Grin Win

A short, silly, odd flash story
by Maggie Slater

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Devon’s whole six-foot-two frame collapsed onto the kitchen stool, his gloomy eyes watching me. Where his mouth usually lay under the downy hints of his first moustache there was only blank skin. He’d lost his smile again. For the fourth time in three days. 

I sucked in a steadying breath and tried to keep the irritation out of my voice. “Where’d you have it last?” 

He shrugged and wilted onto the countertop. 

“How about last night?” I prompted. “You were gaming, right? Did you smile then?”

Another silent shrug. I glanced at the oven clock. I had twenty minutes before I had to leave for work, and his buddy would be picking him up for school in ten. We didn’t have time for this! 

“Why not wear Dad’s smile today?” 

Devon held out his arms, hands wide. Too big. Okay. 

“What about Nick’s? I’m sure he’d lend it to you for a day.”

Nick was his eleven year old brother. Not a precise fit, and missing some teeth, but better than nothing. Devon shook his head, holding up pinched fingers. Too small. Fine. 

I couldn’t spare mine. Any other day, I’d have happily offered it, even though he probably wouldn’t accept it, but the Nielsons were signing on the biggest house I’d ever sold. It’d make our vacation fund. It’d make a good chunk of his and Nick’s annual 529 contributions. I needed it for this meeting.

Seven minutes until his car came.

“Okay, okay, let’s think.” 

The coffee I’d chugged at 6AM to wake up was hitting my empty stomach hard. When was the last time I’d seen Devon’s smile? Not at dinner last night, certainly, when Brad made everybody grumpy and uncomfortable grilling Devon about his school day. Not yesterday afternoon, when I finally convinced him to bring the moldy dishes down from his room. 

His room! He was always leaving stuff laying around on the floor. I bolted upstairs to the mountain of smelly laundry he called his bedroom. I picked through it gingerly, trying not to gag. Nothing obvious. I fled back into the hall and shut the door behind me. 

Five minutes. 

I ran back down to the living room and pulled up all the couch cushions. I found Brad’s sexy smirk and tucked it in my back pocket. No need for the boys to know we’d messed around on the couch after they were both in bed. They didn’t need the therapy fuel. 

I searched through dog hair tumbleweeds under the other furniture, lifted the gritty edges of the rug to see if it’d slipped under the tassels, peeked between the books on the shelf in case it had gotten stuffed into the tattered copy of Hitchhiker’s Guide again: no smile. 

I raked my memory for some recollection of Devon laughing. It felt like it’d been forever. He’d grown so sullen over the last few years as puberty hit home. 

Then I remembered: last night, I’d heard that still-startlingly deep guffaw from Nick’s room. They’d been having one of those increasingly rare moments of goofy, brotherly camaraderie, curled up on Nick’s bed before lights-out watching silly cat videos and losing their minds. 

Three minutes. 

“I know where it is!”

I bolted upstairs to Nick’s room. 

Nick was tangled up in his blankets, half-in and half-out of his bed, his head on the floor. He was undressed, unfed, half-asleep, but his bus didn’t come for another forty-five minutes, and anyway, it was Brad’s problem this morning. 

“Rise and shine!” I sang, stooping to plant a kiss on his mussed hair. He grumble-mumbled, “Morning,” and then pretended to fall into a deep, snoring sleep. 

That’s when I spotted it: Devon’s big, toothy grin tucked just behind the bedside table where it must have fallen the night before. I snatched it and ran back downstairs just as Devon’s friend pulled his battered Ford Taurus into our driveway. 

“Here!” I tossed it to Devon’s outstretched hands. He slapped it on his face, and I saw those charming dimples that he had always been so embarrassed about. 

“Thanks, Mom,” he said in that deep voice I was still getting used to, and gave me a bear hug before ducking out to the waiting car. 

I signed the biggest deal of my life that morning, but honestly?

Finding that grin was the biggest win of my day. 

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Hi there! If you don’t know me, I’m Maggie Slater. I write speculative fiction of a variety of stripes ranging from outright horror, sci-fi, and fantasy to strange, humorous literary stuff. My work has appeared in genre mags like Apex Magazine, Metaphorosis (and even got translated into Mandarin for Science Fiction World), as well as in literary magazines like Redivider and The Core Review.

