Flash Fiction Online #144, September 2025

“Silence, in the Doorway, with a Gun” by Nadia Radovich

“The Last Items of the Forgotten Hero, or The Grandchild’s First Dragon” by Guan Un (Reprint, not reviewed)

“Yet Another Unforgettable Luncheon” by Leo Rein (Literary, not reviewed)

“Out of Print” by Wen Wen Yang (Reprint, not reviewed)

“Emerald Gears” by Beth Goder

“The Things You Bought for the Robot” by Stefan Alcalá Slater

“The Forest Through the Teas” by Wendy Nikel

Reviewed by David Wesley Hill

“Silence, in the Doorway, with a Gun” by Nadia Radovich, the first of four pieces of original genre fiction in the September issue of Flash Fiction Online, is an engaging parable in which the medieval protagonist, Silence, is given a choice of lives by the goddesses Nature and Nurture—whether to live as a man with a gun or as a beautiful woman. Unfortunately, neither option sits well with Silence, who eventually decides upon a third course of action, to cut the Gordian knot, so to speak, with the titular gun.

I’m always leery of stories in which the first sentence includes a pathetic fallacy, but “Emerald Gears” by Beth Goder charmed me nonetheless. Although deemed science fiction, I’ll argue the story is thinly-disguised fantasy, the protagonist being a magical (superpositioned?) market, which can appear anywhere in the universe and fulfill your deepest desires—if you’re worthy. Like the earlier story, it’s another parable, equally engaging, and worth a read.

I’ve owned a couple robot vacuums over the years, and despite their resemblance to horseshoe crabs, I found myself anthropomorphizing the devices, which is the mechanism at work in the issue’s next story, “The Things You Bought for the Robot” by Stefan Alcalá Slater. Here, the protagonist purchases an inexpensive machine second-hand, only to find herself spending more and more money on upgrades and add-ons, and giving the thing both a face and a name, as the robot becomes part of the family. Sadly, though, not even “waterproofing spray” is sufficient to save the day when floods arrive and uproot their house from its foundations.

Finally, we come to “The Forest Through the Teas” by Wendy Nikel, an amusing bit of fantastical fluff, whose punny title hints at the tale’s epiphany. Here, Hyacinth Gartner and her tween granddaughter, Callie, although on the outs with each other, are attending the Ninety-Fifth Annual Ladies’ Mysticality Society Tea Party together, where a chance mix-up of teacups results in a possible rapprochement between the two. Ah, if only the generational divide could be bridged so easily in real life, but that’s why the story’s labeled—fantasy.