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: Dreams of Snow

They slept in two tents side by side, the scientist and her wife. It had started as a joke back at base camp. Like those poor married couples in old  Hollywood films doomed to spend their onscreen marriages in separate beds. But the joke had taken on a life of its own. The ground was...

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 Greatest Detective in the World

In a long, narrow building at the end of a long, narrow street lived the Greatest Detective in the World. He had never solved a single crime, but in his long life he had read countless mysteries, and devoured every true crime novel and newspaper report he could get his hands on. And he had...

Flash Fiction Friday: The Great Fire

The old man watched as the house burned. The fire spread from room to room in a crackling orgy of smoke and flames. The smell. The noise. The heat. There was a strange beauty to it—a fatal, blackening dance that consumed everything in its path. The old man was not sure how long he stood there...

Flash Fiction Friday: Along the Waterfront

They waited on the waterfront for Mr. Birch to arrive. There were five of them—distinguished men in long coats and expensive shoes. Their cars were parked down the road, and their drivers were milling around out of sight. None of them wanted to be there. Mr. Summerscale checked his watch for the third time and...