Tag: Flash

There is a storybook. All of us are in it.

Here are some tales.

Talking to Replika before police bust in

Summer wheeled into fall, everything off the rails. Dara bounced on her bed making wishes like a kid. She toppled mid-leap and poured half through the window. She swore it was an accident. Her dark hair smelled of freesia as I carried her cracked and screaming to the couch down the hall.

 https://fishbarrelreview.wordpress.com/2026/02/10/eirene-gentle/

https://www.frazzledlit.com/p/the-house-burnt-down-before-we-lit

The stringy air smelled of plum and snapped like gum. Arguments between Dad and Cat sharpened, switchblading even their silences. A pebble lodged in me, I felt the roundness as I did what I was told, mama making sure of it with a bony finger gun poking that part of my back that makes me freeze up. I hate that part though physiologically it doesn’t exist. ‘There’s nothing there,’ Cat said over and over, but Cat doesn’t understand the process of petrification.

https://www.frazzledlit.com/p/what-doesnt-make-you-stronger-kills

‘Why are you here?’ Hank asked because he liked questions she couldn’t answer. He wore a map of mistakes all over his body, from his little toe to the hairline scar by his right eye. ‘I can’t see with it anymore, he said, gesturing. She had to lean in to hear him. He smelled like something empty.

When Tino called in the sharks they were ready. They’d practiced so many times. The circle, the dip. Synchronized finning to the music of Bolero. Everyone watched the sharks so no one watched Tino. That’s how he released the swans who never stayed in order no matter how much they practiced. They flapped and snapped at whatever was closest so people scuttled like roaches and Tino was invisible as always.

https://www.bloodhoneylit.com/fiction/t-is-for-tino