No one knows why color disappeared. Leaves browned. Flowers faded. Clothing looked washed-out. Even blood turned beige.
My son’s never seen a sunset, only gray skies.
The last green shoot attracted longer lines than the Mona Lisa. When I took my son to see it, he scrunched his nose. “Gross.”
Hannah Whiteoak is a freelance writer and poet from Sheffield, UK. Follow her at @hannahwhiteoak.
Late in life, she traded piano for painting. It was so refreshing. She’d only ever played keys when she’d had a husband to join onstage.
They’d joke about it when he appeared to her. She tried painting him in his present form, but she could never get the eyes right.
Lucas Kwong wrote this story.
It’s where his best stories arrived without fail, in the shower with warm water running down his back.
Later, pencil sharp, notebook open, squeaky clean, he’d chew on the pink eraser and try to remember. The muse just laughed.
That’s how he learned the best stories never make the page.
Guy’s work has appeared in 43 literary journals including Carve, dacunha, and Exposition Review, where twice, he was a flash 405 winner. Third Wednesday ran his story, The Most Shoplifted Poet, as both flash fiction and poem of the week. Guy teaches low-fat fiction, lives on a houseboat, and walks the planks daily. He prefers to write on ATM slips with low balances while waiting for traffic lights to change.
I drizzle honey over yoghurt and imagine that I am Jackson Pollock.
Yesterday’s dessert was a masterpiece, worthy of MoMA, but this looks amateur. I need precision. I need clean lines.
But it’s freezing and my honey has crystallised into thick, sticky globules.
I bet Jackson Pollock could afford heating.
Danny Beusch started writing flash fiction in 2017. Find him on Twitter: @OhDannyBoyShhh.
The painter painted the world black. Black trees, black grass, black clouds, black tomatoes. Van Gogh-like brush-strokes, thick with sorrow, melted around us. Even little girls smiled with teeth black as watermelon seeds. Everything so biblical we ran to the river to wash away our sins in dark, inviting waters.
Jim Doss lives with his wife and three children in Sykesville, Maryland, and earns his living as a software engineer. He has previously published two books of poems: Learning to Talk Again, and What Remains. In partnership with Werner Schmitt, he also published a book of German translations entitled The Last Gold of Expired Stars: The Complete Poems of Georg Trakl 1908 – 1914. In his spare time, he is an editor for the Loch Raven Review.
Picasso owned a cat who controlled the weather in Paris. When he painted the cat yellow, it was sunny. Purple, and lightning broke out.
People gathered outside Picasso’s door at sunrise and waited for him to put out the cat. “Darn, more rain,” they said during the cat’s blue period.
Jay Gershwin lives in New York. You can get a free copy of his novel, Poor Man’s Autumn, through Amazon.
The Mad Colorist turned the sun green.
Earth reeled.
Gently, God said, “Change it back.”
“Never. I’m talented, see?”
“Fine. Your choice. You need a bigger canvas. My choice.”
The Mad Colorist fled from an exploding nebula, while God changed the sun back Himself.
“Talented? Ha. Flash in the pan.”
Brenda Anderson wrote this story.
The diner was a clean, well lighted place, open around-the-clock.
I was working the counter the night Edward Hopper stopped in.
He asked me why I wasn’t wearing a paper hat.
I shrugged and said, “The cook wears a hairnet.”
“Well, I’m giving you a hat,” he said, sketching feverishly.
Bob Thurber is the author of “Paperboy: A Dysfunctional Novel” and two collections of stories. A celebrated master of Flash and Micro Fiction,” his work has appeared in 60 anthologies, received dozens of awards, and been used in schools and colleges throughout the world. He resides in Massachusetts where, despite severe vision loss, he continues to write every day. Visit his website at BobThurber.net.
I sat at a picnic table in the woods, with my pen. I had hoped to honor you.
I would be masterful with my language, weave an imaginary tapestry. All would know of your glory,
had I succeeded. Instead,
I wrote this. My,
what a waste of such precious time.
James P. Spitznogle is an aspiring something from a mountainous somewhere.
Taking off her eponymous heels, Spanx, push-up bra, contoured make-up, doll-face lashes and hair extensions, she complained bitterly that he wasn’t honest with her, while, oblivious to irony, he admired his reflection in his favourite mirror, applauding his own insight on the importance of artistic integrity in the New West.
Kai Gaitley is an English student in Hilo on the Big Island of Hawaii who understands that an obvious reference is only obvious if you lived through Madchester too.