Flash the Court

Tag: Flash Fiction

  • “After the Movies” by Susan P. Morehouse

    “After the Movies” by Susan P. Morehouse

    “After the Movies” by Susan P. Morehouse is a Southern-style slice-of-life story—a quiet but eerie homage to mothers and daughters and strangers and kindness and “the road unspooling before us.” The slow-and-steady-wins-the-race progression of the narration propels readers toward the inevitable end of the story, which surprises and blesses and satisfies and perplexes.  —Court Harler

    We’re driving home from the movies the long way, past the Beckley work farm, and Mom and me are talking about Butch and Sundance, how you can’t outrun fate no matter what or how gorgeous you are. I’m riding shotgun looking for deer to jump out the corn because we can’t afford to wreck. Mia’s in the back humming “Raindrops Keep Fallin’ on My Head,” and Freddie’s kicking my seat. They were too young for the movie, but we couldn’t leave them home alone.

    Our headlights barely pierce the dark. I turn around about to smack Freddie when Mom starts in on how it’s a men-who-roll-out-the-road night, for sure. “Look there,” she says pointing at a red light moving through the dark before us. “It’s three men with maybe twelve teeth between them and dirty faces throwing the road off the back of their truck that only has one taillight. Who knows where this road’ll take us.” Mom likes making things up, but this story gets to me and I’m looking more at that taillight than for deer.

    Up ahead, the light grows larger. I think we should go back the other way, but now Mom’s stopping for a skinny man in the road holding a lantern. Just a man. The light casts a shadow over his face. “Need a ride, stranger?” Mom says. He slides in the front next to me.

    Now Mom drives squinting into the dark, as if there’s a glare, which there isn’t. No one peeps from the back seat.

    The man’s clothes are too big for him; jeans dried hard on a line, tied with rope at the waist, and a shirt with the cuffs past his wrists. He hugs the door like he’s ready to jump out. He doesn’t smell like anything.

    We drive and drive, the road unspooling before us as if we’ve never been on it before, as if we’re lost, as if people we’ve never met really are making this up as we go along.

    At the bus station, the man thanks Mom in a voice that sounds unused to talking. She hands him something from her purse, and says “God Bless,” which we don’t say at home.

    Before he slides out, he leans into me, his breath hot on my skin. He says, “Girl, you try and grow up kind like your mama,” which I never thought of before.

    SUSAN P. MOREHOUSE’s flash and micros have appeared in Hippocampus Magazine, New Ohio Review, The Dribble Drabble Review, and elsewhere. Her stories and essays have been nominated for Best American Essays, The Pushcart Prize, and Best Microfiction, and she recently was the third-place winner of CRAFT Literary Magazine’s First Chapters Contest.

    Featured image by Guilherme Stecanella, courtesy of Unsplash.

  • “Fifteen Shades of Pink” by Christine H. Chen

    “Fifteen Shades of Pink” by Christine H. Chen

    In this sweet satire of a flash fiction, Christine H. Chen asks her readers to rethink the color pink. Put yourself in the “Pink Panther heels” of the “Chinatown girls,” and then ask yourself why society asks young women, especially young women of color, to be so cutely monochromatic? Chen poses this serious question in a way that playfully demands an answer.  —Court Harler

    Chinatown girls dream of poster Barbie Pink in a mermaid emerald skirt who whirls on her Hot Pink seahorse with bobbing Baby Pink jellyfish, carpets of jade waves weaving on her Blush Pink seafloor; China Rose pearls caress her Salmon Pink skin, her chest twinkles with Flamingo Rose cockles oh how Chinatown girls pine for Barbie Pink’s blond curls, how Chinatown girls bleach their black hair to yellow goldfish, how they nibble on white rice to carve curves, paint eyelids and cheeks Barbie Pink, line lips Neon Pink, how they squeal oh-my-god to each other when they wear tiaras of Crêpe Pink cloudy beads with plastic Piggy Pink peonies, how they strut imaginary catwalks on Pink Panther heels, Peach Pink conch and Punch Pink jingle shells jiggle on bony hips, their footprints like Ballet Slipper Pink limpets clinging to evanescent TikTok dreams wind blowing on sand, oh how Chinatown girls dream of Barbie Pink who gazes on from her Pastel Pink poster until paper turns to puffs of planet dust.

    CHRISTINE H. CHEN was born in Hong Kong and grew up in Madagascar before settling in Boston where she worked as a research chemist. Her fiction has appeared in CRAFT, SmokeLong Quarterly, Space and Time Magazine, as well as the Best Microfiction and Best Small Fictions anthologies.

