Flash the Court

send me your irreverence

  • “Then Came Funboy” by Sam Berman

    “Then Came Funboy” by Sam Berman

    A little horror of a dream for Halloween is Sam Berman’s “Then Came Funboy.” But it’s not horror, exactly. And it’s not just a dream. Indeed, it’s a love story, of sorts, with no end in sight, much like the endless reverberations of a supposedly safe ship smashing again and again against the indomitable iceberg of history and lore, of breath and myth.  —Court Harler

    A dream I often have.

    Which I had again just last night.

    Is that I am on the iceberg right as the RMS Titanic approaches and becomes brilliant through the low fog. It’s moving slow but also fast. And I jump and wave. I yell. Loudly. I smash my hands together the way babies do when they build things. But. Of course––being a dream and all––the ship stays resolute. Stays coming. Keeps on me. And soon the hull is well over my head. And try as I might—and I do try, as best I dream-can to push the ship back out to a safer part of the Atlantic—my wrists just break. Just snap. Just explode, actually. Against the hull. I yelp. While the children up on the standing deck begin to hang themselves over the railing, showing me pictures on their cellphones of my body, and pictures of some family members I no longer mess with too much, and then they spit on my head, and call me a kike, and shoot Nerf guns with party blood, set on the most extreme power setting, right at me. And there are some lanterns in the dream. And screaming. And everyone’s breath looks like bulls’ breath when there’s screaming. Which is when I wake up, usually. A lot of the time. I wake up right then.

    Yeah.

    And.

    The dream I have the second most.

    My Darling.

    Is that I turn around in the bakery.

    And come back.

    And that I don’t do those, that, the, of course the thing I have already already done.

    SAM BERMAN is a short story writer living in Boise, Idaho.

    Featured image by Art Institute of Chicago, courtesy of Unsplash.

  • “Tufts” by Miriam Mandel Levi

    “Tufts” by Miriam Mandel Levi

    “Tufts” by Miriam Mandel Levi is a ghost story of a flash fiction. You’ll sense a weird chill, and not quite know why. Maybe it’s the way the author captures the ineffable, or the sublime. Or maybe it’s the way the narrator suffers, so alone. Either way, you’ll feel the season’s fear: solitary rambles, falling leaves, peripheral apparitions.  —Court Harler

    A piece protrudes behind my ear, at my waist, so I adjust my hat, tuck in my shirt. You wouldn’t believe how many times I go to the bathroom to check, and it’s a rare bathroom these days that has a full-length mirror.

    Once, in a conversation with a guy at a work, I noticed a piece jutting from my shoulder. I brushed it off with a toss of my hair as if it were a flake of dandruff. Another time, at a bar with friends, I found a few pieces at my feet, and kicked them out of sight. What was that? someone asked. Straw, I think, I said. Maybe by day the bar is a barn and at night they delete the n. They laughed. It takes so little to throw people off your scent.

    In the past, I worried about my dusty, musty scent. Avoided confined spaces, overdid the perfume. I made my movements small and circumscribed so I wouldn’t crackle. Mercifully and sadly, not a single person has ever noticed or let on that they know. True I hid, but only in order to be found.

    My mother used to admonish, Stay out of the wind, remember a cow could take a chunk out of you, don’t get too close to a fire. Of course I know how sorrily and abruptly it could end for me. But after all these years of concealment, I can’t say I’d miss it: life, or loneliness, I mean.

    Over the years, I have searched for someone like me. Looked for a lightness of step, listened for a rustle. I’ve come across people stuffed with cotton batting, wool, feathers, foam, even ball bearings—all trying to pass themselves off as flesh and blood, as if it were some standard of normalcy.

    Sometimes I imagine tearing off my clothes, grabbing tufts from my head and belly, and tossing them into the air like dry fall leaves. You see! I’d shout at no one, until my voice grew hoarse and my clothes sagged and the wind whipped up the long crisp strands and scattered them.

    MIRIAM MANDEL LEVI is a retired speech-language pathologist turned writer and editor. Her work has appeared most recently in JMWW, Flash Frog, The Forge, Under the Gum Tree, River Teeth, and Bending Genres. She is an editor at Under the Sun: A Journal of Creative Nonfiction.

    Featured image by Nellie Adamyan, courtesy of Unsplash.

