Flash Fiction Online #138, March 2025

“Henrietta Armitage Doesn’t Read Anymore” by Damon Young

“Lizzie Williams’ Swampy Head” by Joshua Jones Lofflin (reprint, not reviewed) 

“The Qalupalik” by Shantell Powell

“The Chaperone” by Kimberly Crow (reprint, not reviewed)

“Drown-Haunted” by Corey Farrenkopf

“Borrowed Breath and Starlit Scales” by Erin L. Swann (reprint, not reviewed) 

Reviewed by Chuck Rothman

“Henriette Armitage Doesn’t Read Anymore” and for a very good reason. There is a possibly metaphorical octopus in her head and the doctor doesn’t seem to be much help. Damon Young has come up with an interesting situation, but I wish there was more here than just presenting it.

Shantell Powell writes “The Qalupalik,” an Inuit legend that steals children who venture too near the water. A brother and sister make this mistake and must face the creature. I like the introduction of a monster from a non-western tradition and the way the girl manages to defeat it.

“Drown-Haunted” by Corey Farrenkopf shows an Earth that is badly flooded. The narrator’s son is being killed by a green mold so she goes to her old house, now underwater, to ask for help from her dead mother. It’s a mood piece and I did like the mother’s request and how it played out.

Chuck Rothman’s novel The Cadaver Princess will be published by Experimenter Publishing, the book imprint of Amazing Stories.