Congratulations to Bright Flash Literary Review’s Pushcart Prize Nominees:
Barbara Kivowitz for “Lipstick”
Johnson Yazzie for “Love is Annoying”
Tinamarie Cox for “In His Eyes”
Jeff Kennedy for “Martin Waters The Flowers”
Catarina Delgado for “Deliberately”
Lynne Curry for “Born to Fly”
By Aarushi Bahadur
The boy is in the living room and he has a telephone in his hands. The phone: eggshell blue, cord stretched, ribbonlike. His ear is pressed to the receiver and he is rocking back and forth on the couch and the room is wallpapered with gray roses that he does not care for much. The phone goes to voicemail and he calls the number he knows by heart again.
The boy is waiting. He has been waiting for a while. He is waiting with the weight of the phone clutched in his hand and the little freight trains running through his head. He thinks absently there are always people on the other end of the phone but maybe they are afraid to pick up or maybe the line is busy or maybe they are busy but at some point they won’t be and then he dials the phone because it has gone into voicemail again.
He scans the room. The windows are drawn heavy with velvet curtains and the roses are still. Maybe it is late. Maybe it is early. His feet do not reach the carpet.
A girl enters the room and after a moment of hesitation sits down next to the boy on the couch by the wall with the phone. There is a cigarette between her fingers. She has been told not to smoke but she likes it and the younger boy can’t stop her. He looks at her reproachfully but says nothing. She hasn’t mentioned the phone, after all.
The girl sits for a moment and then walks across the room. A radio is sitting on the media cabinet. She turns it on and it begins playing a song that the boy does not know but the girl seems to because she scoffs and switches to another channel. This one she likes better, abstractly jazzy and wordless, and the boy watches mesmerized as she moves to the center of the carpet and begins to sway by herself. The song ends and she walks back over to the radio and switches it off. The boy dials again.
In some time a man enters the room, coming to settle against the doorway. Both the boy and the girl turn to look at him guiltily and the girl pulls her skirt over her knees. The man is smiling.
He looks at the girl. Put out that cigarette.
She meets his eyes and taps the end. Ash freckles the carpet. She turns and snuffs the cigarette on the coffee table because they have no ashtray because people are not supposed to smoke in the house.
The man lingers. The boy and girl exchange a look. The man does not do much other than straighten his suit and look at them and examine them but the boy wilts under his gaze and the girl crosses her legs. He knows they are waiting for someone to call back and he has come to pick up a phone book.
The girl puts her hand over the boy’s. The girl knows the man is looking. His book is on the table.
The man checks his watch. He looks at the telephone again and the cord that is stretching half the distance of the room, eggshell blue, and he sees the time is getting late and smiles and excuses himself. The boy and the girl watch him go in silence. He has left his book.
They sit for a while. After the man has left, the boy speaks. Quietly and with effort he says, “I just want to say something to her.”
The girl picks up a coaster from the coffee table and turns it around and around and around. She wants another cigarette but they are all hidden in her bedroom. “What?” she asks.
There’s a long pause that unsettles the girl and the boy takes the coaster from her hands and sets the phone back in the holder and says, “I don’t know. Just something.”
When they are all gone, the phone rings.
* * *
Aarushi Bahadur is a senior at St. Paul Academy in Minnesota. She’s a Scholastic writing award winner, a student journalist, a theater kid, and an ardent vinyl collector. Her work has previously been featured in Iris: Art + Lit Magazine.
By Logan Anthony
The beeswax candle flickered self-consciously on the splintered sill among the others, some beeswax, others not. The only living flame. The others grumbled their complaints within earshot.
On the other side of the window, the night was a soft dark. Still young. The moon was new and surrounded by a faint smattering of weak-willed stars. This was the kind of night the candles lingered for, climbing the walls of their jars in increments of cooled wax instead of melting down t o burn up in their depths.
Outside the shut door, the doe of the house bustled about. The tapping of her hooves reminded the candles of the eating sounds the humans had once filled the place with, the metal of silverware scraping against patterned ceramic plates.