  • “Family Medical History” by Maggie Russell

    “Family Medical History” by Maggie Russell

    Health is a heritage we are bequeathed without our consent. Call it DNA, or call it destiny—we are more like our parents than we may care to admit. But “care” is the key term here: how we care for ourselves, how we care for one another. In her flash creative nonfiction essay simply entitled “Family Medical History,” Maggie Russell explores the confounding complexity of the bodies we are given.  —Court Harler

    You never told us the proper names for your diseases. Never called your arthritis by its full name, ankylosing spondylitis. You never used your full name either, the J stood alone in J. Robert.

    My stomach issue was introduced at seventeen. Too young for an ulcer, you told me hopefully, only to be crushed at the diagnosis. With my prescription in hand a litany of worry crossed your face. Your tone was no different from how you spoke of your unliked uncle, the one who drove Grandma to our house for Easter. His visit cut short whenever he mentioned the guys he knew, who fixed problems.

    You hoped for the same: my ulcer and your ulcerative colitis to stay distantly related.

    As to all things undigestible, there was no debate my genes were yours. All your other kids had tough marble façades that reflected yours. Yet they could drink a bucket of queso, but not us. We can’t trifle with lactose, you said, when I called you about my self-inflicted wound rendered from cheesy alfredo. It was the result of suddenly stopping veganism at a Macaroni Grill dinner, with the boyfriend you were never sure about.

    We were made of squishier stuff than the others. We, the wholehearted ones, saw kin in everything. You, wet-eyed at the kids washing windshields while we were stuck in Bronx traffic. Me, pleading to save the small creature on the side of the road, my teary face smearing the inside of the window. Again.

    I can’t remember when the back pain began, an uprising of aching bones. Mine was at twenty-four. Would you have known it would turn, as yours did? You could smell trouble, truffle-sniff it in the air. In Rome once, I remember you shushed us past the fountain, quickly away from a growing crowd. We cobblestumbled from the cathedral up to an arched bridge. You’d heard the words of rapidly rowdier protesters and caught in the crowd’s grumbling what we couldn’t comprehend: a full-body riot.

    We heard nothing of your diagnoses, only the unreadable groans. Only pills rattling in bottles like shoes on ancient streets.

    I need those names now, Poppa, to answer this rheumatological rampage. I need to fill in these blanks on family diseases.

    MAGGIE RUSSELL is an essayist and poet who writes professionally about law. Raised by the woods in Connecticut, she now lives in Nashville where she volunteers with prison poetry projects. Maggie’s work has appeared in January House, Last Leaves, and the anthology If You Ever.

    Featured image by Jose Arias, courtesy of Unsplash.

  • “In bed” by JR Walsh

    “In bed” by JR Walsh

    “In bed” by JR Walsh is a dialogue-driven flash fiction infused with subtext. Picture it: two lovers bedding down for the night, unable to resist talk of the spiritual, the existential, and the psychological, despite their mutual exhaustion. And yet—the sensual, too, simmers just below the surface of their imbricated, complex conversation.  —Court Harler

    One said, Focusing on the enemy is the enemy of true faith.

    The other said, Oh, here we go.

    One said, No, I’m serious.

    The other said, I am sure you are.

    One said, Religion, love.

    The other said, Not tonight, love. I’m not focusing on nothing.

    One said, Years of my life were stolen by religion.

    The other said, Then by using your logic, you shouldn’t focus on it.

    One said, That may be true.

    The other said, Good, let’s talk about anything else.

    One said, But religion is: What. You. Are. Into. It’s your passion.

    The other said, I believe in God.

    One said, And I want you to have your faith.

    The other said, Good, because I’ve got a day off tomorrow and I have faith we won’t do this tomorrow.

    One said nothing.

    The other said, Unless you want to make an enemy.

    One said nothing again.

    The other said, Were you trying to make a point for my benefit?

    One said, I seem to be lacking focus.

    The other said, That is a side effect of your medicine.

    One said, I stopped taking that weeks ago.

    The other said, Why?

    The other also said, Why didn’t you tell me?

    One said, You’d get mad, I figured.

    The other said, You remember what happened last time.

    One said, My memory is fine. Sadly effective.

    The other said, I have wobbly faith that you’ll tell me when you quit your meds.

    One said, I quit my meds.

    The other said, Okay.

    One said, I’m trying to say I think I have strong faith in you….

    The other said, But?

    One said, …but I think I also need to take you for granted.

    After a long pause the other said, Like you’re an agnostic about love.

    One said, Yes?

    Anybody would’ve said, Explain.

    One said, Love, like God, might not exist, but if it does, I have it for you.

