Flash the Court

Tag: Narrative Voice

  • “Self/Other” by Gargi Mehra

    “Self/Other” by Gargi Mehra

    In “Self/Other,” Gargi Mehra’s self-conscious and self-reflexive mother-narrator spies herself in a fellow soccer mom. She compares and contrasts, converses and reminisces, though eventually decides, “But our miens are the only factors in common.” What may be deemed an everyday exchange soon develops, through carefully chosen and depicted detail, into a glimpse of contemporary feminism, into a peek at the conflicted woman within.  —Court Harler

    At the football ground I run into my younger self – the one that bounces while she walks, and perhaps gyms while she sleeps. She’s leaner than I’d ever been, her calves smooth, biceps flexed, arms buffed, skin de-spotted, eyes fiery, chin firm, lips curled. She’s definitely not the early-twenties version of me that’s bitter and broken and teary-eyed and forever scouring the horizon for the male pillar that will bear the weight of her sculpted shoulder.

    We trade names, birthdates (but not years), family trees (but not mental disorders that may have passed down), and even veer into dating histories. But our miens are the only factors in common. I struggle to scrape out the little details – it’s like poking at the grooves between my premolars, hunting down that elusive morsel just to find something, anything, that we share.

    Then it turns out that even our mothers aren’t the same. She says her mom flatlined even before their wedding – only then do I look past those cheekbones that pierce the air, and glimpse the resolve etched into pimple scars just like mine.

    Our little girls trot up to meet us (look at us – aren’t we progressive by getting our daughters to football and not the usual dance-craft-cooking-painting kind of classes?), hers bereft of shin guards, hair tucked into a tight bun, while my little czarina has fixed a tiny pink bow to the scrunchie of her ponytail.

    The smartphone rings and other-me toddles off to bark into its electronic butt, the sunlight bouncing off her hair, feet springing off the turf, while I scour the landscape for a woman that misses perfection but mirrors me.

    GARGI MEHRA is a writer, a computer engineer, and a mother. She plays the piano, smashes her lessons on Duolingo, and thrives on word games including crosswords, Scrabble, and of course, Wordle. She lives with her husband and two children in Pune, India.

    Featured image by Alberto Frías, courtesy of Unsplash.

  • “Average French Bread with Two Eggs on the Plate without the Plate, on Horseback, Attempting to Sodomize a Crumb of Portuguese Bread” by Mikki Aronoff

    “Average French Bread with Two Eggs on the Plate without the Plate, on Horseback, Attempting to Sodomize a Crumb of Portuguese Bread” by Mikki Aronoff

    Mikki Aronoff’s new ekphrastic flash fiction, “Average French Bread with Two Eggs on the Plate without the Plate, on Horseback, Attempting to Sodomize a Crumb of Portuguese Bread,” is inspired by a painting of the same name. Herein, the salty house servant takes the sulky painter to task—for wasting her good food, for wasting her precious time—pitting the real against the surreal, resulting in the whimsical and the comical.  —Court Harler

    After a painting of that name by Salvador Dalí, 1932

    “That’s no crumb,” grumbles the artist’s servant. “The crust alone on that end piece would feed my family of seven for a week, and we’d throw the heel to the dog.” Juana’s pointing to where her patrón is stippling his brush, touching up the business end of a loaf of French bread that’s poking at the cut end of a loaf of Portuguese bread—the French bread erect, poised for pleasure, the Portuguese bracing for pain. Juana wipes her hands on her apron and shakes her head. The artist bows his, sets down his brush. He forgets that not everyone is rich, that loaves may need stretching.

    He has also forgotten how pleasurable dining once was. These days, he’s too distracted thinking about his wife’s lovers to remember to eat. When Juana forces the issue, shoving food under his nose, he plays like a child with what she puts on the table. Manchego dances with Cabrales. Bread has its way with bread. Napkins shield the loaves’ private parts, then are whipped off in a frenzied culinary tease. The artist stabs his sunny-side up eggs, smirking as he does so, waves his hands over double yolks like a priest, christening them with names like Wifey and Mother.

    “Hapless,” sighs Juana, as she doffs her Cordobés felt hat, passed down from her father, a dusty bent feather tucked in the band. She slings bucket and rags over her arm to waltz down the hall and clean the latrine. “Next time, try fruit!” she shouts over her shoulder, soapy water sloshing all over the tiles.

    MIKKI ARONOFF lives in New Mexico, where she writes tiny stories and advocates for animals. She has stories in Best Microfiction 2024/2025 and Best Small Fictions 2024 and upcoming in Best Small Fictions 2025.

    Featured image by Guillermo Mota, 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.

  • “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.

  • “Inconclusive” by Jack Smiles

    “Inconclusive” by Jack Smiles

    Flash fiction can (and will) run the gamut of human expression. In “Inconclusive,” Jack Smiles utilizes dry humor and sparse but surprising prose to keep the reader riveted until the very end. The overall mood is playfully noir—dark and twisty but also funny and, ultimately, hopeful.  —Court Harler

    My father always said he was a WASP, as in White Anglo-Saxon Protestant, or so I thought. He had no family anyone knew of. He disappeared when I was sixteen, literally, poof, gone. I was curious as hell about him. For my twenty-first birthday my girlfriend gave me a DNA test kit. I learned I was fifty percent Irish, which I expected from my mother’s side, but the other fifty percent? 

    “Inconclusive.”

    Inconclusive? I talked to cousins on my mother’s side who had done the test and none of them had ever heard of inconclusive. I called the 1-800 number, but ran out of patience after the fifth voice prompt. I sent emails, a web form and a letter, that’s right, paper, envelope and stamp. 

    I was seriously thinking about driving to Omaha and camping out in front of the office of the DNA company until someone gave me an answer. But it didn’t come to that. I got a text from a restricted number: 

    “Jane Reilly. Postum, New York. 611 Crandell Street. Inconclusive.”

    611 Crandell was a six-story apartment building. I didn’t have an apartment number. I stepped into the foyer. The door to No. 1 opened. If this was Jane, I hoped to God we weren’t related. She was gorgeous. Tall. Blood red hair. Enormous green eyes. I had red hair and green eyes, too, but nothing like hers.

    “Jane?”

    “Inconclusive. Come in.”

    We sat on stools at the counter bar in her kitchen. She poured wine.

    “Are you drawn to strange things or have odd habits?” she asked.

    I didn’t admit it, but yes. I liked aphids. I never knew why, but I collected them in a glass jar that I kept in the laundry room and watched their tiny black or green bodies shrivel as they died.

    “Do you sleep outside?” 

    Again I couldn’t admit it, but again she was right. I did sleep outside a lot, sometimes in a hole.

    “You are drawn to bright light, aren’t you, and deathly afraid of webs?”

    “Well, we’re all unique.”

    “Unique, indeed,” she said. “Follow me.”

    I’d follow her anywhere.

    We took an elevator to the roof.  She walked to the back edge of the building. We stood side by side looking down at an empty alleyway.

    “We have the same great grandfather,” she said. “He was from….”

    I didn’t hear where he was from. She’d pushed me off.

    So this is how I die, I thought as I fell, and I was so close to discovering my heritage. But my body orientated in midair. My fall slowed. I landed gently on my feet. I looked up. Jane gave me a come-here gesture. My arms went up from my sides. They quivered, faster and faster, making a buzzing sound. I lifted off the ground and flew, floated really, in a meandering pattern back to the roof.

    My father, I realized, really was a WASP.

    JACK SMILES is a former community newspaper feature writer collecting freelance rejections as a hobby in retirement.

    Featured image by Ali Bakhtiari, courtesy of Unsplash.

  • “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.