Flash the Court

Tag: Speculative Flash Fiction

  • “Mehmed’s Fever” by Râna Campbell

    “Mehmed’s Fever” by Râna Campbell

    “Mehmed’s Fever” by Râna Campbell is a hybrid work of speculative historical flash fiction and just a hint of prose poetry. Elevated language intensifies the regal setting of the Third Courtyard, while the symbolic and mythic allure of the peacock entrances both the eye and the imagination. “What one sees is what one has chosen,” so says the sage.  —Court Harler

    Sunrise alighted on the city’s minarets and began seeping through its bazaars like pomegranate molasses. Constantinople had been seized over twenty years ago, and Fâtih Sultan Mehmed strolled the New Palace’s Third Courtyard secure in Islambol’s inviolability.

    A rosebush stirred in the sultan’s peripheral vision. As he turned, a peacock emerged, its tail fanning out into a hundred iridescent eyes. Together they shimmered like the depthless night sky, beckoning Mehmed forward. He raised the brocaded edges of his emerald kaftan, the bejeweled silk garment refracting rays of amber, and crouched.

    What is it you show me?

    “There was a time when man and beast and the light of Mohammed were as one,” chimed a voice as familiar as the muezzin’s call to prayer. The peacock cracked open, birthing Akshemseddin’s white-bearded figure, his turban a resplendent halo.

    “Hodja Efendi, am I dreaming?” Mehmed asked his long-deceased Sufi mentor.

    “Is not life but a dream, Conqueror, in the watchful eye of Allah’s mind?”

    Day broke. The fragrant steam of spiced sahlep drifted over from the kitchens by the Second Courtyard. A bead of sweat escaped Mehmed’s turban. Then another. Where the droplets met the arid soil, pools of indigo and turquoise formed and sprouted peacock feathers. He steadied himself, rose, then moved to splash moon-chilled water on his face from the garden’s central pond.

    Akshemseddin followed, a trail of feathers blooming in his wake.

    “The peacock, too, watches…some see in its gaze the promise of paradise, others eternal disgrace. What one sees is what one has chosen. But vanity can blind a man.”

    “Have I been vain, Hodjam?”

    But Akshemseddin was gone, and the feathers in the grass encircled and overtook Mehmed’s limbs like vines, until he stood,

    himself a peacock,

    looking out at his sprawling empire

    from behind a dewy rosebush.

    RÂNA CAMPBELL is a damn good editor and a prize-winning writer of flash and microfiction, along with the occasional poem. Her work has appeared, among others, in Intrepidus Ink, God’s Cruel Joke, and Humphrey Magazine. For general inquiries and editing services rendered with love, Râna can be reached at yourfinaldraftediting@gmail.com.

    Featured image by Mohnish Landge, courtesy of Unsplash.

  • “Croc Mother” by Rebecca Klassen

    “Croc Mother” by Rebecca Klassen

    “Croc Mother” by Rebecca Klassen is an edge-of-your-seat read, a speculative microfiction infused with danger from the opening sentence. But the writer doesn’t rely on mere suspense—instead, she delves immediately into the heart of the matter, yet without overexplaining the issue. Through subtext, the microstory’s narrative tension is expertly, terrifyingly, suspended in time.  —Court Harler

    When I was six, I jumped into the crocodile enclosure, compass-point snouts rotating on the water towards me. Mum ran to fetch Dad who I’d last seen hogging a swing in the playground. Not swinging, just scrolling as aggrieved children floated out of swatting distance, like they sensed the things he’d done, things that I never told my nosey teachers and neighbours about, or that social worker who kept steering everything back to Dad whenever I tried to talk about Mum. But the mother croc at the water’s edge was a fantastic listener, smaller than the others who were gliding closer as the zoo goers screamed and filmed me on phones. I told the mother croc about Mum’s delicious meatballs, funny stories about ghosts, feeding the ducks together, and the great raspberries she blew, and how all of it was the best, and she was the best but also the worst.

    Mum came back with Dad as zookeepers sprinted with crackly walkie-talkies, and Dad watched me with folded trunk-arms and that look, and Mum stood behind him with that helplessness that cancelled out the meatballs, stories, ducks, and raspberries. I prised open the mother croc’s jaws and climbed inside her gaping mouth and sat on her spongy tongue. The other crocodiles crawled out of the water towards us as I yanked down on her top teeth, ordering her to close her mouth to protect me, to help me, to just do something.

    REBECCA KLASSEN is co-editor of The Phare and a Best of the Net nominee from Gloucestershire, England. She won the London Independent Story Prize and was shortlisted for the Bridport Prize and Alpine Fellowship. Her stories have featured in Fictive Dream, Mslexia, Flash Frontier, Scribeworth, and New Flash Fiction Review.

    Featured image by Dan Meyers, courtesy of Unsplash.