Of the family in residence, the doe was the candles’ favorite: she kept to herself and often left the candle room to its own dust and devices. The candle room remained from the previous owners. Humans with their rooms dedicated to curiosities.
The family of deer in residence hardly had a use for the candles. Most of them were not sure what they were. But the doe knew. The single beeswax candle did not know it was being used as a beacon; neither did the other candles. But the doe knew. Had the other candles known, they might have acted differently that night, and the crooked little beeswax candle in the windowsill might never have gone out.
The night sprawled cool and damp. Had the flame flickered on a few more hours, the passing fox in her crimson robes wouldn’t have stopped to squint through the reeds in search of that pulse of light. The flame would’ve drawn her in, a wingless moth. The doe would’ve sensed the loping of the body as it came closer, trodding over clovers and daffodils huddled beneath the windowsills.
Instead, the fox slowed to a stop and flattened her body beneath the underbrush. In a pile of shed pine needles, clusters of orange-fingered fungus wormed up from the soil. The fox coiled her breath tight in her chest and ignored the aching. She had come a long way. The forest soundtrack pulled her ears in all directions. She scanned each window of the cabin.
The fox dug her claws into the soft earth and huffed, ever so slightly. The meat of her body yearned to run, to feed. Time was not something to waste. Saliva clotted in her throat at the far-off scent of spilled blood across the stream. Yet the fox remained unyielding. In her anticipation, she must have missed it: it couldn’t be that it wasn’t there. She rose, sniffing for honey in the air, that tell-tale sign of burning beeswax. She continued her search for the beacon.
Awake long after the others, the doe laid and waited for the candle to convey her message. She sealed the door to the candle room those hours ago, after lighting the wick of the beeswax candle, and had not allowed herself to reopen the room. She had thrown herself into the night’s routine for the simple benefit of distraction.
If the doe had allowed herself to think of the candle, to gaze upon it aglow without the face gleaming in the window behind it, she knew the longing would be too great. She would melt like beeswax with no glass walls to climb. She would pool at her hooves, unable to listen for the cry that would come from the underbrush. That call to leave the cabin and disappear amongst the red of the leaves and robes out there, claws dug into the earth in wait.
For her.
* * *
Logan Anthony is an American queer writer and transgender artist from Indiana. Anthony holds a Bachelor of Arts in Creative Writing & English and works as a freelance writer. Find Logan’s work in Thin Air Magazine, Hare’s Paw Literary Journal, The Madison Review, Stoneboat Literary Journal, The Write Launch, and more. You can read their work at www.thewritinglog.com and follow them on social media @the_writing_log
By S.E. Drake
Adam, my husband, is dead.
I wanted to scream again, to cry, to get down on my hands and knees and shout. I wanted to deny it. I wanted to somehow reverse his murder by sheer willpower as though if I believed he was alive hard enough or shouted “no!” loud enough it would make a difference.
Instead, I was coiled up on the couch, unable to move. The truth was bludgeoning me down. I felt like I was being slowly decapitated, slowly suffocated, as though every burst of reality in my mind was the blow of an ax. He is dead, wham, he is dead, wham…. I wanted it to end soon.
Mom shifted in her seat on the other couch and looked at the door. Then I heard it too, a rat tat tat at the door. I didn’t care who it was. I rolled over and forced my face deep into the moist and slimy pillow I was cradling. It was Adam’s pillow, and it still smelled like him, like shaving cream, laundry detergent, and sweat.
“Alyssa Lee,” a voice boomed behind me. I rolled over. I knew I was a mess, but I was rather apathetic at the moment.
Two police officers who looked vaguely familiar were planted in the middle of our living room like a couple of linebackers. When I saw them, I sat up and started trying to brush the hair out of my face.
“Alyssa Lee, you are under arrest for the premeditated murder of Adam Lee.”
My brain scrambled to understand his words, and they had me on my feet listening to my Miranda rights before it sank in. One officer grabbed my hand and jerked it behind my back. Every ounce of hope I still had evacuated my heart when I felt the cold metal bite; they were handcuffing me.