    The other said, I can live with that.

    After a long pause one said, Really?

    The other said, No, not at all. I was just hoping you’d fall asleep if I said that.

    The other also said, This conversation is the enemy of sleep.

    One said nothing some more.

    The other said nothing for the first time.

    They said I love you at the same time.

    They said nothing together for a long time.

    JR WALSH teaches creative writing at State University of New York at Oswego. He is the online editor for The Citron Review. His writing is found in beloved publications such as The Greensboro Review, New World Writing, Switch, Litro, The Hong Kong Review, FRiGG, BULL, HAD, Fractured, Taco Bell Quarterly, and Esquire.

    Featured image by zero take, courtesy of Unsplash.

  • “What It Takes, What It Gives” by Cheryl Pappas

    “What It Takes, What It Gives” by Cheryl Pappas

    “What It Takes, What It Gives” by Cheryl Pappas is a prose poem, an ekphrasis, and a eulogy. Impressions of life; remainders of death. The bold hues and shapes taken from Lee Krasner’s 1971 Palingenesis are reawakened in words: a passing of souls from paint to page.  —Court Harler

    After Lee Krasner, Palingenesis

    My soul is a splendid, manufactured thing,

    creaking cranes and wrecking balls—

    the noise keeps me up at night.

    Hard edges smoothed with berry cream, mixed with hard-earned blood. Generations get rebirthed when bodies from my past crush into molten ash.

    I can smell the talcum powder from here.

    Multitudinous shapes linger on my tongue (how insensate I am depends wholly on pressing tasks at hand): black patent leather shoes, jackets used for blankets during the war, a hypodermic needle, a vinyl record, a candle.

    Holiness is a crowd of color, clanking in greens and pitched pinks, barely contained, but held. I spin out new levels like fans twirling fast back into the bowels of earth.

    I am my brother

    I am my father

    I am my mother

    They are dead.

    I am food

    Let it begin.

    CHERYL PAPPAS is the author of the flash fiction collection The Clarity of Hunger, published by word west press (2021). Her work has appeared in swamp pink, Fractured Lit, Wigleaf, Hayden’s Ferry Review, SmokeLong Quarterly, The Chattahoochee Review, and elsewhere. She is a 2023 MacDowell Fellow.

    Featured image by Michael Hamments, courtesy of Unsplash.

  • “Farmed Out” by Katrina Irene Gould

    “Farmed Out” by Katrina Irene Gould

    Ever wonder about the person who grows “your potatoes and greens”? How they spend their days and cold-cold nights? How they rise “earlier even than the crows” to a “black sky” to plant and harvest and plant and harvest in a never-ending cycle of work and work and more hard work? Katrina Irene Gould provides a glimpse of the grower’s life in her new prose poem, “Farmed Out.” What’s “love” got to do with it? the speaker wants to know.  —Court Harler

    Soft-gray dreams give way to a black sky, pinprick stars, a new moon. Long johns, scratchy wool socks, boots she’s learned to upend and shake after that one squishy-mouse time—never again, thankyouverymuch. The iris bulbs in the mudroom fail to cheer her. They wait, as she does, gnarled and dirty, for when the sun will unfurl their impossible, velvety, muzzle-soft petals.

    You’d like to think the hush of the barely-morning still shakes awe into her, but today the barnyard is a frozen sea, her careful steps—she’s awake earlier even than the crows—compelled by habit and obligation. So what if your potatoes and greens weren’t harvested with love most days? Who else do we ask to love their work so much that in the consuming of it, you feel their care? That can be your dream: that in this coal-black morning, a person has risen to make you feel loved.

    KATRINA IRENE GOULD has spent thirty fulfilling years counseling in Portland, Oregon. ​Her writing ​has appeared in Dorothy Parker’s Ashes, The Gilded Weathervane, HerStry, Glacial Hills Review, Mukoli, Literally Stories, and others. Gould examines our knotty experiences in hopes of helping us all to hold our struggles more lightly.

    Featured image by Sonny Mauricio, courtesy of Unsplash.