  • “Bobcat Trail” by Swetha Amit

    “Bobcat Trail” by Swetha Amit

    In “Bobcat Trail” by Swetha Amit, readers meet two characters in the process of radical change. The young narrator is about to leave for college, while the narrator’s unhappy mother begins a very different type of personal transformation. Amit imbues this speculative fiction with precise, unforgettable imagery and impeccable subtext.  —Court Harler

    After Dad abandoned us for another woman, Ma felt more comfortable in the garden than in the house. Beneath the starless sky, on the damp earth, nestled between the rustling bushes and the oleander tree. I would sometimes see her crouching. Her knees close to her chest, her brown eyes tracking the movements of a finch or a squirrel with uncanny stillness. One afternoon, the summer before I left for college, I found her almost motionless near the oleander tree. Her silhouette seemed to shimmer in the heat. Her floral-patterned sundress appeared to melt in the dazzling sunlight. Her soft velvet hands were now elongated and curved into claws that clutched the murky brown mud. A short bobbed tail twitched and brushed against her ankles.

    “Ma?” I gasped.

    She slowly turned her head to look at me. Her warm brown eyes were now wild, with golden irises and vertically slit pupils. The bridge of her nose protruded, and long whiskers grew from it. Her face was sharpened and framed by tufted ears. A low guttural chuff escaped her throat instead of the human words that included my name and insults hurled at Dad over the phone. Words that pierced my gut and made me retreat into the solitude of books and art. For a moment, we held eye contact. There was no fear or regret in those eyes—just a cold, steely look.

    A squirrel emerged from the bushes looking for fruit. With a quick leap, she gave chase. I watched her move along the fence with a grace that Ma’s sluggish body had forgotten when she’d feast on Oreo cookies relentlessly or wipe out tubs of ice cream, weeks after Dad left. I watched her now partly in awe, partly anxious, wondering if fatigue would catch up with her aging body and she’d be found breathless, clutching her chest. Like the time she attempted a power yoga session while watching a video, only to find herself panting on the floor. I watched her and the squirrel disappear into the muddy trails behind our house. I waited until sweat trickled down my forehead. Until my throat became parched, and I forced myself to get a glass of ice water from the kitchen table. I came out. Ma was still not back. I waited until the sky turned pink to bruised purple, then a hollow black. The ice in my glass melted. I stood outside for a long time, listening to the sounds of the crickets chirping, the distant honking of passing cars, and an owl hooting. 

    A rustling in the bushes startled me.

    “Ma,” I called.

    I squinted to see two golden blazing spots. They were just fireflies.

    I waited all night under the starless sky, inhaling the scent of the mud, for Ma to emerge from the trails, panting. I held my glass of half-full water tightly.

    SWETHA AMIT is an MFA graduate from the University of San Francisco. She is the author of a memoir, A Turbulent Mind, and three chapbooks. Her words appear in HAD, Bending Genres, Ghost Parachute, Gone Lawn, cream city review, and others.

    Featured image by Giorgio Trovato, courtesy of Unsplash.

  • “Incomplete” by Isabel Fontes

    “Incomplete” by Isabel Fontes

    A flash based in dreamlore is tricky to write, and even trickier to publish, as this ephemeral form often proves enticing for the writer, but ultimately, too elusive for the reader. Not so for “Incomplete” by Isabel Fontes. Here we have two dreamers intertwined by separate sleeps, enacting an entirely new reality. When waking life fails to deliver, dreams become dangerous.  —Court Harler

    André is thirty-nine.

    He wakes at the same time every day – whether he wants to or not.

    The alarm rings before it should.

    He is already awake when it happens, staring at the ceiling, heart alert for no reason he can name. The woman beside him murmurs something and turns away. He doesn’t answer. He hasn’t touched her in weeks.

    The marriage means nothing to him anymore. He shares a bed, not a life. His body lies beside another, but his thoughts are elsewhere.

    He goes to work. He does what is expected. The smiles around him feel rehearsed, automatic. Everyone moves as if following instructions written long ago. More and more, he senses that he’s only watching his own life unfold.

    That night, sleep comes quickly.

    Too quickly.

    Clara is thirty-six.

    She lives in a modern flat with a husband who loves the idea of them together. She works in public relations, surrounded by voices, meetings, and noise. None of it reaches her.

    Every morning, she looks at her reflection and feels delayed, as if the woman in the mirror arrives half a second too late. Her days follow a strict sequence – wake, speak, smile, return home.

    At night, she clutches her pillow and closes her eyes.

    That is when the dreams begin.

    Between sleep and waking, they find each other.

    They don’t know names.

    They don’t see faces.

    But they are not alone.

    Their breathing aligns without effort. When one inhales, the other follows. When one hesitates, the other waits. It feels natural, necessary – like something finally returned to its place.

    Here, they feel whole.

    The first thing André notices is how thin the days become.

    He forgot a meeting. Then another. His reflection pauses before copying his movements. He types sentences at work that feel unfamiliar, as if written by someone else.

