Nick’s millionth cartwheel looks like his first: He plants one hand on the grass and then, before I can catch his legs and help, he tumbles into a round-off. For a moment I’m taller than him, and I…| Flash Frog
When we run out of nice things to say to each other, Gil and I watch TV like we’re each just a brain in a jar, sitting side by side. Except instead of brains we’re hearts. And by hearts, I mean sex…| Flash Frog
It starts snowing at eleven, soft flurries that turn thick by noon, the kind of snow Christmas movies recreate with shaved soap and synthetic chemicals. By one, the grass is covered, white powder b…| Flash Frog
The frog doesn’t move. Not for a long time. Its skin is the green of river glass, shimmering like a puddle after rain—light fractured across something thin and soft. The ventral surface is pale and…| Flash Frog
My little brother pinches off a big piece from the Body of Christ, plops it right on his tongue, and clamps his mouth shut. Mr. Dean chuckles and shakes his head before offering the Body of Christ …| Flash Frog
Sam and I are watching a documentary about the future, and he tells me that he’s not worried about it. “How can you not worry about the future?” The TV flashes images of tropical storms battering t…| Flash Frog
Every town’s got one. He keeps a beat-up grey Oldsmobile parked at an abandoned gas station in the center of town. No one’s ever seen him drive it—he hovers around it like home base. You remember p…| Flash Frog
The baby stares at the ceiling fan, content for the moment. I slump on the couch, afraid any movement will make her cry. My stomach growls. I can’t remember my last full meal. Days blur together. M…| Flash Frog
We found it by a dirt track that ran next to a lagoon. We found it walking to a school dance. We found it, I’m told, in Southern Gothic ways. The lagoon was full of eels, as well as manure and pest…| Flash Frog
You’re sixteen today, but no one told your stomach. For breakfast you had black coffee. For lunch you had a bag of cheddar and sour cream Ruffles and a Hawaiian Punch from the vending machines at s…| Flash Frog
My ex doesn’t know he’s my ex. I just packed and left. Headed east for an hour. It’s close to midnight and I’m cruising through a one-light town in his old Crown Vic on the way from nowhere to some…| Flash Frog
Later, you will realize it was all part of the fortune-teller’s ploy, the way he looked at you across the crowd and tilted his immense, dark beard in that way, as if to say, “Whoa! There’s a lot go…| Flash Frog
I wake up in the walls. I am watching them serve dinner, this family of four, from behind pine-scented wood paneling. A worm nudges past my cheek and something crawls over my toes as they spoon pea…| Flash Frog
Kelly’s drunk enough when they get to Applebee’s that she has to lean on Cam to stay upright and her head turns faster than her eyes which isn’t all that fast since she has to think about it, will …| Flash Frog
we don’t imagine we’ll drown. We feel every fat raindrop on our scalp as we hurry to class, to work, to the market. Our children jump in puddles, soaking the bottom of their pants. We hold the umbr…| Flash Frog
Oh. The leaves were teeth. Imogen stopped walking, the squeak of her sneakers against asphalt suddenly quiet. It must have rained the night before because the squirrel’s face, a rictus of death and…| Flash Frog
He had six Dalmatians, all names starting with the letter “L.” Lulu, Leon, Leonard, Lupe, Lukas, and Little. I asked why “L” and he said he liked the shape the letter made– two lines coming togethe…| Flash Frog
When Gladys the gorilla starts to touch herself, I’m in the gorilla house watching Bernice tongue a peach candy into the ball of her cheek. We’re wearing matching pink coats and handing out gorilla…| Flash Frog
*THE BLUE FROG 1st PLACE WINNER* Introduction by Guest Judge GINA CHUNG In the deeply affecting “Materials Needed,” an adolescent protagonist gradually comes to an understanding of thei…| Flash Frog
Camera 1 Our neighbor on the right, Mrs. Moulton, didn’t feel safe at home anymore. So much crime these days. Her husband, so often away on business. So she adopted a dog from the shelter, a huge b…| Flash Frog