  • “It Was the First Day of Fall When the Sumo Left the Dohyō…” by Mathieu Cailler

    “It Was the First Day of Fall When the Sumo Left the Dohyō…” by Mathieu Cailler

    Fall is a time for favorites: your favorite cozy sweater, your favorite apple, your favorite cat named for your “favorite singer.” As the seasons shift, so too, do you. In this time of transition, read and reflect upon “It Was the First Day of Fall When the Sumo Left the Dohyō…” by Mathieu Cailler, a flash fiction just in time for the autumnal vibe.  —Court Harler

    …and championships and cultural nobility behind. He changed into a Thelonious Monk T-shirt and gray slacks, leaving his mawashi in the changing room at the Gap. He traded in his high-calorie chanko nabe for a crisp Fuji apple at the farmers’ market and downed a glass of buttery chardonnay at the wine bar across town. He abandoned the forceful moves of sumo—yori-kiri, oshi-dashi, uwate-nage—for ballet lessons on pas de bourrée, rond de jambe, and soubresaut. He stopped by a pet store and adopted a cat, which he named Ella, after his favorite singer. He stroked her coat and listened to her purr as he strolled home.

    Maybe the oak tree in his yard had shed some of its leaves. Maybe Ella would like to nest atop them. Maybe he could take pictures of her and post them to Instagram, or maybe instead he’d simply lie down beside her in the soft autumn foliage.

    MATHIEU CAILLER is the author of seven books. His work has appeared in over 150 publications, including Wigleaf, The Saturday Evening Post, and the Los Angeles Times. He is the winner of a Pushcart Prize; a Readers’ Favorite award; and the Paris, Los Angeles, and New England Book Festival prizes.

    Featured image by Aaron Burden, courtesy of Unsplash.

  • “Brief Lives of Garden Insects” by Frances Gapper

    “Brief Lives of Garden Insects” by Frances Gapper

    In “Brief Lives of Garden Insects” by Frances Gapper, bugs are sexy. And fascinating. From “The Dreadfuls” to the “Best in Show,” these miniature, pesky creatures flash in to and out of their own lives. In each numbered segment, they posit quirky but poignant questions about friendship, courtship, and partnership.  —Court Harler

    1

    Jane’s partner Maria’s fifty viviparous adult daughters, aka The Dreadfuls, are visiting in midsummer; staying aeons. Maria says, ‘Spit for luck!’ and Jane gobs up nectar. It’s her own fault for having opted to remain wingless, sans alpha female equipment.

    The Dreadfuls pierce leaves and suck sap, demolish pies, colonise hooks and pegs, flutter-float while eyeing Jane. And give birth. Happening once upon a Dreadful squatting to extrude, Jane detoured around her, pink but smiling.

    After the visit, Maria lies on her back and waves her legs in the air. Grateful for Jane’s billion cups of green tea: ‘I owe you,’ she says.

    Jane’s ex-loves forged independent lives but later grew desperate. She more cautiously chose to attach herself to a thriving family. Or horde, scourge, intrusion. Whatever.

    2

    Jane loves one of her co-grandkids, Jimmie. Anxious re his weakling status – butt of sidebites, target of gunk – she cherished him. Tickled his tum and endured his earwig jokes, beetle jokes, jokes about ants, thrip jokes.

    But getting smart and ignorant, he joined the superhighway. She chased after him: ‘Jimmie-Jim, give me a kiss?’

    ‘Fuck off, Nanny.’ He really said that. And she laughed.

    3

    The way Ant Guy (‘Call me Gorge.’) used to milk Jane, it felt like being given a lovely massage. ‘You’re my favourite cow,’ he’d say. ‘Best in Show. Awarded a rosette.’

    They had a friends-with-benefits relationship. When Jane was being bugged by a predatory midge, Ant Guy zapped it.

    But one day: ‘Where’s Gorge?’

    ‘Deleted. Got too sociable with the livestock.’

    Farm life continues. They ant-handle her, she excretes the honeydew, they cart it off.

    FRANCES GAPPER’s work has been published in four Best Microfiction anthologies and lit mags including trampset, Splonk, Wigleaf, The Forge, Atlas and Alice, 100 word story, Literary Namjooning, and Trash Cat. She lives in the UK’s Black Country region.

    Featured image by Phil Mono, courtesy of Unsplash.

  • “Adrift” by Tracie Adams

    “Adrift” by Tracie Adams

    September is the season of gentle remembrance. Summer’s over and school’s back in session. Elementary or university, our children resume their inexorable paths toward more independence and, consequently, more distance, from us, their parents. In “Adrift,” Tracie Adams captures moments anew: what would we give to relive each (im)perfect family memory, just one last time?  —Court Harler

    Maybe it was the worst of times on that houseboat. The air conditioning was broken, forcing us to retreat to the sundeck to escape the sweltering heat of the living room, an Easy-Bake Oven that smelled like a urinal cake. Maybe it was the best of times, the perfect ending to a vacation that began at a waterpark resort in Phoenix, where my husband and I watched our teens swoosh through slides, shouting this is awesome!

