Issue #20 Surreal Flash Fiction
Peg by Aimee Parkison

In your favorite foreign movie, the husband wakes at night and sees the elderly neighbor woman in the bedroom, staring at his wife, the young sleepwalker, S, tied to the bed for her own protection.

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Marionette by Nod Ghosh

You pull her up on two-strings, one-string, ten strings. You make her dance her necessary steps, and then you stand her still.

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The Blood Artist by Jefferson Navicky

Like a meteor on Mars, red dust kicks up from the bricks. The men in white suits with gas masks and their little buzz saws are tethered to the scaffolding by what looks like a large scrunchie.

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The Fourth Wall by Kim Hagerich

My neighbor broke the fourth wall. It started innocently enough when we both found ourselves on our verandas watering the plants and she asked about the music we were playing inside.

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Paper House by Robin Littell

Annie lives in a paper house. It is delicate, like the wings of a satin moth. She sits on furniture drawn with charcoal, harsh black lines that leave dusty trails on her skirt.

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Bog Iron by Shane Larkin

We make stops on the way to our bog plot to look at the little skeletons. Dad tells me about them. Curlews and skylarks in dancing poses. Tiny skulls.

Amelia Earhart Knew Seven Latin Words for Fire by Joe Kapitan

Ignis, the flaming wreckage, bubbling rubber, liquified cloth, her skin charred and blistering, acrid smoke, the tiny thunders of survival’s kicks

Fulfilling by Fiona McKay

Kate is not ‘imagining it’. There are small tufts of pale fluff on her neck, and no, it’s not ‘just a tissue in the washing machine’ as John suggests. There’s nothing drifting off his shirts, nothing clinging to Ella’s favourite black top, Josh’s Minecraft t-shirts. It’s more solid than tissue, just on her clothes. And only she can see it.

I’ll Show You Mine If You Show Me Yours by Eliot Li

I tell you I’ve only ever shown it to a girl who I met on a tour bus in Moscow, where I was traveling with my parents. She had bad acne, and she really liked Duran Duran.

Morse Code by Elizabeth Cabrera

The old man fell asleep in his car, his nostrils pressed softly against the steering wheel, but the car kept going, because the old man’s foot was not asleep, was still pressing down hard, and later they would say, it’s not really his fault, he’s such an old man.