I don’t remember much else besides Mom trying to stop the officers as they pulled me down the front steps between them like I was a drunken sailor. The moon was resting over my neighbor’s house, and a million tiny stars glinted in the sky and winked at me from the deep, soft quilt of blue that made up the sky. The air smelled so sweet and fresh, unbelievably fresh. Did it always smell like that? The trees were still covered with little droplets of rain like the perfect, fluorescent roses specked with dots of glue in flower shops; they were so beautiful. I fixed my eyes on the moon and took one last gulp of pure air before the officer put his hand on my head and forced me down into the squad car.
* * *
S. E. Drake has been writing for over seven years. She teaches high school English and is the author of the Dark Secrets Series, a young adult murder mystery trilogy. Her favorite book is either True Grit by Charles Portis or The Hobbit by J. R. R. Tolkien. She lives in Ohio with her fur-baby, Sadie.
By David Partington
On a sparkling April morning, clean white sheets billowed on the clothesline, robins sang, and lilacs bloomed. Inside, a sunbeam slipped through a gap between the nursery curtains, illuminating dancing dust particles that might otherwise have gone unnoticed. All was quiet as baby Suzanne lay in her crib, guarded by stuffed animals. But the peace was not to last. An orange kitten, driven from the living room by the smell of fresh furniture polish, came slinking down the hallway toward the nursery, its eye caught by a bunny leaning against the crib. With slow, stealthy footsteps, the kitten crept toward it. Crouching behind a box on the floor, it watched the bunny and lay in wait. Too preoccupied with its stuffed carrot, or perhaps frozen in fear, the bunny didn’t move. Seizing the moment, the kitten sprang forward, wrapping its paws around its prey. The bunny fell to one side as the kitten pummeled it with tiny feet. It was all over. The kitten had triumphed, and little Suzanne hadn’t even been disturbed. Shocked by the unbridled brutality, the other stuffed animals stared mutely into space. The merry sunbeam frolicked on the carpet as the kitten now lay its head upon the bunny and fell asleep.
* * *
David Partington is a freelance writer and illustrator living in Toronto. His work has appeared in The Bacopa Review, Jake, Power Cut, Alma, and elsewhere.
By Wendy K. Mages
The show’s long over, the theatre finally empty. A lone oboe sounds. The single-bulb “ghost light” standing center stage flickers. Music, from an unseen orchestra, swells. Softly, pointe-shoe clad footsteps tread the boards, tutus swirl. The stage is set, as phantom swans of yesteryear begin their nightly dance till dawn….
* * *
Wendy K. Mages, a Mercy University Professor, is a Pushcart Prize nominee and an award-winning poet and author. She earned her doctorate in Human Development and Psychology at the Harvard Graduate School of Education and her master’s in Theatre at Northwestern University. As a complement to her research on the effect of the arts on learning and development, she performs at storytelling events and festivals in the US and abroad. To learn more about her and her work, and to find links to her published stories and poetry, please visit her Mercy University Faculty page https://www.mercy.edu/directory/wendy-mages and her website, Wendy Mages: Storyteller https://sites.google.com/view/wendy-mages-storyteller
By Peter Bruno
This time she’d been gone for two days without a call. But that night the shoes seemed to offer some relief. You were sitting on the bed at your mother’s side. Once again she was searching for air, clutching the sheets with each labored breath. Your sister was out and the three of you were waiting, again.
“God knows where she is. In that jungle.” Your father said, cigarette smoke seeping through his words. He meant the city, which was only twenty minutes away, but he often called it the jungle. You envisioned skyscrapers dense with vines. Parrots escaping through revolving doors. Elevators filled with zebras. Your sister was gone and, for all they knew, you knew, dead. As usual, the police had been called; so you waited. It was a muggy night and the air conditioner was on. Thunder grumbled. You heard the dog’s nails tap-tapping on the kitchen linoleum. By then, you had gotten a second dog that you disliked: Fifi, a gray miniature poodle with runny eyes.
And then to everyone’s surprise, she appeared. Standing in the opened doorframe, spots of rain on her face and dungaree jacket. In her arms she held a damp box. She entered the room; you moved toward your father.
