Category: Flash Fiction

Shutdown Today Arnold was super frustrated by the latest Government shutdown.  Such failures only happened in his country.  The shutdowns came when the parties refused to agree on the yearly Government spending bill.  Civil servants went unpaid, projects postponed, benefits stopped.  Many citizens viewed it as a news item.  It rarely affected them directly.  A […]

Seeking The Nobel Peace Prize The new President really really wanted to be given—to him, win–the Nobel Peace Prize.  He believed it would show the world what a wonderful person he was.  Peace, after all, meant a lot more to people than science and that other stuff.  He realized it was not a sure thing, […]

Porn Nazis After the Nazis invaded a country one of their first acts was to spread pornography.  They knew there was nothing better for them than most of the captured country’s men jerking off at home.  It worked in every country except France (French men were already preoccupied.)  When the nation elected a new President, […]

Civil War The is the story of the collapse of the nation’s house.  The house was built on the ocean shore, on stilts, for the views.  It was meant to last forever.  Yet now the walls were broken and splintered, the roof leaked, the water pipes spurted, the furnace on the fritz.  No one could […]

The New President’s New Halloween The New President’s new Halloween was like no other.  In addition to young trick or treaters, he sent armed troops to major cities—not costumes, the real thing.  The troops had loaded automatic weapons and did not ask for candy (they had their own.)  It was a truly unusual Halloween, unusually […]

Making The Most Of His Life Arnold believed in making the most of his life and wished everyone felt the same.  Life was short and you got only one chance.  Any less than making the most of it was a waste.  He worked hard at his career, steadily if slowly advancing.  He helped his extended […]

Stress Angela’s work was tough.  At work, she managed people in a large corporation, responsible for their screw ups as well their failures.  It was work that ground her down no matter how hard she tried.   She brought the tension home.  Some evenings, everything her partner did was wrong, the place was filthy, the food […]

The New President’s New Army The new President had bone spurs which prevented him from being in the military, although he could still play golf, but he knew what the military should be: a glorious fighting force in his image.  So, when elected, he declared war was man’s work.  More, officers not white were promoted […]

Guns Paul grew up with guns.  Not in his home, but on he saw plenty on TV and in movies.  Guns in the hands of good guys and bad.  Handguns, automatic weapons, sniper rifles.  Paul knew what an Uzi looked like by the time he was fourteen, though he’d never seen one in real life.  […]

Donald Donald was born into a rich family.  His father wanted him in real estate but he yearned for something concrete so he plowed his money into a company he could dedicate to his needs: a toy company.  He fired the key executives and hired only those whose opinion was “Yes.”  He fired those who […]

Mated Initially, the affair was almost entirely sexual.  They were both enrolled in an evening cooking class where students were there not because they wanted to learn cooking.  After the class started, he joined her at a counter and they baked a cake together.  They went to her place afterwards and did not sleep together, […]

2084 Welcome to 2084.  It’s been a long haul–getting used to 6,900 sunscreen takes time.  I don’t go out.  Why bother?  What’s outside except dirt and cancer?  I live in a comfy apartment thirty feet underground.  Best protection against the tornadoes and storms and solar radiation.  Only the poor live above ground.  The nightly news […]

The Cure For Boredom Charlie was bored and did not understand why.  He had plenty of diverting toys.  TV, streaming, computer, gaming platform.  Books, magazines.  Two fish tanks, with guppies and cute cat fish.  But it increasingly was boring and felt wrong.  It was wrong to eagerly wait for the next TV show.  Video games […]

The Beast Comes For Us Victor usually wrote personal stories from his own life about what was important to him but, these days, he felt an obligation to write political satire—the anger demanded it.  Hatred was everywhere, promoted by the nation’s leaders.  The Beast appeared and slouched over the land, at first hesitant, increasingly relentless, […]

Politics And Used Cars The nation had been a world leader but its new President, a used car salesperson, saw it as an outdated older model which needed more than a paint job.  Living in a used car, like living in a democracy, can be comfy.  It is familiar, radiates shared history, and the seats […]

Conspiracies In the early days of the pandemic Phil was returning home from a quiet walk when he saw his next-door neighbour.  She had just returned from picketing the local hospital.  The hospital had no overflow of covid patients.  It was lying, the media were lying.  Covid did not exist.  The whole thing was a […]

The Illegal Alien A gentle alien from another galaxy landed on Earth, hid its spacecraft and got an apartment, a car and a job in a convenience store.  It was an explorer and would live among Earthlings and learn their ways. However, everyone around it quickly realized it was an alien, mostly because of the […]

Its All About The New President The New President believed life was all about him and believed now that he was elected he could prove it.  His first days in office were full of news reports about his flurry of executive orders.  The news was all about him.  As the months crawled by, the top […]

Dream World Anton put all of his valuable thoughts onto the internet: Substack, Patreon, his own website.  Each day he wrote something about the world he lived in, describing what was wrong and how it could be made right.  When he started uploading, he was quickly  thrilled, getting hits.  However, after a few months, the […]

Fake News Woodrow was fed up with the plethora of fake news—not fake news, exactly, but none of it was real news.  The media and web fed on politics and disasters.  A fireworks factory exploding was certain to make the nightly news.  So was a big flood.  The political stuff was full of distortions, the […]