Category: Archives

ISSUE 9: MARCH 2016

~ Brilliant Flash Fiction

IMG_9133Raphael and His Daughter
By Thomas Sanfilip

I saw her walking toward the Ponte Vecchio again late in the afternoon. Not even her eyes could tell where, so warm and lustrous, but always cast down as if the earth speaking, and her father watching, always watching, though not directly, as if a master guiding a horse from behind that, with the tap of a switch or the flick of an eyebrow or some low whistle in his throat, could make her turn or pirouette. She only had to hear the wind to move closer or more distant from everything around. He could direct her ever so subtly in a new direction like some magician probing a dark secret.

This passionless movement of the earth below her feet and the father’s power to move it and to watch his daughter move with it over the Arno, back and forth, was like some frothy wave of light. Her long brown hair twisted over her shoulder made me wonder. She looked like some melancholic angel fallen to earth, though no words passed between us, only this languid, distant walk, a product of her father’s training, his mind, his thoughts. Here he was with daughter pausing to his reckoning, her face consuming my heart like some wild inextinguishable flame night and day on the streets of Florence. Continue reading “ISSUE 9: MARCH 2016” →

ISSUE 8: JANUARY 2016

~ Brilliant Flash Fiction ~ 1 Comment

IMG_5797A Pain Artist
By Leland Neville

Before YouTube and reality television there was a brief but passionate interest in pain artists. I performed in the cutthroat Rust Belt. Local TV news crews were often present. Men laughed uneasily, women screamed, and children watched open-mouthed. The occasional groupie would even follow me from an Econo Lodge in Buffalo to a Super 8 Motel in Detroit and back again. I posed for photographs and signed autographs. Times really have changed.

My boss, a serious-minded operator, never ad-libbed. “Ladies and gentlemen, according to the FBI you will probably be stabbed, shot, or raped at some point in your life. And if—God forbid—you should resist and injure the man who is attacking you … ” My boss melodramatically paused. “If you should harm that man who wants to kill or rape you, well, you will probably end up in jail. And what will happen to him? He will get your house. He will get your life savings. He will be entitled to a lifetime of government benefits … ”

The complimentary chicken dinners remained untouched. All eyes were fixed on me, standing off to the side, stoic.

“In my pocket,” said my boss, “is the user friendly state-of-the-art devise that will save your house, your money, and your life.” Continue reading “ISSUE 8: JANUARY 2016” →

ISSUE 7: SEPTEMBER 2015

~ Brilliant Flash Fiction ~ 3 Comments

IMG_4658The Sea in Her Ear
By Opal Palmer Adisa

She was drowning, and doing everything she knew she shouldn’t.

She opened her mouth and tried to swallow the sea.

Its ceaseless motion rocked her body; its voice whistled and echoed all around her. Splashing and crashing, its wetness clung to her like weighted cement that attempted to pull her down. The sea had gotten hold of her and was not ready to let her loose.

She opened her mouth to shout for help and gulped more water, then thrashed about frantically, her hands flailing like slender branches forced to dance under heavy winds. She was drowning and knew her survival depended on her relaxing and allowing the buoyance and heavy saltiness of the sea to keep her afloat.

Something about the neediness of the ocean scared her, the possessive way the water draped her legs, the intimate fishy smell that engulfed her nostrils, the roar of the waves locked in the chamber of her ears, the vast emptiness of the sea, slick like oil yet colorless, invisible. God’s Child knew only a fool would try to save someone bent on drowning herself, and she was both fool and self. She knew she needed to conserve her energy, but her heart was another current in the ocean gravitating towards other channels of currents so Yemaja, the great goddess of the ocean, dragged her down and rolled her like a barrel plummeting down a steep hill. Continue reading “ISSUE 7: SEPTEMBER 2015” →

ISSUE 6: JUNE 2015

~ Brilliant Flash Fiction ~ 3 Comments

IMG_6658Old Jimmy
By Young Lee

Old Jimmy approaches the street corner, paper grocery bags weighing in each hand, and pushes the yellow walk button with his elbow. He has on cotton yoga pants, cut off at mid-calf, partially revealing a pair of great bass swimming upshore. The old black ink faded to a watery grey against his own scaly skin. At his sleeves, his lanky, fleshy arms have long been inked with mystical birds and masks like weathered totem poles. Inspired by past winters, hunting moose, in the South East Alaskan terrain. Ancient hieroglyphics decorate his forearms to commemorate his late wife. And the markings of Buddha, the All-Seeing Eye, the Hindu Ganesha, along with Christ seated on Jimmy’s torso, front and back. Tombstones of his past.

Old Jimmy pushes up his prescription glasses with the tip of his thumb, wiggles the blood back into his fingers. He feels faint from Bikram Yoga and hunger as the amber sun presses down on him. Through the asphalt mirage across the street, Old Jimmy discerns a young man in a vintage Jim Morrison tee shirt approaching the opposite corner. He had that shirt once, a long time ago. Remembers going to their concert. As Jimmy observes him, there is something else familiar about this young man. The manner of his walk. The way he jerks his head to throw back his long wavy bangs. Sweat runs down Jimmy’s back and he rests the bags down beside him as he rubs his tired eyes and scratches an old scar on his right cheek. Despite the heat, his fingers are cold and moist. He readjusts his glasses and studies the young man’s face as he’s retrieving something from his pocket. He regards the boy’s compulsive blinking. The exact habit he had before he got cataracts in both eyes. That arched nose reminds him of his father. And the same thin lips that purse when he sniffles. Then suddenly he notices the payphone that he entered nearly forty years ago. Continue reading “ISSUE 6: JUNE 2015” →

ISSUE 5: MARCH 2015

~ Brilliant Flash Fiction ~ 3 Comments

FIRST ANNIVERSARY EDITION

IMG_4538 DESERTER
By John S. Lewis

In Guiana, a little known country north of the equator, there lived a family of five, in a recently established housing scheme for the low–income bracket. The head of the family, David Anderson, was pacing the living room; as usual, searching for a means to keep the family fed, when he heard someone calling at the gate. Before David could get to one of the front windows he heard his son, Kwame, speaking to the person. As he’d been meandering in that direction, his mind recorded that his wife, Holly, was close to a window; yet she did not look out and answer.

