Flash!
A Journal of Very Short Fiction
Editors:
Mollie Monje, Mercedes Parker, and Matthew Bardowell
Cover Art: Alexa Wideman
Webmaster: Joel Lindsay
Flash! is a collection of short stories published by the Department of English at Missouri Baptist University, One College Park Dr., St. Louis, MO 63141.
Submissions: To submit a flash fiction piece, please attach it as either a Word file (.doc or .docx) or a PDF to matthew.bardowell@mobap.edu. Submitted stories must be 50-1000 words in length; however, exceptions can be made at the editors’ discretion. We consider up to three stories from each author.
Please include the following information when submitting a flash fiction piece: author name, school or affiliation, story title, number of works submitted (up to three stories are allowed), word count for each story, and a short biographical statement (50100 words). Multiple stories can be submitted in a single document. Interested students, faculty, and friends of the Department may submit previously unpublished manuscripts to matthew.bardowell@mobap.edu for consideration.
Flash! is published once annually, exclusively online. Our submission deadline is September 1st, and our target publication date is October 1st.
Missouri Baptist University reserves the right to publish accepted submissions in Flash!; upon publication, copyrights revert to the authors. By submitting, authors certify that the work is their own. All submissions are subject to editing for clarity, grammar usage, and Christian propriety. The views expressed in this publication do not necessarily reflect the views of Missouri Baptist University.
Editors’ Note
Dear Readers,
Welcome to this year's edition of Flash!. We are thrilled to showcase some fabulous works from our MBU community. The pieces featured are written exclusively by students and staff, and we are delighted to share them with you.
This year's stories cover a variety of topics. Some focus on the pain and growth that come with maturing such as “When She Doesn’t Need You” while others, like “Sasha Was Strange,” explore the complexities of human connections. But the predominant theme encompassing these stories is a colorful connection to imagination, and this often intertwines with the themes above.
The intersection of these themes highlights a broad spectrum of the human experience. As these characters go through small and large moments of life, their authors call us to remember the transitional periods of our own development, no matter how awkward or bittersweet. Even so, they could potentially give us a glimpse into the rites of passage that we have yet to or may never endure.
Whether these pieces cause you to look behind or ahead, we hope they encourage you to reflect on the chapters of your own story.
Mollie Monje, & Mercedes Parker
St. Louis, MO
January 2026
Tommy’s Lemonade Stand
“Fresh-squeezed lemonade! $5 or BEST OFFER!” That was what Tommy’s sign said. When he brought it downstairs to show his mom, it had only said “Fresh-squeezed lemonade! $5.”
“Tommy boy, you’re going to price yourself right out of the market,” was her comment.
Tommy didn’t think so. His lemonade was worth $5. Probably more, but he didn’t want to seem greedy.
“It’s homemade, mom. You know how hard it is to squeeze a bunch of lemons? Plus, I melted the sugar into the water like you showed me. Stove, pan, stirring. The whole nine. I didn’t just dump it in cold like some noob.”
She gave him a look over the top of her glasses. It was an “I see you” look, but not without sympathy. She convinced him to add “best offer” to the sign. In the end, he talked himself into thinking that maybe someone would taste the lemonade and think it was so good that they’d fork over a twenty. Hey, it could happen. People think kids are cute when they’re trying to earn money.
Now, at the bottom of his driveway, he realized he had a problem with his business model. Mostly, it came down to location. For one thing he lived at the end of a cul-de-sac. Not a ton of foot traffic. He knew that now. He considered moving to the nearest cross-street, but that seemed like a to-do. He decided it was best to stand pat. Wait for customers. Word of mouth would follow, then they’d come in droves. He believed in his product.
Just then, a young man came into view, cresting the small hill that led to his house. He seemed to be in his twenties. He was carrying something. Some papers. Maybe a clipboard. He looked sweaty.
“This is it,” Tommy said to himself. “Game time.”
The young man turned down one of his neighbor’s walkways, knocked on the door, and waited. His neighbor opened the door, and the young man started to say something. Tommy couldn’t hear what, but he saw his neighbor, a middleaged blonde woman, start to shake her head. The young man went on. She put her arms out in front of her and moved her hands like she was playing an invisible accordion. This gesture, combined with the head shaking, led Tommy to believe this discussion wasn’t going well. His neighbor raised her voice a little, and Tommy heard the word “solicitation.” Then he heard the door slam.
