the first years of the Thirty-First Century, the great, the good, the wicked, and the terrible, all gathered from across the Seven Galaxies for the Trial. They came in their rockets and solar sails, their hyperdrives and trans-dimensional cannons, their teleporters and astral projectors. The Judicial Station show court could...

Flash Fiction Friday: Concerning the Proper Uses of Cyanide

I’m going on a picnic and I’m bringing apples, bananas, and cyanide. Cyanide is crucial to the success of any proper picnic, or so my mother used to say before the men in white coats took her away to Happy Town. A little pinch of cyanide can go a long way. I learned this for...

Flash Fiction Friday: The Brief Journey of the Malcontent, Doctor H. H. Foster

Dr. Foster went to Gloucester in the pouring rain. He had not intended, when he woke that morning, to go to Gloucester or, indeed, anywhere at all, but circumstances of a pressing nature had unexpectedly arisen, and thus he found himself donning his hat and his coat and venturing forth into the downpour. It was...

Flash Fiction Friday: Secrets and Smiles

Dorothy was perched atop the veranda, her legs dangling aimlessly. The party was starting to wind down after an afternoon of cocktails and gossip. Twilight was approaching and there was a chilly nip in the air. Laughter floated up from the garden below, but Dorothy didn't even turn her head. She knew that particular laugh—her...

Flash Fiction Friday: The Mouse and the Dragon

Long, long ago in a great cave high in the mountains a mouse and a dragon played poker. The mouse was quite a little mouse but brave, as mice count such things. He had traveled far and wide in his youth, from the country to the town and back again. He had gone on many...

Flash Fiction Friday: November in Kolonia

November in Kolonia. There is cold nip in the air, and the sky is a threatening gray. It’s a bluff, of course, no rain will fall today, or tomorrow, or the next day, but the man on the bicycle doesn’t know that. He pulls his beret tight and peddles faster. All the houses look the...

Flash Fiction Friday: The Life & Loves of Mr. Albert P. Pennyfeather

Mr. Albert P. Pennyfeather was in love. For those who knew him well this was not, altogether, much of a surprise. Mr. Pennyfeather, after all, was infamous within certain circles for his particular talent for falling into and out of love at the drop of the proverbial hat; sometimes even before the hat had been...

Flash Fiction Friday: The Monster of Lake Cranberry

There was a monster fishing by the lake. His name was Gerald. He was small, round, and green, the color of all proper monsters. His teeth were long and sharp. His fur was prickly and spiked. But he was, all things considered, a rather pleasant fellow. His grin was roguish and infectious, even if there...

Flash Fiction: The Man of Spoons

It was three days before Curtis met the man of spoons, or as Curtis (and billions of other people) called it—today. This particular today was distinguished from all preceding ‘todays’ because it was not yet yesterday. It was, however, precisely three days, twelve hours and nineteen minutes before the encounter with the man of spoons....

Flash Fiction Friday: Shipwrecked

  The man and his boy made their home beneath the wreckage. A meteoroid storm had forced them to make a crash landing and it had taken them a month to salvage the debris, and another month to finally accept that no help was coming. They had strayed too far from the spacelanes. The man...