Anne Lamott calls it her broccoli. Stephen King calls it his beast. My beast was asleep. I tried prodding him, kicking him, calling him bad names. No roars. No lightning bolts of creativity. Just me, slapping words on a page with the precision of a toddler, becoming more and more certain I was wasting my …
Tag: flash fiction
The Most Dangerous Thing We Do
Once this kid—my passenger—grabbed the steering wheel and jerked it hard over while I was driving. Not just a little tug, mind you, but a full-on we-gonna-die! yank. The kind that elicited a blood-curdling scream and a shouted sermon. A 19-year old preaching car safety to a 15-year-old. This kid was all charm and immortality …
Last Touch
A tire spun, the one not furrowed by speed and thrust. Smoke wheezed from the buckled steel hood. Engine guts, half-erupted and splattered with oil, steamed in glossy, iridescent blackness. Beside his twitching foot lay an unwrapped breakfast sandwich. The smells of sausage, cologne, and sharp copper ghosted the car, floated out the broken windows, …
Fiction: Tight Flight
I pressed the call button. Pinned to my window seat by the slumped behemoth of a man, it was the only thing I could do. His flesh oozed beyond the arm rest, assaulting my left thigh with an intimate, maddening pressure. His body heat passed through his polyester pants, through my jeans and ignited a …
Journey to Bethlehem
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 …
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 Was Practice?
The Mind Cheats Long Before the Body Ever wonder where divorce begins? My recently published flash fiction How Was Practice? attempts to plumb this dynamic in under a hundred words. Well, if that’s not ambitious… I'd be ever so grateful if you'd read it and let me know what you think. For more great 100 Word posts, check out …
Words Bridge the Gap: Cesar Egido Serrano Foundation $20K Prize for #flashfiction
Could you write a hundred-word flash fiction by Thanksgiving? How about for a $20,000 first place prize? Runners-up get a thousand bucks. And it's legit. I checked because you know what they say about things that seem too good to be true. This year's theme is the word, bridging the gap between different cultures and …
Continue reading Words Bridge the Gap: Cesar Egido Serrano Foundation $20K Prize for #flashfiction
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 …
KL Griffiths 