If you enjoyed this story, please consider donating a buck to my Ko-Fi or following me on Instagram (if you enjoy notebooks, books, movies, and occasional art journaling). I’m also loosely on Bluesky and Substack. Or subscribe to this blog for any and all updates of flash fiction, general writerly nonsense, and periodic interviews with fantastic authors!

It has been a whirlwind August. My family went on our EPIC, three-part voyage to the West Coast, and while it was awesome, I am so tired now.

First stop: L.A.

We stayed in an AirBnB by the ocean in San Clemente and spent almost every day at the beach with my sister and her family. The boys are all pretty close in age, and played together for hours. We did nothing else, aside from eat delicious food, and sleep way too late, and although I got sunburned, nobody else did! A small miracle when Andy is an almost literal vampire who catches fire if he’s in the sun between 10:30AM – 3:30PM. It was so ridiculously relaxing. We visited my long-time friend Karen at her retirement community, and on our last day, we drove Sunset Boulevard, Hollywood Boulevard, and had In-N-Out Burgers at a Mulholland Drive lookout above the valley. It was so very cool.

Second stop: Portland

Portland was me and Andy’s stomping ground from the late 2000s to the early 2010s. We weren’t sure what we’d find there, since the news on the East Coast tends to focus on all the no good, very bad things that have happened there in past years. A lot of the old restaurants we loved have closed, but there were a lot still there! In fact, we were pleased to find it was very much like we remembered. We took the boys to a cat-video compilation show at The Living Room Theater, spent too much at Powell’s, got perfectly lost in the Japanese Garden, wandered the hills of the Hoyt Arboretum, stepped inside a replica of Mt. St. Helens (complete with lava), and spent a ton of time with our beloved adopted family out there. We drove by all our old haunts, and dined at Pig-N-Pancake and McMenamins and Escape from New York Pizza and PDX Sliders and Rogue Brewing. We toured the submarine at OMSI.

And can I gush a little about HOW FREAKING BEAUTIFUL the PDX airport is now? Like…OMG guys. Wow. Best airport we’ve been in lately by FAR.

Third Stop: Seattle

After Portland, Andy and the boys flew home, but I continued on up to WorldCon. I only stayed for a day and a half, which was probably a little bit too short of a time, but I got to see everyone I desperately wanted to see, primarily my friends, Katherine Quevedo and Rachel Unger. They’re the absolute best, it was amazing to hang out with them in-person again! I also got to hang out with the lovely Scott from BCS and the imminently unmatchable Maurice Broaddus of Mo*Con fame, and I met a bunch of other people and made some new friends, too! It was a total blast.

Home Again

Back home at long last (and after a somewhat terrifying landing at Logan in Boston), I’m easing back into our summer schedule once again. We’ve been dealing with a cracked tooth, an accidentally defrosted freezer that required emergency cleanup, a broken Telsa solar system (still… ongoing since 7/1), and rescheduling everything we need to reschedule as plans and work requirements shift while we were on vacation. Still, it’s amazing to be sleeping in my own bed again, even if my brain is still on West Coast Time, and doesn’t want to go to sleep until midnight. Thanks, Brain!

In two weeks school starts up again, and my days are going to be unrecognizable after the last ten years of having an under 5 at home at all times. Both boys are going to be in full-time school come September. I’m going to have a lot more time to myself, and I’m trying to brace myself for the inevitable transition week. Every fall, I’m eager to kick into high gear on writing, but it always takes a week for me to get used to the new schedule. So while I’m looking forward to the newfound freedom, I’m also a little intimidated by it.

Otherwise, I’m spending time catching up on submissions for BCS and walking around my garden, seeing what’s blooming and what’s done. A bunch of black eyed Susans have popped up in places I didn’t remember planting them. The weeds have overrun my little vegetable patch, but to be fair I’ve neglected it all summer. The day lilies are gone, but there are a few scattered tiger lilies that have bloomed. When I was in second grade and moved to this house for the first time, we had tiger lilies everywhere. Then one year, a beetle or some disease came through, and pretty much wiped them out. We haven’t had any for years. I replanted some last fall in the hopes that maybe they’d make it, but I’d forgotten where I’d put them, so I’m really excited to see them!

