The woman winced. Again. Her breath took on a raggedness. Her words broke through clenched teeth. "How much farther?" "Not much, Woman." He'd been mentally referring to her as woman since he found out. It helped. The woman was pregnant. The woman had a special touch from God. He was not to abandon the woman. Woman was …
Category: fiction
The Present, Returned
In the Grand Canyon there is a geologic gap called the Great Unconformity. No fossils exist below this schism. Her timeline has such an unconformity: before age twenty-one, anything that took up physical space and could in theory become a fossil—lost as if by fire. Except the items she chanced to give away beforehand. Those returned …
Blind at 40,000 Feet & Beyond
Bentley was blind from birth, and he played it right. Flight attendants took pity and if an extra first-class was available, would usher him into the plush leather seats. Bentley would compliment her on how good they felt and drop the line: a touch in the dark's better than a smile in the light, as he traced …
How to be a Writer in November: Show up and Throw up
Want to be a writer? It's as easy as show up and throw up. Write stream-of-consciousness. Write garbage. Write your dreams, your fears, somebody else's fears... What often happens in the show-up-throw-up process is: something awesome makes its way onto the page. Inherent in the process is a throwing-off of the shackles of self-loathing and-- …
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Zer0flash Fiction: Absolute Camouflage
https://videos.files.wordpress.com/zBB0YlYF/20170923_1337041_dvd.mp4 Assignment from Zer0flash: create spine-tingling flash fiction inspired by this tranquil video of a dam in Cambridge. Absolute Camouflage The lake floor was crusted over with garbage and cans and the slimy brown bones of a dying tree. Long, leafy willow locks writhed over the water's edge, and even the gentlest breeze could slough …
Say It: A Halloween Horror Story
"That's quite a costume, young ma-- ... er... are you a boy, or a girl? I can't tell under all that make up." The childlike thing shook a head, but made no answer. The widow Hann held upwards of $37 worth of chocolate in her lap, and she wasn't giving it up to rude, ungrateful …
Cinderella, a Twister #writingexercise
I gave this assignment to my 5000 Words students. Take a fairy tale and either: Re-tell the whole thing in a modern adaptation or Choose a scene from the middle and use it to begin a story of your own that diverges from the original. Sometimes as my students write, I do too. Here's my …
25 Things That Scotch the Cat Is Probably Thinking in This Picture
I can't seem to stop laughing at this. I've been in mourning for three years over Kikki, but this makes me want to go get me some furry, purring lap love. Read Scotch's thoughts here: 25 Things That Scotch the Cat Is Probably Thinking in This Picture
Flash Fiction for Microcosms
1 Thessalonians 5:2 Charles Floyd began dying the night of the buffalo. Seaman was hailed a hero, and the whole Corps of Discovery was giddy over the near miss: how the Newfoundland kept the buffalo from trampling the officers' tent. No one was hurt, not even Charles. Still, death had settled upon him like the dreaded …
Zeroflash Fiction: Rampart
He studies her. Must be she's grading stories because her smile ebbs and flows. His heart's been slogging through the desert for years and now this-- mirage, his new team teacher. Like all mirages, getting too close strikes the vision, and he very badly wants to keep her. She's absent to the aura of her …
KL Griffiths 