“Look what I bought Ma!” as if she had just come back from a neighborhood yard sale. Your mother turned away looking at the far wall and the framed image of Jesus adorned with dried, palm leaves twisted into the shape of a cross.
“Look Ma!” She nudged over onto the edge of the bed, and ceremoniously lifted the lid of the box as if its contents were alive. She peeled back sheets of pink tissue paper, and revealed the shoes. They were red leather, open at the toe with an ankle strap and platform heels. Silver studs dotted the midsole.
“I got ‘em on sale. Look; please?”
Slowly she turned toward her daughter. She couldn’t help herself.
“Aren’t they cute?”
Your mother pushed herself back onto the propped pillows. Her eyes damp, her mascara runny. Whatever she had felt, or imagined, was forgotten. She held one of the shoes, tilting it, sharing its charm. You and your father looked at each other, then watched as your sister lifted the other shoe from the box and tried it on.
* * *
Peter Bruno is a writer, teacher, and artist living in Rutland, Vermont. His work has appeared in Zig Zag Lit Mag, SEISMA, Hole in the Head Review, among others.
By Swetha Amit
That night, the knock on the bedroom door in the treehouse we stayed in for spring break was a soft tapping noise, so soft that it felt like I had imagined it.
“Did you hear it?” my voice quivered as I shook my husband.
“Must be the wind,” he muttered sleepily.
I lay on the bed staring at the reflection of shadowy silhouettes of the still tree branches on the glass window. I didn’t think it was the wind, but I felt uncomfortable about getting up and opening the door. Besides, I didn’t want to broach the topic further, afraid it would annoy and push him further away from me.
The next night, the knock was a little louder. My breathing became rapid, and my forehead erupted into beads of sweat. My husband was asleep like the dead. I could imagine the logical engineer in him asking me who would knock on our door at midnight. It could not be the lodge staff or other guests. Why would they disturb us at this hour? His thick, bushy eyebrows would furrow into a frown, creating creases on his large brown forehead. Yet those snippets from a conversation I overheard a couple of days ago at the resort lobby triggered unease in my mind like rip currents in the ocean. Dance, full moon, spirit, girl. He dismissed it as futile gossip when I initially tried telling him and focused on his laptop instead. His stony silence in the room made it colder than usual.
On the third night, the knocking sounded like someone hammering nails on the wall. I jolted awake, and my heart pounded like I’d run fast up those hills we’d hiked earlier that morning. I shook my husband violently until he awoke.
“Hear that now?” I hissed.
He rubbed his eyes and looked at me, annoyed.
“Hear what?”
The knocking became louder. He switched on the night lamp beside him and listened intently, his face growing pale with every knock before he decided to holler and ask.
“Who’s there?”
The knocking stopped. There was a sound of feet shuffling, followed by a light jingling noise of anklets. A chill ran down my veins.
“Someone is playing a prank,” my husband reasoned, albeit hesitantly, like he was trying to convince himself. “Must be those bratty teenage kids we saw fooling around the lake.”
Then he hollered again.
“Next time you knock, I’ll complain to your parents. You hear me?”
There was silence outside the door. After a few minutes, he relaxed and began reminiscing about his adolescence. I listened intently, chuckling over the shameless pranks he played. It was nice to have this easy flow of conversation between us after a long time. Then, the discussion veered towards unruly kids and the hazards of parenting, something we had been procrastinating for the past five years despite the pressure from our families. After that unsuccessful brief period of attempts and an unexpected termination, I wasn’t sure we were ready. Yet that incident created this impenetrable wall between us. He’d begun to immerse himself in work until I forcibly suggested this retreat, to which he reluctantly agreed.
Later, a coyote’s howl pierced through the night’s silence. My husband closed his eyes while I watched the glaring white blur of the moon outside the window. I tossed and turned, my artistic mind stretching its imagination and mulling over the probability of that story being true.