The young man back-pedaled away from the door, looked down at his clipboard, made a note, and walked on with an extra little bounce in his step. Tommy didn’t know whether to feel bad for him or admire him. The young man looked farther along the street and spotted Tommy. Tommy smiled. The young man skipped the next few houses and made a beeline for Tommy’s lemonade stand. It was starting to feel like a sale.
“Good afternoon, son. Got yourself a little lemonade stand, I see,” the young man said.
As a rule, Tommy didn’t like when men who weren’t his father called him son, but if this man was about to buy some lemonade, he could call him Stinky for all Tommy cared.
“Yessir. Five dollars a glass and well worth it!” Tommy said brightly.
The young man looked down at Tommy’s poster-board.
“Five dollars, huh? Well, that’s not exactly what your little sign says, now is it? You shouldn’t have added the ‘best offer’, kid. Didn’t you know people were gonna low-ball you?”
Tommy didn’t know what to say to that. He looked up at this young, sweaty man, a man clearly in need of a refreshing glass of lemonade, and just didn’t know what to say.
The young man, reading Tommy’s discomfort, said, “Ah don’t worry, kid. You’re young. You’ll learn how the world works soon enough. I’ll take one.”
Tommy’s worried face broke into a relieved grin.
“Alright! Here you go, sir. You wont be disappointed!” Tommy busied himself with the cup and the pouring, and handed over his first sale.
The young man drank deeply. When he finished, he wiped his mouth with the back of his sweaty arm. His eyes brightened. Tommy could tell that he liked it, but he wasn’t surprised. Tommy believed in his product.
“Well, well,” the young man said. “That is some good lemonade!”
Tommy swelled with pride.
“And you know, you’re right. It might even be worth five dollars.”
The young man fished in his pockets and drew something out. He reached for the money jar, and Tommy’s heart sank when he heard exactly four coins hit the glass.
“That's my best offer,” the young man said. “So long, kid.”
He walked off with that same bounce in his step, and Tommy stood there stunned. He felt like a chump. He poured the coins out and examined them.
“Not even a quarter,” Tommy said ruefully. There was a dime, a nickel, and two pennies. Pennies. It was an insult. He held the pennies in his hand about to toss them into the street, when he paused, rubbed his eyes, and looked again. One of the pennies looked funny. Made Tommy think he was seeing double, only he wasn’t. The first penny looked fine, but the other one looked like the letters above Honest Abe’s head were printed twice right over the top of each other.
He walked back into his house. He needed a break. He didn’t even want to look at lemonade right now. He told his mom what happened with the young man. She looked at him over her glasses again and gave him a hug.
Tommy sprinkled the coins on her desk and said, “17 cents your best offer... yeah right. But that penny is weird. It looks like it got messed up when they made it.”
His mom took a closer look, “That is weird, isn’t it? You know sometimes these mistakes at the mint can be valuable.”
“A valuable penny?” Tommy wasn’t buying it.
“I’m serious. Let’s check.”
She pushed away her work, and set to googling.
He was playing Roblox when he heard his mom call him back to her desk.
“Oh, To-mmy. Come he-ere,” she sang. “Do you know what you have here? Do you even know?”
“Yeah, 17 lousy cents. You can’t even buy a gumball with that.”
“Correction, Tommy. You have 16 cents ”
“Even less that I thought!” Tommy cried.
“Let me finish, Tommy boy, let me finish. You have 16 cents, and a very special penny. This…” here she held up the weird penny with the double-printed letters, “this, Tommy, is called a 1995 Double Die Obverse Lincoln.”
“English, mom?”
His mom laughed and said, “Double Die Obverse means they cast it twice at the mint. That's why the letters in “LIBERTY” look the way they do. It’s rare. And valuable.”
Now she was talking Tommy’s language.
“How much?” he said, excited in spite of himself.
“Well, this website says twenty to forty dollars uncirculated.”
“What does that mean?” Tommy could hardly contain himself.
“You know, like not getting passed from hand to hand. This one’s been circulated, so it’ll be worth less than twenty.”
“How much,” Tommy repeated. This time warily.
His mom turned the computer screen so he could see it. Through her smile, she said, “Five dollars.”
Matthew Bardowell
When She Doesn’t Need You
It had always been Jemma.
