In Karachi we wrapped nightfall around our fingers, long silken black noose knotting into flesh. Pressed bottles of bootleg liquor to our mouths, lined our nostrils with white smoke, wings of ash around our footprints. We were itching to be at the mouth of a beginning. Spoke in lies, small and big. “Yes, I’ll be home by six,” and “No, I’m just going to the movies.” Watched mosaics of anguish on our parents’ faces, tasted the salt of their sorrow....
She’s finally made it out the house and that whole mess, and she’s sitting in a Chevy parked out by the shuttered Five & Dime. Her first real crush’s beside her in the driver’s seat and her hand’s on his lap and just lays there while the windshield wipers wipe. With them is her baby brother in the backseat buckled up and wearing Velcro kicks size-L, who all he ever eats is Special K but dry straight out the paper...
Ma collects birth stories as lozenges and swallows them when she is tired. Not of her own, because she was born between the fingers of rice paddies, quickly and flush with shame, but of me. I was a citizen of misfortune, she said, my blood more cautious of where to forget than how to exchange oxygen, which is why I came out crying and blue. I was born on Friday the thirteenth, even though she tried to trade an extra...
A woman is driving 100 miles-per-hour toward a brick wall. She’s slamming the brakes, but they don’t work. Her boyfriend, in the passenger’s seat, chews gum and scrolls Instagram. He pumps one fist and shouts along to yacht rock. The woman volunteers at Habitat for Humanity. Her boyfriend is a budding ornithologist. Flips the bird everywhere he goes haha get it? The wall is a breaking point, rapidly approaching. The car is a 2002 Honda Civic with a mismatched door...
I can’t remember this watch not on his body. I do remember him taking it off occasionally, only because I remember the click of its oyster clasp. I can’t recall the ritual of him removing it. Was it bedtime? Was it bathtime? I take it off for neither. I am an orphaned puppy, tuned into it like some surrogate heartbeat. Its weight on my wrist is a comfort. An anchor. It is worth more than anything I own. Look at...
SmokeLong Quarterly has been dedicated to publishing the best flash narratives since 2003.
December 2025
I have so much to tell you. Issue 90 is a double issue with 17 pieces of flash brilliance. Thank you to everyone who lent a hand in getting this issue done. To the submissions editors, Circuit Trainers from SmokeLong Fitness, the creative writing classes and their instructors who read the submissions queue, thank you… Continue reading New Front (continue reading)
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Are you curious about the community workshop of SmokeLong Fitness but don’t know if you can commit to a year without a peek behind the curtain? You can try SmokeLong Fitness in January and February for just $55, and then you can decide whether this community works for you. The base peer-review workshop takes place… Continue reading Try SmokeLong Fitness
Valerie Hughes (she/her) lives in New York, NY. She is currently working on a novel. Her writing can be read in The Masters Review, Queerlings, 50 Give or Take, and elsewhere. Find her on Instagram at @_valeriehughes.