The knock came as a thunderous blow on our last night. This time, we both sat upright in our bed, shivering under our blankets, fearful of the door breaking. He surprisingly held my hand, looking at my face, which probably spelled terror. We then reached for our phones. The batteries were drained despite putting them on charge. The sound of flapping wings and hooting reverberated in the air. My husband grabbed a walking stick and a flashlight and jumped out of bed in his white pajamas.
“Just wait until I get my hands on you,” he yelled.
“Don’t,” I pleaded. “Don’t leave me alone.”
He turned and stared at me. Traces of compassion were in his eyes, making my heart leap in hope until another knock disrupted this tender moment.
“Those tiresome kids,” my husband muttered, rushing to the door and motioning me to follow him.
I got out of bed wearing my pink polka-dotted nightgown. When he opened the door, a wave of cold air greeted us. There was nobody there. We stood there gaping into the darkness except for a patch where the silvery moonlight kissed the ground. We heard a wailing sound in the distance like some animal had been wounded. Or was it a lost child? Goosebumps pricked my skin. My husband ran down the ladder and sprinted towards the direction of the sound.
“Wait,” I called out, my voice echoing in the night. My head swirled with a zillion thoughts. What if it was the spirit I heard those lobby folks talk about? Was there a hidden secret in this lodge? Or an unseen force that was seeking revenge or some redemption? And why knock on our door? I didn’t have a reason not to believe in supernatural forces, even though I grew up in a house of bankers and lawyers who scoffed at such tales as mere folklore. But I heard of my friends’ families encountering strange occurrences in their hometowns, which I couldn’t dismiss as mere human figments of imagination. I continued chasing my husband, my bare feet running on the cold, muddy ground, with tiny stones poking them.
“Don’t leave me behind,” I cried.
He didn’t stop. I could still see his white pajamas glittering in the moonlight. My quads ached, my chest felt heavy, and my feet began to hurt and were probably bleeding. I continued running in search of an explanation behind that persistent knock. I continued running to bridge the distance between us until a cascade of darkness enveloped me in its arms.
* * *
Swetha is the author of two chapbooks, Cotton Candy from the Sky and Mango Pickle in Summer. An MFA graduate from the University of San Francisco, her works appear in Had, Flash Fiction Magazine, Oyez Review, etc.(https://swethaamit.com). Her stories have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net.
By Lisa Richter
I’m in the pool and the lifeguard yells across the span of 10 lanes, “Hey, you okay?” as he taps his head several times, and I soon suspect he’s speaking to me because other swimmers are now looking my way and because I am stalled at the end of the pool, I realize now, holding my head, and I’ve likely been idle here for some time; then again he says, loud and distinct though my Speedo cap is vacuum-snug over my ears, “You okay? Maybe take it easier….” to which I wave and to prove nothing is amiss swim the entire lap in one breath, stifling a gasp at the end, imagining as I glide through those 25 meters what he would say if I told him that I’d been neither dizzy nor muscle sore but rather engaged in fervid conversation within myself about the new wood flooring I’d earlier decided on and paid for, a ruptured pipe having flooded my home days before, clear water ankle deep, though nothing of value lost, my piano especially spared, the water encroaching to within inches of its legs then strangely halting; she, the one I’d loved who’d shared my life and home, her spirit these months later still watching, doubtless behind it all: protecting the sacred yet forcing a cleanse, wanting for me a new start, new possibility, a fresh foundation, yes, this flooring, though I’m conflicted whether the replacement is really the right quality, tone, and finish, whether I shouldn’t have gone with the wider planks, the longer boards, the heftier price, and as I swing around to forge a return lap, sucking a lungful of air under the guard’s gaze then diving deep and wiggling myself forward near the bottom of the pool like a flat-fish-flounder, a small voice begins a singsong “water here, flood there, water water everywhere” and another carps, “You are not okay, oh no, you are surely not okay.”
* * *
Lisa Richter lives in Laguna Beach, California. Her poetry, essays, and fiction have appeared in literary journals and anthologies, both in print and online. She is a poetry alumna of the Community of Writers and holds degrees in mathematics (1983) and creative writing (MFA, 2010). More about Lisa at: LisaKRichter.com
By Cor de Wulf
Following Phaebea out onto the ice plant, Flake carries the empty canning jar she has put in his care. Its lid glints with afternoon light as they move along the quarry-stone wall built in an attempt to slow the sand’s relentless advances on their saltbox house tucked between the North Sea’s grey dunes.