That’s who he lived for since the day Thomas Rivers had broken fourteenyear-old Jemma’s heart and Quinn Flores was imagined into existence. Quinn knew he loved Jemma; for years he believed she felt the same, that she would always need him. That feeling changed as he saw her dance in her wedding dress with her new husband.
“Still haven’t figured it out, friend?”
Quinn recognized Lola’s voice, though it had been a long time since he had heard it. Lola was Jemma’s first imaginary childhood friend, her first playmate.
“Why would she imagine us if eventually she wouldn’t need us?”
Lola’s pink princess dress ruffled around as she spotted Jemma and Hudson waltzing for their first dance. She giggled at the sight.
“I remember when we practiced her wedding dance to Prince Charming when she was little. When we would spin and spin and...”
“Lola.” Quinn stopped her twirling, his eyes moving to the bride. “She doesn’t remember that. Why doesn’t that bother you?”
Jemma’s fictitious beau watched in dismay as Hudson guided his wife around the dance floor, passing right by her imaginary friends without a second thought. It was like she was ignoring him. Lola swayed to the angelic music.
“She doesn’t need me anymore.”
“Doesn’t that scare you?” His voice tried to hide its shaking.
Lola’s small palm grasped his bigger one. “She has someone else to take care of her. Jemma grows up and something bigger comes to help her.”
Quinn shook his head at the couple, refusing to let the girl go. He released Lola’s hand as the first dance ended. Jemma walked around the tables embracing guests with a beautiful smile, her husband greeting friends on the other side of the room. Quinn was a few tables away when he was stopped again.
“Not trying to keep our girl from her party, are we?”
The young phantom grimaced, turning to see the face of white clown makeup with a deep voice that could rattle bones.
“Nice to see you too, Jamboree.”
The clown smirked, grasping Quinn’s shoulder. They looked on at the bride as she laughed with two of her bridesmaids. “Still can’t believe she’s married.” The younger man didn’t speak. “It isn’t easy Quinn, but it's necessary. It’s time to let her go...”
“I can’t.” He broke away from the clown. “She needs me.”
“Not anymore.” Jamboree stated, his painted-on smile hiding the flat line of his lips. His beady green eyes shifted to the groom planting a kiss on his motherin-law's cheek before shaking hands with his father-in-law.
Quinn shook his head. “I need to talk to her. What if he leaves her one day? Who will she have then?”
“He won’t. You and I both know he won’t.”
“So, I’m supposed to let her imagination die, like all adults?”
“Imagination doesn’t die, Quinn.”
“Then who will be here to make sure she’s alright? Late at night when she’s afraid and the world’s asleep, who will hold her and say everything's ok?”
Before the clown spoke, Quinn followed Jemma as she walked past the crowd into the bridal suite around the corner. The door shut quickly behind him, leaving the phantom alone with the bride. Jemma pulled a pin from her hair before removing her veil, fluffing out her shoulder-length curls before checking her makeup. Quinn watched her for a moment, taking in the radiance of her grace. His feet moved him forward until he stood directly behind her, his reflection in the mirror next to hers. Jemma said nothing, her grin spreading across her lips.
“It’s like we always dreamed, Lola.” She whispered to the silence. Her hands drifted across the vanity to a framed picture of her and Hudson. “And tonight,” she giggled, “I’ll sleep in peace. No more clowns to keep me awake.”
Quinn remembered how small and afraid she was when he first met her. Jemma used to hide behind her once-long hair, hoping it would shield her from the monsters in the dark. That was before she made Quinn. It was Quinn who helped her outgrow Jamboree’s nightmares, Jamboree who pulled her away from
Lola’s tea parties. Now it was Hudson pulling Jemma from the illusion of love Quinn offered. Progress was the way of life, yet he didn’t want to let her go. The apparition moved his hand to her shoulder, dismay setting in as it fell straight through her. She couldn’t see him anymore.
“Thank you, Quinn,” Jemma’s whisper was soft, “For keeping my heart safe.”
He froze as the girl walked out. Quinn stared at himself in the mirror. Jemma remembered him. She remembered Jamboree and Lola. She didn’t have to see them to know they could hear her words. His brown eyes pooled as he looked at his reflection, truth setting in.
Jemma didn’t need him anymore.