The hydrangea is exploding, too, though I didn’t seed them with enough wood ash OR coffee grounds to turn them colors this year (pink for ash; blue for coffee), but the bush looks lush and happy, so I’m happy about that, too. The stonecrop is bursting with white buds. I can’t wait to see their merlot flowers this fall as one of the last-blooming. I wish I’d gotten my zinnia seeds planted, but ah well! Next year, eh? The lavender is booming, even the one that I had to chop back because it went all woody and crazy. Lots of mojito mint still, lots of parsley. The bleeding heart is completely done and has surrendered its corpse to the earth. There are a lot of weeds to chop back. The Milkweed is nearing its finale with pods full of silky seed fibers. I saw a caterpillar on one that was black and yellow and spiky (did not touch). I don’t know what that one is, though I’m 99.9% sure it’s not a Monarch. I’ll have to look what that is, and will add a footnote.

What I’m Going to Work On in September

I am SO excited, because I just had a major breakthrough on my work in progress novel that has been honest to goodness stalled for the past nine months. It’s been trapped in that uncomfortable percolating phase, with nothing coming together, nothing connecting. But I think I finally got it, and I am so excited to tackle this.

So September will be planning, prepping, and starting to write that draft as fast as I possibly can. Looking forward to making progress on it at long last!

I’m also spending a lot of time thinking about how to track my writing-in-progress projects, and removes the burden of uncertainty (a little) in what to pursue and what to abandon (even temporarily). I’m a fast writer (it’s not at all inconcevable for me to write 2k in an hour, and I often do), which means I produce lots of rough drafts. The challenge I run into is finishing them–or determining which ones are worth finishing–and getting them submitted. Most sit around for years, untouched.

So I’m looking for ways to organize myself and take those projects I really do want to finish and move them towards the completion. I’ve been a recovering perfectionist for a few years now, leaning hard into the 70% Rule, and coming to the awareness that my shit-detector is a bit overclocked. Part of my Friday Flash challenge has been to teach myself to let go of things and play more.

So that’s what’s going on with me right now. Keep cool, hang in there, enjoy these last two weeks of August, and I’ll post a Friday Flash this Friday and next Friday. After that, I’ll see whether or not that’s something I’m going to continue during the fall season, or if I’m going to let that slide to focus on bigger projects. I kind of enjoy Friday Flash being as summer-specific thing, but we’ll see.

Until next time!

Meant to post this a week ago when it came out, but I FORGOT. (Also, I’m on vacation, so that’s my excuse.) I’m on a group interview with the marvelous Benjamin Gorman of Not A Pipe Publishing via his YouTube channel Writers Not Writing! It’s a nice long one with the editor of HOPE: The Thing with Feathers (B. Morris Allen) and two co-contributors, Lisa Fransson and Louie Sullivan. We talk about lots of things–the anthology, politics, and hobbies!–and you’ll learn a little more about the anthology, too! Check it out here:

Hope you enjoy it, and definitely pick up a copy of HOPE: The Thing with Feathers which contains my strange escaping-toxic-friendship tale, “The Trash King”!

And if you’re in the Seattle area 8/15-8/16, send me a message via my contact page or Instagram/Substack and maybe we can meet up in person! :D

Aloe Gerald

A short, odd flash by Maggie Slater
*There is coarse language in this one. You’ve been warned.*

“We’re exchanging vows on Thursday,” Alice said as though she weren’t sitting with a tattooed arm draped around a large potted aloe. Its prickly fronds were thick and robust in the shade from the bistro table’s umbrella. 

Christiana waited for Alice to crack a grin, to laugh it off, to make fun of her for her gaping disbelief, but Alice merely sat there, as cozy with the aloe as she might have been with a human lover.

“You’re…marrying a plant.” 