*THE BLUE FROG 2nd PLACE WINNER* When attempting to navigate the perilous waters of a threesome, there is only one way to ensure safe passage: you must always be the third. The third is new and exc…| Flash Frog
*THE BLUE FROG 3rd PLACE WINNER* At the end, our father existed in two places at once: the first was where he was, in bed with a nurse tending to his whims and my mother bringing him water and my s…| Flash Frog
Most nights, we drive around with no destination, taking different back roads onto the main road, looking out for cars we know. Lowrider sees us and flashes his lights from the Gas ’n Grub parking …| Flash Frog
The physics professor who fucks you tells you that sometimes you are an alkali metal and sometimes you are a noble gas. He calls you Rubidium in the rare moments he is tender. He calls you Neon the…| Flash Frog
After Mom died, Dad started building the train set in the garage. He started with a station and single track, then added two more tracks later that year. He added trees and tunnels. He set up minia…| Flash Frog
Our babies all grew wheels one day. Axles sprang from the soles of their chubby feet and shot out bony spokes. We saw the safety issues right away, but their rubber tires rolled over our protests, …| Flash Frog
Clara and I spent that first afternoon, without Elie, wandering the narrow streets of the Khan al-Khalili market, soaking in the sights and smells of Cairo. I had expected the market to be filled w…| Flash Frog
No amount of strobe lighting or pineapple White Claw could make Brendan Dixon look like anything other than the face of death. He is still the color of cornstarch, still proportioned like Gumby, st…| Flash Frog
Father has a new red girlfriend. Red hair, red face, red man hands. A bog creature. My mother had been all white, untouched. This girlfriend, Marta, is trying to break into my room with a knife. I’…| Flash Frog
We filled our arms with cool bottles of syrupy soda, strawberry licorice, peanut butter crackers, crinkle-cut potato chips—as much as we could carry. Throwing our heads back under the fluorescent l…| Flash Frog
All winter, we nine-to-fived and obeyed lines between boxy buildings, calendar grids, and hour hands, even when the wedge of day narrowed until night waited for us at home. So, when months went by …| Flash Frog
Sex. You lie back, close your eyes and think about how to make green chili pie. You could teach the girls, right after you pick them up from tennis. Easy-peasy. A useful thing to know. Sex is overr…| Flash Frog
My dad texts me—we have a mouse in our house!!!—then a mouse emoji with an elegant coat of white fur and menacing red eyes, like Perler Beads. There are no visible mice in my freshman residence hal…| Flash Frog
It was strawberry season and she wanted to be picked too, leaning against the wall in her shortcake dress, hiding her adventurous fingers behind her back. They were lined up on the vine, so many sm…| Flash Frog
My brother taught me how to catch scorpions in Death Valley. One word: pitfalls. Mikey and I would spend an evening near a large rockface—one with a lot of cuts and cracks; little guys fit anywhere…| Flash Frog
I lift my hand from the steering wheel and adjust the rearview mirror so that it’s tilted all the way up, angled at the roof. Right now I can’t focus on the road with my ghost staring at me from th…| Flash Frog
Every night before bed, Dad dragged us around the house to do final checks of the recorders and the night-vision cameras. Make sure batteries are at full, make sure they have optimal positioning, m…| Flash Frog
At first, we’re haunted softly, like a pink sky overtaken by the creeping evening. Ms. Perez, who is proud to still live alone, calls the rental company to complain about a dripping sound she only …| Flash Frog
While we were still new, I laid it all on the line with Jason. I needed him to know what had grown and settled inside of me, thoughts of splintering, of stunted appendages, and an inescapable feeli…| Flash Frog
For months, Catherine has craved the sour salt tang of pickled cabbage. She wades through the maze of stands with one hand cradling her belly and the other covering her mouth. Her husband will eat …| Flash Frog
