My Flash Fiction Story "Joy" Featured in "Flash Fiction North"

What fun! My wacky flash fiction story JOY just appeared in the wonderful UK literary magazine Flash Fiction North. Many thanks to the very kind editor, John. What a nice guy! Thank you for giving this story such a good home.

Okay, have you ever considered the link between bug bites, suffering, and Buddhism? No? Really? Well, the character in this story has. And I think you'll like her conclusion. lol!! 

The link below is to my story on the site. However, this link is for all the stories in the "Recent Fiction" section. At some point this story won't be recent anymore, and since it doesn't have its own link, I'm also going to post it below for when that time comes. 

Happy reading! 

Flash Fiction North Recent Fiction 

JOY

Alison pulls into Walmart, parks her car, and reaches under her shirt to scratch her bellybutton. It itches. Like fire. This morning, while she was running the five-mile track at the college, the one she runs every morning, her stomach started to itch. So she scratched it. And that’s when she pulled the mangled remains of a tiny bug from her bellybutton. Great. Bitten by a mystery bug. She had hoped the bite would fade quickly. It didn’t. It grew larger, angrier, itchier. And there wasn’t just one. There were seven of them on her stomach, including the bite in her bellybutton. Each bite large, inflamed, itchy. Grabbing her wallet, Alison opens the car door and hurries across the parking lot to Walmart. Today, her professor in Comparative Religion assigned the class another paper to write. The topic of this one? Joy and the Four Noble Truths in Buddhism. “I should write about these bug bites,” Alison says, laughing as she scratches her stomach. “The title of my paper could be Joy, Buddhism, and Bug Bites.” According to the Buddha, life is suffering. Buddhists believe suffering is important, because it can lead to joy. But Alison has a problem with that. She’d rather skip the suffering and grab the joy. Can’t she do that? Can’t she have joy without suffering? This. This is what she’d like to know. This is what she wants her paper to be about. Ten minutes later she emerges from Walmart with a big tube of hydrocortisone cream. Pulling her keys from her pocket, Alison passes a woman whose hair is dyed the color of bluebells and tied in a long ponytail. Her shirt is blue and so is her sweater. “Love your hair,” Alison says. The woman turns and smiles. “Thanks,” she says, happily swinging her bright blue ponytail from side to side as she walks into Walmart. “This,” Alison says, heading toward her car. “Now this is what I’m talking about.”