“His name’s Gerald, but technically, yes. He’s a six year old Aloe vera, which makes him about twenty-four, so the age-difference isn’t that crazy. Anyway, I wanted you to witness it for us.” 

The aloe looked smug to Christiana, cocky to the tips of its tentacular blades. Was it her imagination, or did it lean closer to Alice when she stooped to brush her lips against it? 

Alice chuckled. “He says you shouldn’t beat yourself up for being prejudiced against him. He gets that cross-genus relationships can seem a bit weird at first.” 

The breeze picked up; Gerald’s fronds shifted, almost vibrating in the moving air. He was so incredibly green, a bright, hungry green that made Christiana suddenly self-conscious of the limp spring salad left on her plate in a pool of sanguine balsamic dressing. She could feel him watching her every move, observing everything she did, absorbing the very light that reflected off her skin and bounced onto his firm leaves. 

Christiana took a drag of water at the sudden heat invading her skin. 

Yeah. Oh, yeah. Drink that shit. Hydrate, bitch.

She choked. “Wh-what?” 

“I said that the ceremony’s going to be at our house, around three o’clock. Just a few friends and the officiant. You know them. Nick, Pauline, Jeremy—the gang. But don’t tell Louise. She wouldn’t understand, but it’d hurt her feelings not to be included. I just don’t want that kind of negative energy on our special day, you know?”

Gerald the Aloe reclined in his pot like a regular, boring plant. He didn’t look any different than any of the ones Christiana had inadvertently killed in the six years since she’d lived on her own. Yet, there was something about him, about the way his largest leaves stroked Alice’s arm possessively, or the way his upper fronds seemed stuck in a perpetual flip-off position. Gerald didn’t give a damn, about anyone, of that she was certain. 

“Um, bathroom?” 

Alice followed her away from the table, and the moment they were safely out of Gerald’s sight, Christiana grabbed her arm. “He’s weird. I don’t like him.” 

“Plants give off really different vibes than humans. You’ll get used to it when you spend some time with him. He’s definitely prickly on the outside, hard to get a handle on, you know? But deep down, he’s really giving. He’s helped me heal more times than I can say.” 

Christiana weighted her words, and then swallowing said, “I think he was just coming on to me.” 

Alice stiffened. “What?”

“Just now, when I was drinking my water, I heard- I thought he said-”

“Goddammit!” Alice tore free from Christiana’s grasp and went tearing out onto the restaurant patio. 

By the time Christiana caught up, Alice was screaming at the plant in front of everyone. “-promised! You swore you’d changed, you pup-of-a-turnip!” 

Christiana didn’t catch Gerald’s response, but whatever it was made Alice break into a shrill, angry laugh. 

“You think that excuse is going to fly again? That bullshit? After everything we talked about with the counselor, about your disgusting obsession with Evian and Polar Springs commercials, you sick, dirt-sucking freak? I cannot believe I trusted you again after that shit with Louise! I knew, I knew, it was all you, but I blamed her, you gnat-infested sun-whore! Fuck you!” 

Patrons at the other tables who had up until now merely watched the fight with startled delight, now jumped up and shouted as Alice grabbed Gerald’s pot and made to throw him across the patio. 

The bald middle-aged man snagged the pot from her. “Hey! Hey, now. Let’s all just calm down, okay?”

Tears poured down Alice’s cheeks as  Christiana caught her by the shoulders, holding her back. 

“You lying shit-monger! We’re through! Don’t come looking for me when you’re wilted and dry and root-rotted, you-!” 

The bald man set Gerald back down on the latticed patio table just as a police cruiser glided up to the curb. The door clunked and an officer clambered out. Christiana drew Alice towards the sidewalk. 

“He’s not worth it,” she whispered as Alice collapsed against her, sobbing like her sorrow would crack her ribs. 

“I loved him so much!” Alice wailed. “I took such good care of him all those years together, how could he hurt me like this?”

Christiana made a soothing sound and glanced back at the café. The police officer was speaking to the bald man now. A single frond lay broken on the concrete. Christiana hurried Alice onward, trying not to think about the stump on Gerald’s shoulder, its healing juices weeping for no one. 