How did she remember them? There was only one answer: memories.
Memories weren't the death of imagination, simply figments of creativity moving on until they were needed. Jemma didn’t need him, but he would still be there.
“Ready to go, friend?”
Lola and Jamboree stood beside him, their reflections in the mirror absent. Quinn felt a tear fall down his face as he nodded. They took his hands, a shimmer coming around them.
“Wait.”
Lola and the clown exchanged a confused look before watching Quinn. The young man reached to straighten the picture of Jemma and Hudson, his hand falling through the solid structure. A smile came to his tear-stained face, the first one in a long time.
“Take care of our girl, Hudson.”
The three phantoms linked hands, the glow of memory coming over Quinn from the others. His smile was the last to fade as his reflection disappeared from the mirror.
Alyssa Gray
Sasha Was Strange
Sasha was strange. She would highlight empty spaces then proceed to write in them. I discovered this when I sat next to her last semester. I never worked up the courage to ask her why. The more time I spent with her, though, the more I realized that this peculiarity applied to her whole outlook on life. I once made the mistake of asking her how she was doing. It was unlike me to reach out to a person like that, but I’d been having a bad day and was way less diligent about upholding my walls. She told me she was doing magnificently. She said that day was going to be the best day of her life. I felt obligated to ask her why. She responded saying she was going to make it the best day of her life. Her response left my question largely unanswered, but having exhausted my sociability, I kept any further inquiries to myself.
Halfway through the semester, we had an important presentation in the class we shared. Just before it was my turn to go up and present, unprompted, Sasha turned to me and whispered something akin to: “Today is going to be another day.” Aside from the whole interaction being strange, her words were rather forgettable. The only reason I recall them is because of what happened soon after. Following my presentation, Sasha stood up and confidently walked to the front of the class. She had a bright red spot on the back of her gray pants. A rather large one too. The entire class broke into a series of murmurs. A soft spoken girl, whose name I don’t remember, scurried up, said something to Sasha, then gave her the jacket she had on. Sasha wrapped it around her waist then smiled and waved at the class as she walked out. Before the teacher could convince the next person to present early since the presentations were broken into two days and Sasha was the last one for that day Sasha returned. And with the jacket still wrapped around her waist, she presented her topic as if nothing had ever happened.
When she sat back down, I managed to scale my walls and ask her if she was okay. She smiled, but it was a patronizing smile, as if I was asking something that had an obvious answer. With a shrug she said, “I’m okay. Today is another day, remember?” After this, she finished packing up and went off to do whatever Sasha does.
From these incredibly limited interactions with Sasha, I learned something essential about her that answered the question I never worked up the courage to ask. Sasha walked into situations having already determined whether it was a highlighted space or not. There was no hindsight for Sasha. No looking back with regret or longing. She didn’t look back, having already written her notes, having already experienced life, and highlight the parts she deemed important and worth remembering. No. Sasha was strange. She would highlight empty spaces then proceed to write in them.
Thandizo Chifungo
The Abyss
I reach out into the dark abyss, hoping to grasp the image I’ve created of you. My outstretched arm is false as my gaze is set on my own reflection, not you. Despite having spent a shameful amount of time analyzing it, I consistently forget what my face looks like. In the dark, I see hints of light here and there, glinting about like indecisive fireflies. I reach out to grab one, but each time I think I’ve got it, I open my palms and find them empty. Deep down I know that there is a never-ending bright light always within my reach. But my outstretched arm is false and my gaze is set on other things.
The abyss is not silent. It is full of noise. Overwhelming sounds surround me as I hop around trying to catch the fireflies. I never do. Vaguely, I hear your faint voice snake its way through the chaos. I know it is yours because I have heard it before. I turn my head to listen, but my outstretched arm is false as my ears crave the noise. Enticing songs scatter my focus and I lose myself in the melodious cacophony. The fireflies dance before my eyes in a hypnotic motion. My mind is pacified but my soul remains unsatiated. Deep down I know where to find peace, but my outstretched arm is false because I know I am naked.
I came to this knowledge right before I entered the abyss. Nobody told me, 1 but now, amidst the noise, I am constantly reminded. Nothing here ever truly clothes me, but when I chase the fireflies fast enough and deafen my ears with the noise, I can forget that I am naked and hiding. If only for a minute. I know you are here with me in the abyss; I see glimpses of you from time to time. Every time, your outstretched hand is true and your gaze is fixed on me. Great fear seizes my heart, with hints of longing and regret. In your presence, the fireflies lose their luster and the noise disappears altogether, but the abyss remains because my outstretched arm is false and I cannot grasp your hand.
