by IB | Apr 25, 2025 | Featured, Flash Fiction
Gilded by a Thousand Sorrows She follows me, with the flutter of a duster, around the house. A bony question mark, hips grinding like a worn out piston working fur-lined slippers against the old oak boards. Lungs working in out, in out, chuff-chuff,...
by IB | Mar 23, 2025 | Featured, Flash Fiction
Fisherman After a long, dreich day in the firth – soaked gansey, torn gloves, a few sorry mackerel dangling from the lines – I hauled up on the beach. Thick smell of wrack. Bird cries. Night. I lit a kerosene lamp, stood at the sea’s edge,...
by Helen Ivory | Feb 7, 2025 | Featured, Flash Fiction
Flower tongue Daffodils hate being shoved in corners. When forced they emit a peculiar scent, part butter, part ulcer. I wear yellow shoes because I don’t like corners either but I am frequently left in them, and so I exude a peculiar smell. You...
by Helen Ivory | Feb 1, 2025 | Featured, Flash Fiction
Chiaroscuro A line of blue hills in the distance is contoured like a monumental sentence… – Ciaran Carson He began his day as he’d always done—by fetching up the milk from his doorstep, putting the kettle on and tumbling Darjeeling leaves...
by Helen Ivory | Nov 14, 2024 | Featured, Flash Fiction
The Hardee’s Coffee Club I’d seen them all humped over at a table slurping coffee in a mostly empty Hardee’s at 6:30 a.m. in my hometown when I ran in and ordered a bacon and egg biscuit with hash browns and a diet coke because the drive-thru had...
by Helen Ivory | Nov 6, 2024 | Featured, Flash Fiction
Gone Fishing I bounced past the other boy in the bedsit balancing on the balcony. I’d just woken up. He’d been pulling fishing line out of his mouth for sixty-three days now and the floats had just stopped. ‘Not sure how much more I’ve got!’ and...
