A tough-looking woman watched Louise step to the coffee urn to draw a mug of strong midnight brew. It was Louise’s first night at the rest home. The woman wore the same prim uniform as Louise, but she wore it differently, unbuttoned to the top of her brassiere.   …

  You’re ten. You don’t remember your ma—she died birthing you. Your pa is a gunsmith and the part-time sheriff of a town too small to afford a professional lawman. Four drifters ride into town and leave Pa sprawled in the sun-baked dirt of Main Street, life pulsing out of …

  The black crayon—the one School Resources Officer Gary swore looked like a gun (“or maybe a knife…definitely something!”)—rolls out of Melvin Jenkins’s limp hand. It comes to a stop under the water fountain outside Miss Beverly’s classroom. Blood, splashed across white porcelain fountain, drips down. Droplets splatter against a …

  Fireworks skitter, spitting sparks down the sidewalk.  The sky fills with flowers burning out of existence as they burst and bloom.  Under the blossoms, Elli sits on her porch watching Betsy Russell dance.    Last week, Betsy went wandering the woods.  She carried a machine gun and spitting shark …

  Agora’s botched exposé on Sandda City’s raging coal-burning fissures packed an emphatic moral: don’t fuck with the mayor. His hack job ripped her from the pedestal she’d occupied as an Mlog darling. Discredited and desperate, she’d foolishly accepted a hooded city official’s offer of dirt on the corrupt leader. …

Winner of the 2022 Derringer Award for Best Flash Fiction     “You smell anything funny?” Angelo asked. Rosa, hard at work with her whetstone, said, “No. Hold it tighter, okay?” He adjusted his grip on the sword. It was braced against the tabletop, gleaming in the yellow lamplight as …

  Reijiro had wanted to die. Though he had discovered the greatest pleasure in fishing, it was not what he felt he had been created to do. His soul was restless. He’d already established a legendary status, but it did little to satisfy his ennui. His name had been recited …

  Mira screamed down the interstate in her beat up Chevy, her sister Zoe riding shotgun. Without any warning, Zoe turned toward the passenger-side window, lifted up her T-shirt, and flashed the driver of the eighteen wheeler in the next lane over. “Woooo!” The trucker showed his appreciation with two …

  Somewhere near Morgantown, West Virginia December 13, 1915   Ian sat behind the wheel of his Model T pickup, awakening from a brief sleep.  A steady flow of blood ran from his nose, down his forehead, and onto his bowler hat.  Nervously, he observed his surroundings and went over …

  I awoke to the sound of my phone vibrating on the bedside table accompanied by that godawful ringtone I still haven’t gotten round to changing. A cacophony that dragged me bleary-eyed into yet another morning. “Hello?” I said, my voice thick and gravelly, a reminder – along with the …