    At night, he dreams of a glass breaking.

    The next day, one shatters in the office kitchen. The sound makes him stop. He waits for the echo. It never comes.

    That night, sleep pulls him under again.

    Clara dreams of standing in a room without walls.

    The next day, she feels exposed everywhere she goes.

    Her husband asks if she’s listening. She nods. His voice feels distant, poorly tuned. She rushes through meals, through conversations, through hours.

    Night becomes the destination.

    They grow closer in sleep.

    Where André feels hollow, Clara fills the space.

    Where Clara fades, André steadies her.

    Together, they fit.

    During the day, both of them think further. Clara’s hands tremble when she’s awake. André’s name is spoken twice before he responds. They stop correcting these things. They stop caring.

    Awake, they are fragments.

    Asleep, they are complete.

    Sometimes André wakes with his chest tight, lungs waiting for air that arrives late.

    Sometimes Clara wakes holding her breath, unsure why she ever stopped breathing at all.

    They begin to dread mornings.

    The alarm becomes an intrusion.

    Waking feels like a loss.

    The dreams deepen.

    They don’t speak there. They don’t need to. Movement is effortless. Time doesn’t resist. It feels like remembering something that was never allowed to exist.

    Outside the dreams, their lives erode quietly.

    One morning, the alarm rings.

    Only one of them wakes.

    The other never does.

    Born in Lisbon, ISABEL FONTES is the author of three poetry books and has published internationally, including recognition in the United States. She is the creator of Jazz’n’Poesia and the television programme A Conversa Com. She lives in London and shares aspects of her life and creative process on Instagram @isabel0fontes.  

    Featured image by CHUTTERSNAP, courtesy of Unsplash.

  • “Twenty-One Grams” by Carolyn R. Russell

    “Twenty-One Grams” by Carolyn R. Russell

    “Twenty-One Grams” by Carolyn R. Russell is a speculative flash fiction that never quite relinquishes its sense of mystery. The setting is reminiscent of the fevered religious revivals of olden days, but Russell cheekily infuses both the plot and the perspective with an otherworldly, new-age sensibility: souls are “weighed” but also consoled by a “perky college girl” with Hello Kitty Kleenexes. Readers will long ponder this narrative’s final reckonings.  —Court Harler

    Our host has a pointed beard that metronomes back and forth as he describes the ancient means by which he says human souls can be weighed and measured. Twenty-one grams, he gargles out, his spackled eyes half shut. Tonight he’s barely bothering to hide his disdain; I should have adjusted the footlights to soften the contempt that rolls off him in waves.

    While he lectures, before a transaction, he never moves from behind the podium on the raised platform. We tried that once and it was a disaster; our host in motion was too much for the crowd, resulting in bleeding eyeballs and aneurisms that left our marks incapable of consent. Something about the way he moves is impossible to disguise inside any kind of gear or clothing.

    He begins to hit his stride now; centuries of practice guide the rhythms of his pitch. The room is warm and ripe with the sharp stench of cortisol and adrenaline despite the December air blasting through the open windows that showcase the White Mountains of New Hampshire. Twenty-one grams, he hisses, only twenty-one grams, the weight of a mouse, or a fava bean, or a double-A battery. That’s it!

    As he talks I roam the carpeted periphery of the auditorium. That’s me, a perky college girl with a short skirt and an empathetic smile, quick to offer vitamin water or Hello Kitty Kleenex. I watch and listen. This part can be tricky.

    A woman sitting near me to my right starts to speak. I approach her and ask her to stand and direct her question to our host. She asks if partials are acceptable. Like we’re talking about a liver, like maybe she thinks it will grow back whole. I smile and put my hand on her shoulder to ease her back into her chair, and there it is. That electric jolt that travels up through my wrist and singes my eyelashes.

    We’re finished here.

    I nod to our host and he is before her in an instant; later no one will remember his elated stroll down the aisle. He extends to her a surprisingly dainty hand; he knows how delicate are these first moments of desire, of decision. The woman rises; he puts his arm around her waist and walks her back up the aisle toward the lectern, his new catch a vision in Lilly Pulitzer florals.

    As soon as our host’s back is turned there is the usual stampede for the doors. It always makes me laugh. A teenage boy looks at me over his shoulder as he runs. I place a closed fist on my chin and then raise my index finger straight up over my lips; the boy flings a different finger in my direction, the whites of his eyes lacey with red veins like a road map to hell. We’re in town another few days, and I wonder if he’ll be back.

    A Best Microfiction winner and a Pushcart Prize, Best of the Net, and Best Small Fictions nominee, CAROLYN R. RUSSELL’s short stories, poetry, and creative nonfiction have been featured in numerous publications. Her collection of cross-genre flash is called Death and Other Survival Strategies (Vine Leaves Press, 2023).

    Featured image by Roman Kraft, courtesy of Unsplash.