My outstretched arm is false because it is not really reaching for you, it is reaching for me. I make you a means to my satisfaction like the fireflies and the noise. And like the fireflies and the noise, this perverted cry for help leaves me empty. Am I a wave of the sea, blown and tossed by the wind?2 Will you pull me out of this abyss? Or have I seen your light and heard your voice for the last time.
Thandizo Chifungo
1. Genesis 3:11
2. James 1:6 7
Worlds
Bright royal blue flashes across the sky, signaling an announcement. The time has come. My time has come to step up. The most vibrant yellow beams I’ve ever seen color the sky, spelling out the declaration:
“Welcome Ephraim, Our New King.”
My thundering heart ascends as I take in my surroundings. Millions of people crowd the city square, looking like insects against the backdrop of the colossal skyscrapers. They’re all chanting my name.
“Ephraim! Ephraim! Ephraim!”
“Ephraim!”
My heart plummets to reality. My surroundings seem to de-pixelate, and I am once again in Ms. Trumble’s gray classroom. Gray walls, gray chairs, gray tables, gray air, gray clothes, gray hair…
“Answer the question, Ephraim.” She smiles, but the slight downward turn of her lips tells me that she’s just about done with us gifted children for the day.
“Hamlet is the anti-hero because he is fatally flawed, yet made to be the protagonist whom we root for despite his hypocrisy and egocentrism,” I rattle off robotically.
A familiar set of mumblings begins two desks over, behind me. “It’s not fair. He can basically look up the answers,” Pigtails starts as per usual.
“I know right?” Ponytail agrees. “He doesn’t belong here.”
“Do you have anything you want to share with the class, Rachel? Alicia?”
Goody-Two-Shoes speaks up from the front row.
“That’s enough girls. This is your last warning, no more talking during class,” Ms. Trumble reprimands. This is their 15th warning this week, but who’s counting.
I can practically feel their six eyes rolling as clearly as I can hear each of their scoffs, the telltale sign of a gifted child. Hypocritical egocentric buffoons made main characters, not by the work of their hands, but by pure circumstance sounds familiar. Ms. Trumble has a modicum of humor, I’ll give her that.
“That is all for today. Please have your reports ready by Monday. Have a good weekend,” she recites.
I sink back into my special chair and begin to feel the gray evaporate, revealing my kingdom.
“Ephraim! Ephraim! Ephraim!”
I walk gracefully up the palace stairs, flanked by royal guards on both sides. With each thunderous step, the chant escalates in volume, the crowd losing its synchronization. They love me.
A tap on my shoulder tries to drag me from my birthright, but I forge on, determined. My foot is inches away from my destiny, my breath has stilled within me, and I reach my arm out to grab the railing. But the tap returns with vengeance and urgency, ripping me away from my escape.
“Hey Ephraim! Do you need help getting back to your room?” Goody-TwoShoes pipes up.
I mourn another world lost. The newly created universe crumbles in the confines of my mind as the girl grabs my special chair and begins wheeling me out. I cannot protest. I can only grunt and groan, my fingers too tired from answering so many questions during class.
The gray classroom gives way to a gray hall, and eventually to a gray room. Far too exhausted to begin building another escape, I sit heavily in reality as my wardens, also known as the special needs assistance staff, begin the process of cleaning me and preparing me for bed.
Tomorrow, I’ll visit a tropical island and swim with the dolphins. Thandizo Chifungo
Scene From a Restaurant That is
Better Remembered Than Lived
It's a place, and so there must also be a time, yet they are of no importance for this moment. They are real, as most things are, yet not all things are factual. I could count on one hand the things that make the facts embellished. But there are probably enough for my second hand; however, if I’m counting on both hands, how could I write? So I may need to borrow your hands and thoughts to decipher how many things could really affect the way we look at the world.
Before we get there, before I find my five examples, and before I ask for your help, we first need number one. That must be the greatest thing if the mind thinks it first. Mine did because I speak from an experience, more than just one, enough to ask for your help on keeping count.