    Maybe it was awesome. Or maybe it was another unblemished day soon to disappear as they left for college, marriage, their own lives. Like the day we explored a graveyard in a ghost town called Tombstone, its markers straight out of an old Western. Or when we drove ATVs through desert sunsets melting over Sedona’s red rocks, etching our names in stone, eating pizza under stars. Or when we held our breath in awe at the Grand Canyon’s south rim stretching as wide as a mother’s arms.

    Maybe the man who gave us directions to the marina at Lake Mead wasn’t a liar. Or maybe he was the best kind—don’t bring anything, we’ve got it all—which turned out to be hot dogs, Pop-Tarts, and energy drinks. The camp store shelves were bare. For days, we floated under a Nevada sun, drinking Red Bulls in a rooftop hot tub, where our words were movie lines and our jokes secrets shared with the galaxies.

    Maybe the day we spent slithering through red mud at Slide Rock Park was delightful. But maybe it’s the suffering—the absences, the gaps—that forged us in a crucible and gifted us our golden memories. Maybe years later when I say Arizona trip, we’ll all burst into stories and laughter. Magic will hang like a velvet curtain between us and the world.

    Maybe the days we had so little were the times we had the most. Perhaps our true strength emerged in our weakest moments, struggling, burning like chaff, devouring Pop-Tarts in a floating gas station bathroom.

    Maybe it was never about the perfectly choreographed moments like birthday parties, Christmas lights, or Thanksgiving tables. Maybe it’s the laughter echoing over the water, stars shining in bright eyes, and the stories that still float between us like driftwood.

    TRACIE ADAMS is the author of Our Lives in Pieces. Her work has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, longlisted for Wigleaf Top 50, and published widely in literary magazines, including SoFloPoJo, Fictive Dream, Cleaver Magazine, TRASH CAT LIT, and others. Follow her on Twitter @1funnyfarmAdams.

    Featured image by Dulcey Lima, courtesy of Unsplash.

  • “Naked Babies” by Julia Strayer

    “Naked Babies” by Julia Strayer

    In “Naked Babies,” Julia Strayer reexamines the institutions of motherhood and womanhood. The narrator’s voice drips with delusion and sarcasm, but she’s justified in her bold assessment of “mostly women” and “mostly men” who inhabit the world without thinking, without seeing. Flash work embodies the surreal with true verve, and this piece is no exception.  —Court Harler

    Strangers, mostly women, ask if I give the babies names. I stare unblinking and tell the people out loud in my head that they’re stupid for asking. I don’t have time for small talk, though I’m quite skilled at it.

    I ferry a pile of naked baby dolls in the trunk of my ’68 Valiant because I don’t have a station wagon. I unload them upside down by the legs, and I’ve mastered the ability to carry four in one hand at one time, plus my handbag. It’s quite something with all their hair hanging down. I used to cut my dolls’ hair when I was a kid, but I don’t do that anymore.

    I sometimes cut my own hair, and when the scissors don’t behave themselves in the back, I button my hair in a barrette and I don’t look. What I can’t see isn’t important enough for me to worry about.

    When I was little, I wore a scooter helmet inside the house even though I didn’t own a scooter. I found the helmet in the trash out back of Pancake Willy’s on my way home from school. I never found a scooter someone was willing to throw away. If I had, I might have left home forever. I pretended the helmet was an invisibility shield and, when my mother said I was stupid, or ugly, or weird, or that no one would marry me when I grew up, I couldn’t hear her.

    That’s why I practice with the babies, and, except for the naked, upside-down thing, I’m a good mother to them. I know they’re not real. They won’t need helmets if I mess up and become my mother.

    Some strangers don’t talk to me at all. Mostly men. I think it’s my hair. That’s okay. It’s better that way. No chance of having real babies. I can’t risk it.

    JULIA STRAYER has stories in Glimmer Train, Kenyon Review Online, The Cincinnati Review, Jellyfish Review, Flash Frog, HAD, Fractured Lit, Okay Donkey, and others, including The Wigleaf Top 50 and The Best Small Fictions. She’s a submissions editor at SmokeLong Quarterly and teaches creative writing at New York University.

    Featured image by Edz Norton, courtesy of Unsplash.