Flash Fiction Friday: The Dream of Flight

  The young man danced atop the rusted, wingless husk to a song of his own making accompanied only by the beatings of his heart. His feet clanged and clattered against the metal, the roof and frame creaking our a warning beneath his weight. But he was high above and far away lost in dreams...

Flash Fiction: On the Evening of the Comet

It was nearly sunset when the comet streaked overhead, trailing ice and rock. My feet were sore after a day of hiking and eager to return home, but still I stopped and stared and wondered. At first I thought it was a plane, but the more I watched the more certain I became. There was...

Flash Fiction Friday: Mrs. Inglethorpe’s Birds

  The birds were all neatly arranged, catalogued, and positioned not according to species, size, or beak but in a system all of her own. Mrs. Inglethorpe was a very exacting woman with a very precise set of standards, ones she was reluctant to share but expected everyone to understand intuitively. The birds were not...

Flash Fiction Friday: The Theater in the Woods (Part the First)

When I was young, they set up a theater in the woods outside my house. I don't know who they were or where they came from. Friends of my father, perhaps. He was always bringing home strays—poets, artists, milliners, cabinetmakers, bee keepers, and on one memorable occasion a pair of aeronauts. My mother was often less...

Flash Fiction Friday: The Stargazer

He had always loved the stars, ever since he was a little boy. When he was four years old, his father had bought him a telescope kit and brought him out to a field. They were miles away from home, far from any road, only he and his father. And the stars. There were hundreds...

Flash Fiction Friday: Full Fathom Grave

They lowered him to the ocean floor slowly and with great deliberation. The rope twisted and swayed in the cold and the current, but held firm. Down, down, down the man fell, encased in iron and brass. He couldn't hear anything but the silence raging in his ears, or see anything but the fog of...

Flash Fiction Friday: The Hospital of the Dolls

No one ever went into the doll's hospital. It had been there for years, perched grotesquely on Main Street between the post office and the ice cream shop. Children hurried past, casting grim, curious glances at the dismembered doll heads and little bodies, the same morbid collection as ever. One of them even seemed to...

Flash Fiction Friday: An Apocalypse of Alpacas

Where were you when the apocalypse came? When the alpacas descended in their thousands and lay claim to our cities, our homes, and our fields? Do you even remember the time before? My brother is too young. George was only three when our alpacan overlords arrived. He has known no other world but the mist...

Flash Fiction Friday: The Telephone and It’s Dog

"Operator," the dog barked. "I would like to make a long distance phone call." He was becoming quite indignant. The stupid human on the other end was being surprisingly unhelpful. Clearly, he had never been properly trained. Man might be a dog's best friend, but he was a stupid animal, barely able to function without canine...

Flash Fiction Friday: The Needle and the Haystack

I. The Haystack "We're looking for a white van," the policeman said, looming out of his patrol car in with a glare. His face was made for frowning and he had the weight and bulk of a boxer in his full and violent prime. "Well,"  the attendant said nervously, "y-you've certainly come to the right...