Special Double Review
by
Wendy Vidlak & Philip Hutson
Flash Fiction Online #154, July 2026
“Kingdom of Steve” by Nick Badot (Literary, not reviewed)
“A Perfect Light” by Laura Duerr
“Fragments Recovered from the Wreck of the Seaglass” by E.M. Linden
“Seastrand Beyond” by Anna Clark
“End of the World” by Nick Ekkizogloy (Literary, not reviewed)
Reviewed by Wendy Vidlak
The July issue of Flash Fiction Online opens with off-planet horror. Pipe fitters in an alien ocean play the main characters in this horror short story entitled “A Perfect Light” by Laura Duerr. The scene is set early with alien barnacles that eat through pipes in hours and teams of workers tasked with cleaning them. The workers identified through their headlamps inconsistent light bulbs, important for the newcomer to realize because comms go out often. As the story progresses, the new pipefitter Reyna is left on her own to face a crazy underwater environment and a monster or two. The headlamps play a pivotal role in the horror portion of this story, making for a fun, somewhat ambiguous ending, giving enough of an image of what Reyna is facing for the imagination of the reader to take the horror the rest of the way.
The next piece of flash fiction is told in the form of an epistolary story. Journal entries, lab reports, and letters make up the contents of “Fragments Recovered From The Wreck of the Seaglass” by E.M. Linden. The format of the story augments the mystery well, with illegible blanks placed in key parts, making this story one of discovery both for the main character, but also the reader. Puzzling out what happened to the Lake Eyrie expedition that crashed on a voyage to a mysterious forest on a distant shore where the locals fear visiting. Told from a botanist’s standpoint, we learn of the crew and what befalls them when they find the mysterious trees bearing fruit. The ending contextual notes give it a truly scary resolution.
What if you could receive texts from beyond? “Seastrand Beyond” by Anna Clark explores family dynamics and faith through a comforting fantasy piece. A caretaker of the beach named Agnes watches for the sayings of the deceased that appear occasionally upon the sand. She takes the job hoping to hear from her own parents. The piece displays a lot of emotion through the processing of short sayings written in seaweed on the beach and the caretakers’ reactions to them. It is a character-driven piece that makes the reader think long and hard.
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Flash Fiction Online #154, July 2026
“Kingdom of Steve” by Nick Badot (non-genre, not reviewed)
“A Perfect Light” by Laura Duerr
“Fragments Recovered from the Wreck of the Seaglass” by E.M. Linden
“Seastrand Beyond” by Anna Clark
“End of the World” by Nick Ekkizogloy (non-genre, not reviewed)
Reviewed by Philip Hutson
In “A Perfect Light” by Laura Duerr, the author takes us to a far-off world where a team of undersea maintenance divers in the black and forbidding depths of an alien environment are tasked to keep a giant pipeline clear of the alien barnacles that threaten the integrity of the large pipe, for the crystalline barnacles attach tentacle-like anchors onto the outer wall of the pipe, that, if not cleared by the maintenance crew after only a few minutes, threaten to rupture the expensive pipeline. The bulk of the story is atmospheric and well drawn, showing the harsh conditions in which the divers must work—the freezing cold and total darkness which surrounds them every moment of each work period—to the occasional curious creatures coming close to determine if the strange newcomers to their watery world might serve as a new source of food. The only way the divers are able to navigate while 200 meters below the surface is from the rows of light emitting diodes on their helmets, and even then this proves unreliable from time to time as some of them quit functioning on a sporadic basis, giving each team member a different illuminated signature, as the primary character, Reyna, soon finds out. The author drives home the smothering isolation and psychological terror of the divers’ job when a communications failure leaves them with only a grip on the pipeline their only tether back to their habitat. It’s probably a failing on the part of this reviewer, but it took a couple of passes to spot the clues the author dropped along the way in order to make the ending pay off as planned.
“Fragments Recovered from the Wreck of the Seaglass” by E.M. Linden is the story of the lost Lake Eyrie expedition to a far northern land in 1753. The story is told in the form of diary entries from the partially destroyed journal of the protagonist, James Askew. From James’ entries, we find that the land being explored is not a vast frozen tundra but a boreal forest that had previously been inaccessible by ice. Because of an unusually warm summer, the passage to the forest, across a lake, was now finally possible. Our protagonist is a newly graduated botanist who begins his story understandably excited and amazed at his good luck in being selected for the expedition. As the story continues, with bits and pieces of the ill-fated expedition revealed, his excitement is replaced by despair, then finally reluctant resignation to his fate. The minimalist approach used by the author fits the flash fiction format perfectly and is well done, with only necessary fragments of information used to further the story. Not wishing to reveal too much of the story and risk a spoiler, the description of what happens to the crew of the expedition reminds one of “Dreamcatcher” by Stephen King.
“Seastrand Beyond” by Anna Clark takes place during winter, in a seaside resort that is a popular escape during the summer months. From descriptions of local color and other contemporary items mentioned along the way, the hamlet is located on the English coast in the early 2000s. The author sets the pervading atmosphere from the beginning, with the description of the resort leaving one with the feeling of dead flowers still standing long after the first frost, recalling stories by Ray Bradbury. The story focuses on Agnes, a caretaker in her sixties, facing and accepting her mortality. She sees the beauty in every season of life. An early hint of the direction this touching story might be going is when we are given the phrase “a winter destination for the dead,” but even with that, it didn’t go in the direction I thought it would. Agnes’ story was so full of melancholy it could have easily been squeezed and distilled to two fingers of regret.
“Seastrand Beyond” hints more of magical realism than traditional fantasy and is a solid story, especially in its wise choice of nearly every word given the flash fiction word restrictions. The ending, not what I expected, came too quickly and was well done.
Philip Hutson’s ramblings and poor attempts at storytelling can be seen at https://tr8t.com