“Good morning to you, sir. How may I help you?” he heard Kwame say.

The visitor looked about, confused. He was a graying, official type carrying a briefcase and obviously thinking himself much more important than he was. The man eventually glanced up, and saw Kwame sitting on a branch of the mango tree growing next to the gate. He also saw, by the look of alarm on his face, three or four wasp nests in the tree.

“Good morning, my boy. Aren’t you afraid those wasps will sting you?”

“No, I learned to share the tree with them. They help keep the tree in fruit throughout the year, so we let them stay. My name is Kwame Anderson. What is your name, and why are you here?”

Again, a fleeting look of confusion. “Is your father in?” Continue reading “ISSUE 5: MARCH 2015” →

ISSUE 4: JANUARY 2015

~ Brilliant Flash Fiction ~ 4 Comments

IMG_5190Gale
By Jemel Wilson

Her name was Gale, short for Nightingale. A badass black Caddy sitting on white walled tires. The grill looked like the car had on a fresh set of chrome braces. My grandfather purchased her with money he received from working on the old GM assembly lines. In those days it was hard to own much of anything, so when the neighborhood saw a black man in his twenties riding through the streets in a brand new black Cadillac, they knew you were doing damn well for yourself. It was a luxury that most didn’t get to experience. Other parts of the country were riding on public transportation unable to sit in the front due to the color of their skin.

My grandfather was the role model of the family and everyone listened when he spoke. Every sunny Saturday morning he’d wake my father to help him wash and wax the car. My grandfather would turn on the car radio and turn it up so that the neighbors could hear it on all sides. My father would unravel the hose, drag it out to the driveway and get the bucket of soapy water ready. Continue reading “ISSUE 4: JANUARY 2015” →

ISSUE 3: SEPTEMBER 2014

~ Brilliant Flash Fiction ~ 1 Comment

IMG_5071Rumbling over Steel
By Ute Carson

I love trains, the slow local and the 200-mile-an-hour express. I have traveled on all sorts of trains over the years. As a child I fled westward from the advancing Soviet army with my family atop an ammunition transport.

There was the old steam engine chugging from Dubrovnik to Sarajevo on a narrow-gauge rail line with village women carrying chickens and lugging baskets of farm produce.

My face was soot-smeared with coal dust blowing in through the open windows.

I have shivered in air-conditioned compartments and perspired next to antiquated radiators. I have savored sumptuous meals in elegant dining cars and munched on snacks on wooden commuter benches. Decades ago, on a trip from Stuttgart to Istanbul I bedded down in a luggage rack strung like a hammock above the compartment seats. And once in a sleeper from London to Glasgow, I was awakened with morning tea.

A whistle, a hooting, and the wheels begin to sing on tracks that look like ladders stretched end to end along the ground. In Ukraine a station master in a red cap motioned with his hand signal as we passed through his little town, a herd of sheep on the left, an onion-shaped church steeple on the right. An elegant lady wrapped in fur stepped down from a first-class car in Turku, Finland. And in Italy students jumped onto the caboose of our departing train in the nick of time.

Continue reading “ISSUE 3: SEPTEMBER 2014” →

ISSUE 2: JUNE 2014

~ Brilliant Flash Fiction

IMG_7032You
By Madhumita Roy

My monologue is directed at You.

Because You sit on the other side of the desk with a smirk on your face, which makes You resemble my cat, Ludo, when she smiles. New research claims that animals can smile and, therefore, I believe both You and Ludo are capable of smiling.

On rare occasions your smirk evolves into a wide grin.

These occasions are as follows: when rain-forests burn; or tsunamis wreak havoc in Asian countries; or when two hundred girls are abducted and threatened with rape.

Your face is extremely annoying.

Although there is a halo around your enormously big head, I think it is an illusion you have masterfully created to cut an impressive figure for a credulous crowd. You are not God, Godhead, Godfather, Godly, God-like, or any goddess. Continue reading “ISSUE 2: JUNE 2014” →

ISSUE 1: MARCH 2014

~ Brilliant Flash Fiction

IMG_2527W E I G H T
By Dawn Lowe

I saw a Good Samaritan beside the road and stopped the car.

He held a sign: SPACE SUIT FOR SALE

He was old, thin and wasted. The space suit lay in the dust at his feet, white and shiny, a US flag on its chest.

“How much?” I asked.

“$1,500,” he said. “Cash.”

I put the space suit in the back seat of my car and the old man got in beside it. The suit, seated like a passenger, was three inches taller than the Samaritan.

“Where’d you get it?” I asked.

He shrugged. “I was an astronaut.”

“What’s your name?”

“Does it matter? Once you’re grounded, they all forget.” Continue reading “ISSUE 1: MARCH 2014” →