Flash Fiction Online #157, October 2026
“A Face Slipped Off Its Skull” by Ashlee Lhamon
“Really and Truly Dead'” by Emma Burnett
“下楼 – Next Floor” by Crystal Leung
“They’ve Got Your Number” by Aeryn Rudel
“You/we/us” by Beth Goder
“In the Garden of Death” by Chris Clemens
“The Shit Thing About Being a Werewolf on the Moon” by Eliza Pry
“right here, on this spot” by Parker M. O’Neill
Reviewed by Chuck Rothman
The October issue of Flash Fiction Online focuses on paranormal noir stories.
Ashlee Lhamon is first in with “A Face Slipped Off its Skull.” It’s a horror piece about someone who is literally falling apart in Grand Central Terminal in New York City. The story covers his suffering and reveals what it means, but I found it far too futile to be engaging.
“Really and Truly Dead'” by Emma Burnett seems to be set in an eastern European city where you learn there are three types of dead: Dead, deadish, and very dead. You are given the job of putting a stake through the heart of the dead and deadish. Depressing and without anything particularly notable done with the concept, though there is an attempt at a twist at the end.
Crystal Leung contributes “下楼 – Next Floor,” which traces a woman’s journey as she descends what seems to be a city built like an apartment building. She has moved there with her husband; he has found work and is never home. The work shows a lot of surreal imagery as she descends, but there’s no real story here.
“They’ve Got Your Number” is the story of Jimmy Doyle, a hitman who finds himself a revenant and is taken by the Bureau of Second Chances to pay off his debt of the people he has killed. Aeryn Rudel has written an intriguing story from the idea with an especially strong twist at the end.
“You/we/us” by Beth Goder starts out seemingly as a hard-boiled detective pastiche, where a woman walks in to report a theft of her purse. But something seems off, as the woman and the detective, who have never met, seem to know everything about each other. We discover aliens have given humans perfect empathy for each other, and the ramifications of this are surprising. A great concept shown in a fine story, especially good for its short length.
Chris Clemens contributes “In the Garden of Death,” where a woman is brought to see her dead loved ones reincarnated as grotesque plants and discovers why she has been brought there. A horror catalogue that is hindered by the fact that the woman’s emotions are so muted.
The delightfully named “The Shit Thing About Being a Werewolf on the Moon” by Eliza Pry is a hard-boiled detective story where the detective is as described in the title. He is hired to find a missing girl and the story goes through the case. It’s an interesting conceit and Pry handles it well.
Parker M. O’Neill’s “right here, on this spot” talks about finding ghosts of fallen soldiers in Calais, France, digging them up as you go looking for your own ghost. An antiwar piece about the senselessness of death.
Chuck Rothman’s novel The Cadaver Princess is out from Amazing Stories Selects. He’s online at chuckrothman.com.