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Hi there! If you don’t know me, I’m Maggie Slater. I write speculative fiction of a variety of stripes ranging from outright horror, sci-fi, and fantasy to strange, humorous literary stuff. My work has appeared in genre mags like Apex Magazine, Metaphorosis (and even got translated into Mandarin for Science Fiction World), as well as in literary magazines like Redivider and The Core Review.

If you enjoyed this story, please consider donating a buck to my Ko-Fi or following me on Instagram (if you enjoy notebooks, books, movies, and occasional art journaling). I’m also loosely on Bluesky and Substack. Or subscribe to this blog for any and all updates of flash fiction, general writerly nonsense, and periodic interviews with fantastic authors!

Note: I don’t have a picture for this one, and I’m not sure quite how many words it is, because I wrote it on my phone this morning, but gosh darn it! I still did a flash story this week! 😂

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The Eclair

A flash story by Maggie Slater

Evelyn had dreamed of eating Parisian eclairs at a bistro ever since she was six years old, and now that she had one, she couldn’t do it. Its lacquer black chocolate stripe made her think of ancient chests filled with dust and scrolls and secrets. It’s beautifully rounded pastry shell looked as of it had been laminated with hope itself, and not just ordinary butter. 

For an hour after she finished her coffee, it sat on the plate before her, untouched. The waiter came by several times and asked her something in French that sounded nothing like what she’d studied in high school or independently in the year since her retirement and subsequent divorce. She smiled at him, paid her bill, and nestling the eclair in a nest of tissues from her purse, she took it back to her rented apartment.

In the three weeks of her stay, she had done all the things she’d always dreamed of doing in Paris. The Louvre was much less impressive and much more crowded than it had been in her imagination. Norte Dame, a bit smaller. But the old cobbled rues lined with trees and the Arc de Triumph were lovely enough, she felt by the end of her visit that all in all, it had been worth it. 

But she still hadn’t eaten the eclair. She’d put it in a white cardboard box she’d gotten from a little jewelry shop, and it sat undisturbed among tissue paper on the top shelf of the tiny apartment fridge. When she had packed all her other things—the clothes she’d bought especially to wear in Paris to seem like a local and not a tourist, the books in French she’d picked up from a street vendor along the Seine, the handful of mementos and knickknacks to remind her of this long-awaited and much-earned reward to herself—she took the box from the fridge and looked at the eclair.

She wouldn’t be able to take it on the plane, she knew. If she put it in her suitcase, it would certainly be crushed. She had to eat it now, or throw it away.

The lacquered chocolate had lost its luster. Beads of sweat pearled along its surface in the humid air. The pastry sagged like tired skin. 

Evelyn lifted the eclair from its tissue bed, only to find it had grown tacky, cleaving to the moist paper. Try as she might, she couldn’t pick it all off. The chocolate smeared her fingers. She tried to hold back tears. 

Her phone buzzed frantically: her ride to the airport, waiting on the street, no doubt. 

The pastry split across her palms, oozing custard in a clump down her wrist, dropping a glob onto her white linen pants she’d bought at a boutique just down the street. 

Too late, she thought, as the saturated pastry skin sloughed to the floor. 

Too late, she thought as chocolate smeared across her empty hands, mangled with torn tissue paper. 

Too late, she thought as her phone rang and rang, eager to drag her back home. 

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Note: There’s usually some info about me or my ko-fi if you enjoyed the story and would like to buy me a coffee (or an eclair!), but on my phone I’m limited! Feel free to poke around the site to learn more if you’re so inclined! Thanks for reading!

Le vrai visage de la beauté

A short horror flash by Maggie Slater

Monsieur Poulain was well known for his carnal appetite and unrivaled portraits, but this new series entitled Le vrai visage de la beauté disturbed even his most ardent admirers. One such of these, Mademoiselle Gibault, stood with the tip of her tiny nose almost touching the final small canvas, upon which the portrait’s subject had sloughed off the skin of its cheeks, exposing creamy brushstrokes of bone. 

