Explosive flash fiction from the first year of quarterly contests at the The Molotov Cocktail lit zine. This anthology includes the prize winners and honorable mentions in our Flash Monster, Flash Future, Flash Fool, and Flash Fury contests.
Selected by Josh Goller and Mary Lenoir Bond, the 40 bite-sized stories found within these pages are strange and surreal, dark and offbeat, bizarre and unsettling, with some wry humor to boot.
In Erica David's Flash Monster winner, "I, Homunculus," we read the first-person origin story of a creature born from a mandrake root under a gallows. In Sarena Ulibarri's Flash Future winner, "Natural Selection," the deer have taken over the neighborhood as humanity has succumbed to a horrific virus that turns people feral. Meanwhile, "Our Little Ghost" by JT Gill, winner of the Flash Fool contest, reflects upon an otherworldly child who appears in a boathouse. And the Flash Fury winner, "Goodbye, Sunshine" by Sylvia Heike, shares the inner monologue of an insidious presence inside a yellow-obsessed mind.
Elsewhere, we have shadow monsters, alien babies, genetically-engineered giants, drugs that might make you disappear, time travel, highway snipers, van-driving cult leaders, fiery plane crashes, shamanistic butchers, fortress-building pigs, punchline-delivering grim reapers, macabre brothels, overprotective mothers, sinister fuzz, and much more.
In addition to contributors listed above, this anthology also includes work by Ian Shine, Jo Gatford, Barbara Leahy, Christopher Allen, Jeffrey Spinazzola, Marie Gethins, Puneet Dutt, Chris White, Chris Milam, Alex Cothren, David Novak, Anthony Nichols, Carlos Orozco, Colton Adrian, Tracy Garbutt, John Rickett, Stephanie Roman, Christina Villafaña Dalcher, Nicholas Lamb, Fred Senese, Melissa Monks, Lindsay Dick, Heidi Sterling, Joseph Grantham, Kyle Yadlowski, and Holly Collingwood.
Josh Goller started out in the Midwest but transplanted to the damp and gloom of the Pacific Northwest. He founded The Molotov Cocktail lit zine in 2010. He earned his MFA in Fiction at Pacific University and now resides in Portland where he enjoys driving through fog and hipster-watching. When he's not lurking behind the curtain, he can be found critiquing music, film, and books for Spectrum Culture, where he also serves as Managing Editor. His short fiction, essays and articles have appeared in many online and print publications, and he is a contributing writer for Listverse. He wishes the wages of sin would include a cost of living increase every once in a while.
Mary Lenoir Bond spent most of her life in California, where she worked as an actress in Los Angeles before studying fiction, poetry, and theater at the University of Southern California, where she graduated Magna Cum Laude and Phi Beta Kappa. She went on to earn her MFA in Writing at Pacific University. Mary has studied advanced fiction with T. C. Boyle and Aimee Bender, and learned the art of poetry with Marvin Bell, Ellen Bass, Dorianne Laux, Anna Journey, and others. Along the way, she fell in love with San Francisco, where she lived for many years, but now lurks under the gloomy skies of Portland, where she makes jewelry, perfume and other sensory products. She is the recipient of the Virginia Middleton Award for poetry, works as a freelance writer, contributes articles to wildfeather.com, and has seen her poetry published in Prairie Schooner, december Magazine, and Silk Road.