The baby’s hand grabs at the flashing silver chain of her necklace, tiny fingers fumbling against her clavicle. The stray, sharp corner of a fingernail grazes the mole at the hollow of her throat. …| Flash Frog
Last night my husband rolled over in bed and, in a panic, demanded I let the baby sea turtles in. “They’re too hot,” he said. It was midnight. I looked at him, wondering if I was dreaming it up. We…| Flash Frog
During our lunch break we eat mall pizza and watch the east tower of the Dolce Vista apartments break apart and tumble into the sea. Cassy gasps. Miguel records on his phone. The city is washing aw…| Flash Frog
We gathered at recess and stared at Jessica standing there in a pair of Guess jeans. We put our fingers to our lips and blew clouds of hot breath, pretending we were our ancient aunts with their me…| Flash Frog
I get a text from a friend saying that the woman from the internet, whom neither of us know, whose husband every day would update his page to say that she was still fighting, had died. I stop at a …| Flash Frog
The morning their neighbor Mike Polkovich stuck a shotgun into his mouth, Quinn was picking red raspberries from the bushes that ran a boundary between their yards. His father was three hours into …| Flash Frog
First, we video call my parents, show them our new girl: her tiny pinkies, her alien face. Mother is delighted. Father asks if we’ll make it to a bunker in time. I show them my baby’s feet. Ten toe…| Flash Frog
One day, Ronny Mahoney, walking to school with his buddy Will Naylor, whirled around and stuck out his tongue at me. At seven, I was old enough to understand the gesture’s nuances: it could be play…| Flash Frog
One is sensitive, the other wild. Efforts are made to toughen up the sensitive one and calm the wild one. They are both girls and so they are both too much of whatever it is they are. On the outsid…| Flash Frog
I came home in the fall. Leaves were raked in small piles beneath the dogwoods. The pool was drained. My father was drinking wine in the deep end. A push broom propped against the steel ladder. He …| Flash Frog
1. My great aunt’s house smells like bathroom cleaner and cooking oil. Her kitchen is white-tiled everything. There are always dishes in the sink. The range hood above her stove is broken; one of t…| Flash Frog
We are liars. Not the acquired kind; it is the congenital kind. Our mothers lied to us in-utero, and the lies seeped through their growing placentas to corrupt our developing brains. This is the on…| Flash Frog
When your mom finds the hole in the yard, she makes that face, the one she made at dad last night. You’re too old to be digging holes, she says. What if your sister falls in? Or one of the ne…| Flash Frog
Here in this pine-addled expanse where everything is a tree until it’s a farm until it’s a subdivision until it’s sprawling strip mall with a Kohl’s, a Target, a Smoothie King and a Honeybaked Ham,…| Flash Frog
We swap sweet mascara lashes for soft kohl pencils in jet black. Melting at the tip in the murmuring heat that comes from within our own excitable bodies. We paw at ourselves, Susie and I. Little k…| Flash Frog
We read the devastation in the newspaper: Coffey Park and Paradise. But we don’t have to: it’s outside in the air—the ash, the thick clogged sky. We wonder who will be next and will it be us? We re…| Flash Frog
Six months after her husband had died, she saw her backyard littered with seashells, fish skeletons. It was a grey morning, and a starfish was stuck on her bedroom window, its little tube feet movi…| Flash Frog
You spent a lot of time in gas stations growing up. Speedways, mostly. One on the corner of Tylee and Main, another riding the sideburns of the township administration building, two more split-legg…| Flash Frog
I called him Tooloulou, the Cajun word for crab. He reminded me of them little critters, the way he scurried ‘round the Square on skinny legs before stoppin’ at my table, watchin’ me read a tourist…| Flash Frog
At first it was Father’s pocket watch we found in our garden, crusted with mud and rust, his initials E. E. G. clearly etched into the metal. “It’s impossible,” Mother said. “We buried that with hi…| Flash Frog
