Bringing Bright Ideas to Life:  My Flash

By the time the last grocery store closed, Harrow Bend had already begun forgetting itself. The town lay in a shallow valley where wheat once grew tall enough to brush the sides of passing trucks. In the evenings the fields had moved like water when the wind came through, long golden waves folding and unfolding beneath the sky. Now the fields were the color of old bone. Dust drifted across the empty roads in pale spirals, and the wind moved through the valley with a dry whisp

He had been called many things before he ever knew his own name well enough to answer to it. Case number. Placement. Temporary. The foster homes blurred together like watercolors left out in the rain. Yellowed kitchens. Green carpets worn flat by strangers’ feet. Wallpaper with tiny blue flowers that seemed to watch him while he slept. The colors smeared together in his memory now, but the feelings never faded. Cold linoleum under bare feet at dawn. The sour smell of cigarett

The room was thick with shadows, thick enough to bite. Neon lights from the city outside cut jagged lines across the walls, slicing the gloom into fragments of color. She clutched the bottle like it was a lifeline, knuckles white against the cold glass, the liquid inside sloshing with each trembling movement. Her reflection in the cracked mirror was a stranger. Eyes rimmed with red, mascara streaked like black rivers down her cheeks. She looked at herself and didn’t recognize