    Featured image by Girl with red hat, courtesy of Unsplash.

  • “House Rules” by Jeff Harvey

    “House Rules” by Jeff Harvey

    Some of the best flash fiction is haunted flash fiction. “House Rules” by Jeff Harvey is shadowed by the twin spectres of childhood abandonment and abuse. The piece is driven by a coolly deceptive voice that descends from the darkness; the tone hits as supernaturally chilling, but the horrifying situation itself: all too devastatingly real.  —Court Harler

    Keep your shit locked up. Can’t trust nobody around here. Miss Kendall is okay, but she’ll hit you sometimes after she’s had too many beers. And don’t fucking cry, you’ll get it worse from the others, especially Wayne; stay away from him. Dinner always at six-thirty. Tomorrow’s Saturday so after cleaning the house and laundry, we might get to see a movie on a VHS player. Last week we watched The Breakfast Club. It was cool but nobody famous. After the movie we got lemon cookies and raspberry Kool-Aid. Miss Kendall was happy about something; I’d never seen her smile before. I got some oxy that’ll help ease the pain if you want some. Only ten bucks. And don’t ever ask about going home. That place doesn’t exist for kids like us. Only another house to bide our time.

    JEFF HARVEY lives in Southern California and edits Gooseberry Pie Lit Magazine. His fiction has been published recently by Ghost Parachute, Your Impossible Voice, and Bending Genres. His work has been nominated for Best Microfiction.

    Featured image by Nathan Wright, courtesy of Unsplash.

  • “Tar Pits” by Meg Pokrass

    “Tar Pits” by Meg Pokrass

    In “Tar Pits,” award-winning flash-fictionist Meg Pokrass takes us on a bittersweet ride in a pink convertible —only to discover that fame, like any other earthly accolade, can sink you, and your sister’s “skinny smile,” to the lowest depths. “Tar Pits” is a dexterous, provocative exploration of what it means to be a woman in the world today.  —Court Harler

    First time my big sister took me to the La Brea Tar Pits, we met an out-of-work actor wearing a wilted expression. “You’re my hope,” he said, as if he were sinking. She beamed him her smile, autograph pen in hand. “Don’t give up on your dream, my friend,” she signed, feeling funny for being spotted at the grave of the La Brea Woman’s skeleton.

    Wrapped in faded denim, my big sister’s middle-of-the-night skeleton drove us again to the tar pits. She was pretty, nobody knew she was funny. “You locked in the part,” said her agent, “because of that skinny smile.” I imagined him bowing to kiss her hand but accidentally pinching her bottom. She was soaring over pitch-black places where other actresses were sinking.

    “She was eighteen years old when she died there, asphyxiated while sinking,” she explained, nibbling carrots. Deep in her bathtub, I’d stare at my twelve-year-old skeleton. I wanted to tell her it was a bad idea to revisit those tar pits. “I can feel you wrinkling!” she’d say, rushing in, grabbing my hand, pulling me out. “I’m your La Brea Woman,” I’d sing, wanting to be funny. 

    “When playing a role, an actress is no longer a skeleton,” she said. That day her eyes were bloodshot and we were eating lettuce straight from the bag. When she got bad news after a big audition, I held her hand. The two of us worked up our skinny smiles in the mirror before hopping into her pink convertible. “You used to be funny, kiddo,” she said, as if I were the one who was sinking.

    Not every girl has a sister who haunts old tar pits, I told myself. Now thirty, her agent dropped her and she was sleeping. I was a teenager with undeveloped features, beginning acting lessons. “Disappearing is recommended if it keeps you famous,” she’d say in her pj’s, popping a NoDoz before falling back asleep again.

    No longer a skeleton, she was eating everything she wanted, and it was almost funny. “Let’s binge on donuts,” she’d suggest, pulling me by the hand. One time we ordered twenty maple donuts at Zucker’s, our stomachs rising and sinking. “Relying on anyone,” she warned me, “is dying in a tar pit.” 

    Now I’m driving Hollywood Boulevard in my sister’s car, proud of my skeleton. When I find myself wallowing in memories, I stop for donuts or drive past those tar pits. She left me her pink convertible, and with my hands on the steering wheel, I feel myself rising.

    MEG POKRASS is the author of First Law of Holes: New and Selected Stories (Dzanc Books, 2024) plus eight previous collections of flash fiction and two novellas-in-flash.

    Featured image by Cash Macanaya, courtesy of Unsplash.