Our best flash fiction of 2011

forty

  Miracle, The Shining After he dumped me, I would go out and drink screwdrivers and have sex with strangers on an alarmingly regular basis. One night I came home and puked into the toilet. I gripped the cold porcelain, trying to catch my breath, my glitter make-up mixing with my tears in little rivulets [...]

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Stuff White Folks Like

  I am NOT white – I am 1/86th Cherokee Indian – but I know what white folks like. Because the other 85 parts of me are white as a Starbucks White-Chocolate Mocha.   We like autumn and autumn paraphernalia. Autumn sweaters. Harvest tableaux featuring artfully arranged gourds. Hot apple cider from a farmers’ market. Pumpkin-Spice [...]

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The Hogskin Eve

The football player caught the ball. I saw him on my TV. I only notice stuff like that, never the score or which teams are playing. He had this look on his face, like just for a second he was the Messiah of the world. Just for a second all eyes were on him. The [...]

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Saturday Morning ‘Toon Time

Plucky the Winged Unicorn Plucky the Winged Unicorn lives among the stars. The shooting stars are his own free transit system, but they’re not very predictable, so Plucky is often late for things. Everyone knows Plucky doesn’t have reliable transportation, so no one gets mad when he’s late. Once in a while, someone new will [...]

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Don’t Let the Bastards Grind Ya Down

A special guest column by Boogie Crackerjack I hear ya, girlfriend. It’s tough bein’ a gal. Folks tell ya that ya cain’t do stuff jes’ ‘cause you got ladyparts. That jes’ don’t make no kinda sense. I mean, yer brain ain’t housed in yer ladyparts. Anyone with a basic globe can figure that out. But I’m here [...]

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I don’t think I can do this much longer

Come on, Irene The retired man had started something he couldn’t finish. It was going to be the grandest garden-gnome village the world had ever known. But after just four trips to Target’s garden section, he realized he couldn’t afford as many of those little chumps as his vision demanded. He stopped at about 20 [...]

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Mrs. Ted

Ted pays a company for its services. One thing he pays for is to have the company send him fake bank statements and ATM receipts that make it look like Ted’s rich. Ted leaves these slips of paper lying around his apartment and in his car for his dates to see. They think Ted’s rich, [...]

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The tiniest glass slipper

WTF OMG! I went on this new diet and went down five shoe sizes! It was a crazy diet and I thought it was never gonna work. But it did! Now I have these little tiny doll feet. I have to wear doll shoes! No shit, doll shoes! Like the kind you buy for porcelain [...]

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Keep on the Sunny Side

“Keep on the sunny side, always on the sunny side Keep on the sunny side of life It will help us every day, it will brighten all the way If we keep on the sunny side of life.” That’s that We order the same thing at Bob Evans: the stuffed French toast. What it’s stuffed [...]

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The Choicest Maryland Blue Crabs

A man walks into a restaurant and asks the maître d’, “Excuse me, but do you serve crabs here?” The maître d’ replies, “Yes, sir, the choicest Maryland blue crabs, flown in fresh.” A man walks into a restaurant and asks the maître d’, “Excuse me, but do you serve crabs here?” The maître d’ replies, “No, [...]

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So funny I forgot to laugh

Not funny ha-ha   The clown chose me because my family was in the front row. He honked his obnoxious horn and stuck a suspicious-looking flower in my face. It squirted water, and the audience laughed at my humiliation and I cried for the darkness of the human soul.   Cry, Baby   The baby [...]

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Some Christmas Stories: I’m-a call you my shawty

1.  Country Song   She had been reduced to a faint twang drowned in radio static on the road through Arkansas where nobody lived and nobody listened. It was her worst fear.   2.  Dream   I wake and tell you about my dream, as if it’s an urgent news dispatch from another realm, and [...]

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Some Christmas Stories: Laurette

1.  Golden Retriever “Come here,” said the lady, who was Asian-American and in her fifties at least. “OK,” said the guy, who was in his 20s and as blonde and blue-eyed as apple pie. He was eager to please; a friend had told him that his “spirit animal” was a golden retriever. She kissed him [...]

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Some Christmas Stories: We Wear Short Shorts!

1.  Whatever Happened I saw this kid in the cemetery down in Punta Arenas, Chile. I did the tourist thing of going to the cemetery there because it was printed in bold in the guidebook. I stalked the perimeter for a moment, not sure it was open or how to get in. This reminded me [...]

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Some Christmas Stories: Who Wears Short Shorts?

1. Even better than the real thing  The library book of stories from around the world is from 1925 and has things underlined in pencil and decades-old mustard spots on the pages. There’s a story from Nicaragua about a deaf satyr. A story from Nicaragua about a deaf satyr. It’s enough for me to just [...]

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