So then, what is it you demand? It’s love. And there are so many renditions of love, but this one is that sappy, unsure, unreal type that never feels real; sometimes we should trust that feeling. Love changes the world and makes everything fuzzy. What matters is that person. When love coats the eyes, the world could be real, but don’t count on it. Often the world is that feeling that matte painting made just for the song and dance number practiced meticulously in your head, it could be those woods behind your house that always seemed so frightening, but with this person, the once frightening sight is a fantasy world. Or it could be that cute scene from that movie with that actor that let himself go after a few years oh, and don’t forget that song, you know the one, to dance with them to that tune would make the universe stop as its sound plays from every corner.
So now please listen with intent. At the end there will be a quiz, and I am known to be a harsh grader.
“No, but you say all these things, and I think you have this untrue idea of me. Why do you think all that is true?” She glanced to the tree bearing its richest fruits through the heart of winter.
The words he wanted to say came to his tongue, but the mind held them back, assuring himself that if given the chance again, he would blurt out the words. Adjusting his place in the booth, his posture did not change much, the padding had been flattened decades prior.
“I thought we talked about thinking negatively of yourself; it gets neither of us anywhere.”
The autumn air rested quietly on her hands. She didn’t mind it but had taken notice when she wasn’t supposed to long enough and it would be difficult
to move her fingers.
“Yeah, I know, but I’m working on it, I could count on two hands how many self-deprecating thoughts I’ve had today and, no, it’s not all ten.”
“Well, we could still get that number down to one hand.” He pushed the empty plate lightly for something to do.
“Yeah, well, we’ll see.” A butterfly fluttered down from a place that does not matter and landed on her hand. She just remembered, she had caught him. With a quiet smile, she said, “Hey, you never answered my question. You say all those nice things, what makes you think it’s all true?”
That question forced his personal promise. He looked at her the same way he had all night, the yellow light of the old place laid favorably on her and her alone, “Because I love you.”
A shiver ran to her shoulders, and their dance was a third-act epilogue. A smile the two had never seen appeared over her face, but it was killed by words that almost came out. The words vanished in thought, and a twin of the previous smile took its place, “But like ,” her hands orbited one another, “ in what way?”
He was fixed on her, but the darkness from the windows begged for his attention. He would not give it.
“The exact way you think.”
“Me? But why?”
“For all the ways I have been assuring you for months.”
She smiled again in thought of sweet words forgotten; her smile remained over her face, for now it had to stay.
“But you know ”
“I know.” His smile held there by a force greater than most will ever know. “But if you tell me to wait, I will do it gladly.”
Had there been sun she would have promised that to any stranger, but in her lost glance there was a fine mist that forced the night to be still. “But I won’t, I can’t tell you the day or the time, it just has to happen.”
Leaning closer, he put his arms on the table, which gave a light tilt that was mutually ignored.
“I have expected nothing less since the third time we talked. Now that it’s been made real, why should my expectations change?”
“But now it’s real. There is no more little fun to be had because now we both know what we’ve both known.”
“What are you saying?”
“Just what you’ve known. I can't date you. And now if I try and work on myself to get to that place I want to be, all while keeping you in mind, who will I be changing for?”
“People change for people all the time, granted, good and bad. But why does this have to be for the bad?”
“Because I know it won't be for me.”
So, you, reader, you let me ask: who loved who?
Aidan Gravot
An Invisible Dog, a Distant Train
The pastor’s wife had waited over thirty years for a grandchild.
As soon as her second child was born, the pastor took her back to his hometown to raise the kids. It was a small, no-name town off a lonely highway in the middle of backwoods Arkansas. The nearest town was twenty minutes away, on the other side of the mountain, where the train came and departed, far beyond earshot. Although she was surrounded by a perpetual forest of tall, skinny trees, her life was abundantly full, and she cooked and cleaned and made music with her slim, doting hands for decades.
And when the kids grew up and moved far, far away, there was still the church to tend to. Worship had to be led on Sunday mornings, after all, and the banana pudding for the weekly fellowship dinner wouldn’t make itself. The congregation was, in its own way, her child too. Many of those in-between years were much the same, and all the while she waited patiently for the moment her home would be less of a nest for two old-timers and more of a nostalgic paradise for her children and she hoped their children, too.
She had waited more than thirty years for a grandchild.