            She was a beautiful girl, Mme. Gibault, but the kind average men rarely cast a glance upon: strange cheekbones, angular jaw, hauntingly deep-set eyes, and lank, black hair that would be stunning rendered in ink or charcoal. To the artist, however, with his superior eye, her features hooked his soul and made him hunger for a canvas to catch her on. 

            “What do you think of it, my dear?” M. Poulain glided up to her elbow, proud that he’d kept the starving tremble of desire out of his voice. He took a drag on the cigarette pinched between his fingers. They itched awfully to trace the line of her neck. “It’s dreadful, no? What did the critics call it? ‘Une horreur.’” 

            The breath wavered in Mme. Gibault’s throat, and the quick step she took backwards made his head reel as if drunk. “Non, Monsieur. I think it’s the most beautiful portrait I’ve ever seen.” 

            Her lace-gloved finger rose to hover just a hair’s width from a gob of crusted maroon paint on the canvas. “Just here, where the light catches upon the glistening of the flesh, showing it to be fresh and moist where you’ve pared it back to expose the skull. Or here, where you’ve hinted in the shadows of the dried rivulets of blood seeping from when you gouged out her eyes.”

            M. Poulain felt a bird’s fluttering in his chest, and stubbed out his cigarette in the ashtray at hand. “Mademoiselle, you are mistaken. There was no paring of flesh or gouging of eyes.” He forced a laugh that sounded reedy even to his own ears. “This corpse I acquired from a local physician and rotted away naturally. I merely painted it throughout its decomposition. Unnerving to the public, to be sure, but death is itself unnerving.” 

            Mme. Gibault stood as still as a professional model, only her dark, hooded eyes shifting to peer at him. “Non, Monsieur. It is you who are mistaken. The bruising is wrong for the death to be long past. The light still lingers in her eyes, just there.” She pointed again to the final portrait, the ravaged face, the waxen girl with her exposed bones and a hint, yes, a hint of terror trapped in her eyes. 

            A shudder of revulsion rippled through M. Poulain as he withdrew a step. How was it possible to capture such things in mere paint? He trusted his own skills, his eye was impeccable, but the accuracy of the rendering now made him faintly sick to his stomach. If this girl could detect it, could not someone of authority? Someone who might ask unpleasant questions? 

            “Come,” M. Poulain said, taking the girl firmly by the elbow. “This image has clearly overwrought your delicate sensibilities. There is a chair, just beyond the gallery, that you might rest in.” 

            Was it his imagination, or did she resist, ever so slightly. But no, she came then, allowing him to guide her through the crowd and into the back halls where there was neither art nor audience. The moment they stepped among the shadows, however, he felt a pinch upon the back of his hand. He jerked his arm away from her with a curse, but was suddenly unsteady on his feet, bumping up against the wall. 

            “Come with me, Monsieur,” Mme. Gibault said in the pandering voice of a nursemaid to an ancient and demented man. “Steady now. It’s not far.”

            She led him to the empty room, and lay him gently back on a velvet-padded bench he had not noticed there before. 

            “What is the meaning of this?” he croaked, already losing control of his tongue as she picked up a long, curved boning knife. 

            “What was the meaning in what you did to my dear cousin, Sabine? Do you know how delighted she was to learn that you had chosen her as a model? My poor Sabine, she believed that the face people show the world is always the true one. But people like you and I, Monsieur, we know that is not the case, and I should like very much to expose yours.”

            The knife bit into the skin of his jaw, but whatever she had given him made him powerless to so much as lift a finger, let alone scream as she peeled his flesh mask away.   

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Hi there! If you don’t know me, I’m Maggie Slater. I write speculative fiction of a variety of stripes ranging from outright horror, sci-fi, and fantasy to strange, humorous literary stuff. My work has appeared in genre mags like Apex Magazine, Metaphorosis (and even got translated into Mandarin for Science Fiction World), as well as in literary magazines like Redivider and The Core Review.

If you enjoyed this story, please consider donating a buck to my Ko-Fi or following me on Instagram (if you enjoy notebooks, books, movies, and occasional art journaling). I’m also loosely on Bluesky and Substack. Or subscribe to this blog for any and all updates of flash fiction, general writerly nonsense, and periodic interviews with fantastic authors!