A gathering of recent speculative flash & micro fiction, each presenting a tiny-yet-powerful universe. How tiny? About one-thousand words for flash; four-hundred words for micro. The word count isn’t as important as the emotion, the adventure, the sense of wonder. Including science fiction, fantasy, horror, and the spaces in between.
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A great month for speculative flash! In addition to our usual monthly readings, we have new issues of Radon Journal, Bullet Points, Molotov Cocktail, and the Welkin Mini shortlist.
I’m starting with several micros that exemplify how very much can be accomplished in a tiny word count. If you enjoy these stories, please share them so more readers can find these fantastic authors!
By Zach Shephard in 100-Foot Crow * 100 Words
Cole made many contributions to the firearms industry, including the rear-facing barrel camera and a number of popular SmartGun apps.
By David Lee Zweifler in Radon Journal * 253 Words
Dad says he sees the changes—reality updating in real time. … That was his focus at the Institute. His obsession.
By Eleanor Lennox in Factor Four * 438 Words
“Jamais vu,” I say.
“Indeed,” the man replies.
By Ai Jiang in Intrepidus Ink * 479 Words
And don’t worry, she winks and says she’s immortal. She cannot die; she cannot leave you.
By Hugh Behm-Steinberg in Hex Literary * 928 Words
Fine, most people don’t have the time to make bespoke artisanal apple pies to keep around in case their sister-in-law drops by for coffee unannounced and comment on their housekeeping. But neither do most people have time machines.
The escalation and unexpected revelations in this story left me with a WTF?-grin.
Ways of Love for Three-Hearted Creatures
By Rachel Sudbeck in Small Wonders * 996 Words
The leviathan has fallen in love with the darkness. It’s fond of being the little spoon, and there is nothing that can hold the leviathan, save the dark.
The prose is glorious in this story; clever, poignant, surprising.
Dreams of the Fallen Angelic Youth
By Shiwei Zhou in Hex Literary * 899 Words
We would have taken you into our homes; raised you as our own, but you were all so fervently possessed of a sense of having wronged someone beyond reason.
I’m a fan of Zhou’s horror, and I especially enjoyed the wry voice in this story.
By Derek Wagner in Factor Four * 995 Words
It is the curse of my race that I must feel the pain I inflict, that the death throes of my enemies hurt me nearly as much as the drilled metal that bores into my carapace, twisting through my chitin, searching for my heart.
Written from the POV of a Kaiju on its last desperate mission, the action sings in this story.
By Shawn Kobb in Flash Point SF * 886 Words
CAUTION: For the safe, secure, and enjoyable use of your Time Flyer (™) temporal sliding device, it is vital that you follow the assembly instructions in order, not skipping any steps unless marked “OPTIONAL.”
This is a fun approach to time travel. And don’t we all need a little more fun?
By Catherine George in Flash Fiction Online * 1000 Words
Long ago, in the city where we live, there was a heartbreaker.
(By which we mean, a woman who broke hearts for a living—sliding scale, pay what you can.)
The women of the city suffer the offenses that women have always suffered—but in this city, there is a heartbreaker. And an apprentice. Their services are desperately needed, despite the cost.
By William R. D. Wood in Nature Futures * 941 Words
Bibi could remember the day for each and every star. Days running in empty greenhouses, her giggles and footsteps bouncing off dusty glass.
A little girl hopes to find other children at the end of her journey. We should all be so lucky as to have her empathetic caretaker at the end of our own journeys. Beautiful and bittersweet.
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Bonus Recs!
“Refresh, Renew, Reimagine,” an anthology of 12 micros curated by Melissa Llanes Brownlee for Mythic Picnic. Each micro is a miniature masterpiece by some of today’s best literary flash writers. Mythic Picnic publishes only on Twitter, but MLB was kind enough to screenshot each little gem for Bluesky folks.
If you enjoyed Rachel Sudbeck’s “Ways of Love for Three-Hearted Creatures,” you might also like Tara Campbell’s “The Kraken in Love” in trampset.
And if you’re in the mood to RESIST:
- Strange Horizons’ Stop Surveillance Copaganda special issue
- B. Pladek’s “Tell Them a Story to Teach Them Kindness,” in Lightspeed
- “Rabbit Test,” by Samantha Mills in Uncanny
- New issue of Writers Resist
Myna Chang 
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