Flake is listless today, awakened again by another of Jens and Phaebea’s late-night quarrels—hushed assaults that he doesn’t understand Phaebea has come to believe are her lot and, perversely, her privilege. Emboldened by her worsening state, Phaebea has taken to force-feeding Jens his shame of her, to proving to him that he is the architect of her deterioration. She has taken to rubbing his nose in just how vicious he has become with the insidious loathing he’s adopted from an ever-growing caucus of aggrieved zealots cropping up among colleagues and neighbors.
Flake knows none of this, nor that Jens has recently come to a decision: he will no longer suffer Phaebea’s accusations in exchange for the cold comfort of never speaking of the thing that’s poisoned their marriage. Jens will no longer indulge her appeals for him to justify the vile dogma now wedged between them, driving them—and, suddenly, the world—towards an inexorable precipice. Jens has decided that Phaebea needs treatment, a regimen he intends to take a strong hand in prescribing.
Flake also has no idea of Phaebea’s chance discovery of an aversion Jens has until recently managed to keep from her, a terror she never imagined plaguing her husband. But his is a phobia of such unexpectedly luminous proportions, she sees it as a gift—a stroke of caprice, of serendipity.
So, to make the most of it, she has planned a lavish meal at which she has assured Jens’s attendance with the promise of a rare spread of sumptuous delights. And, to further entice him, she has gone so far as to hint at more decadent indulgences to follow. Despite his contempt for her, she can still tempt him, a price small enough to ensure his presence at her singular feast. It is a means made bearable by its glorious end: her pitiless Jens swiftly humbled, as humiliated as she; more importantly, the sight of his irrational fear burned indelibly into his adoring son’s consciousness.
Motioning him to her side, Phaebea calls to Flake by her favorite endearment—her Dutch diminutive for his proper name, Falco. He is to her, after all, perfect as a snowflake.
“Come, Vlokje. Father will be home soon.”
Smiling down at her beautiful boy—pale as bone china, eyes like spring water—she takes the jar from his small pink hands. Removing the lid, she uses it to scoop into the jar something suspended in a crevice between the stones. Replacing the lid, she hands the jar back to Flake, introducing him to her special evening’s guest of honor.
Magnified by the curve of the jar, Flake is beguiled by her. The largest of any he has watched feed from their webbed snares, her curves are supple, the red hourglass flirting from her underside, a majestic leg stroking his palm from inside the jar. Escorted by Flake to the table Phaebea has prepared for her coming out, she is warm and content in her glass cocoon. But by the time the sun drops behind the dunes, with Phaebea’s extravagant meal laid out before her and Jens, she will be ravenous.
As the unexpected guest at his homecoming—an ingénue darting between the candles, polished flatware, and the crisp white linen that will complete Phaebea’s exquisite table—she will be eager to present herself to the unsuspecting Jens. And, when she feels the tingle of his dread and adrenaline thrum across her abdomen, she will be all the more eager to flaunt her every savage charm.
Following Flake and his charge back across the ice plant, Phaebea reaches out to tousle her pale boy’s sun-white hair, humming serenely, pleased with her son’s fascination with their visitor’s beauty. Drifting in a kind of delirium, she counts the seconds of the glacial hour before Jens’s return, picturing the surprise on his face when he first takes in the elegant table set for him—still unaware of the guest with whom she means him to share it, and of everything else to come after.
* * *
Cor de Wulf divides their life between the Pacific Northwest, Normandy, and the Zuid-Limburg region of the Netherlands. Their short fiction has appeared or is forthcoming in Club Plum, Coffin Bell Journal, Flash Fiction Magazine, Drunk Monkeys, The Writing Disorder, Every Day Fiction, Ink in Thirds, and Blood Tree Literature. Their work has also recently been nominated by editors to the Best of the Net 2025 Anthology.