And then, years later, seven hours away, came a miraculous disruption to her daily life: a baby girl. A granddaughter.
The pastor and his wife were elated. They drove in for her dedication, prayed up and down over that little girl, and loved her instantly. It was decided that their son and his family would come up that Christmas, and as soon as the girl was old enough, she would be sent to Arkansas for one short, glimmering week.
And here she was for her first solo visit, a full seven years and six months tall. Round, rosy cheeks and pale yellow hair. Her son’s blue eyes, the family nose, all condensed to Little Girl Size. A shapeless pink sundress wrinkled from the drive.
The girl had cried at parting with her mother, of course, but was soon won over by the kitchen that spoiled her with whatever she wanted, by the towering cows that mooed in the pasture behind the house, and by the creek that cooled her on hot July afternoons. In the evenings, while the pastor was doing his breathing treatment, she got out her guitar and sang to the little girl. Not lullabies, of course. The granddaughter begged repeatedly for the song about the invisible dog named Germs, who rode in the singer’s pocket everywhere a clever song for a clever, dog-obsessed girl.
The pastor’s wife often smiled because of the brain in that tiny, beautiful head. She found shapes in the clouds as they lay along the river and made elaborate stories with her aunt’s thirty-year-old forgotten dolls.
One day, for example, the granddaughter had to go potty, so she took her into the bathroom, pulled down her pink underwear, and sat her on the commode. The girl bunched her pink sundress in her small white fists and waited. There was a window next to the toilet, open for fresh air. No voice, no traffic, just the sight of the trees shifting their weight in the heat, bending and whispering to each other, trunks pointing toward the sun. The little girl sighed and smiled, resting an elbow on her bare knee.
“Look what God has made!”
She had not, of course, moved to tinkle. The grandmother was quick to conceal her laughter, hiding her mouth behind her hand.
Suddenly: “Shhh, Nana!”
Nana stilled, and for the first time in that house, heard a sound threaded through the trees a low, unmistakable, robust echo choo-chooing across the mountain: the train. It was remarkable she’d never heard it before. Hopping up, the granddaughter grinned. In addition to dogs, she also had an infatuation with trains. You could thank the pastor for that, who had given her a working, chugging train set for Christmas the past year under the impression that Thomas the Train was her favorite thing to watch (The train set was very loud. The grandmother took a quiet, mischievous pleasure in imagining it back home, chugging its way through her parents’ nerves).
Long after the girl left those grand Arkansas mountains and the real train behind, her grandmother listened for the sound of the whistle and steam. The window remained open on warm summer evenings, allowing a stale breeze to stir the house. And in quiet moments, when she rested between songs or bent to taste her pudding, she would pause, turning her ear toward the window.
Every time the train sounded through the mountains, she would stop what she was doing, put a hand on her husband’s shoulder if he was there, and listen.
Once again, she waited: not for arrival, but for return.
Mercedes Parker
Contributors
Matthew Bardowell is Associate Professor of English at Missouri Baptist University, where he teaches Composition and British Literature. Matthew enjoys spending time with his family and playing guitar. In addition to his work in Flash!, Matthew’s short fiction also appears in Cantos: A Literary and Arts Journal.
Thandizo Chifungo is a junior at Missouri Baptist University majoring in Social Science and minoring in Political Science. Her goal is to study law after graduating. She is an international student from Malawi. Her love for writing was cultivated by her 8th grade English teacher, the late Ms. Lopez, whose lessons shine through everything she writes.
Aidan Gravot is a Ministry student here at MBU. In his abundant free time, he watches more movies than most people would think possible and very nearly averaged a film a day for the final three months of 2025. With that abundance of free time, he mainly writes and has almost completed his first book, More Human Than You, which currently sits at 515 pages, far exceeding the expectations he had for it.
Alyssa Gray is a senior at Missouri Baptist University, finishing her degree in middle school math and science education. An avid reader since kindergarten, Alyssa’s love for science fiction and fantasy has grown through her time in school. Her passion for writing started in middle school and became her favorite hobby during the 2020 pandemic. She is currently co-authoring an anthology with Lashae Brown.
Mercedes Parker is an English student at Missouri Baptist University. When she's not reading or writing for her fantastic professors, she's probably reading or writing for herself. In addition to marking her second year of editing Flash!, this edition features her first published work.