Short Fiction – Page 2

Microfiction Practice #7: The Satisfactions of Cocktail Hour

May 7, 2020 by John Leave a Comment

[Don’t know what this is? See this post for some background.]

Prompt #988:

Genre: action/adventure
Word: industrious
Action: painting the ceiling

Story (99 words, per Microsoft Word):

Clarkson was climbing the stepladder to paint the ceiling fan in his jungle shack. Suddenly two ragged soldiers from the local militia burst through the door, shouting manic threats, spraying bullets – but only at floor level. The ladder toppled, striking one unconscious. Clarkson fell, grabbed the ceiling fan — bloody damn ceiling hole! — and flung it in the other’s direction…
He hog-tied both, wrists to ankles, and finished his ceiling work: industriously repairing the new hole. Satisfied, he dragged the soldiers to his backyard, tied them to a tree, and awaited the arrival of sundown — and the cats.

Microfiction Practice #6: Melovi

May 6, 2020 by John Leave a Comment

[Don’t know what this is? See this post for some background.]

Prompt #973:

Genre: fairy tale/fantasy
Word: bait
Action: facing a firing squad

Story (97 words, per Microsoft Word):

Of all his hive’s leprechauns, Melovi wasn’t the smartest: no ideas sprang unbidden from Melovi’s noggin. But he could certainly procure outcomes, by Og! Good, bad, indifferent: Things happened around Melovi!
But finally, gold’s fatal gleam… gold: leprechaun bait, a pretty fishhook on an invisible string… This time, a simple earring, on a deceptively unguarded tabletop. Melovi had but reached for it — and was stuck fast, epoxied in place.
He had told the human little. But he’d told the human enough. And now, his last sunrise: blindfolded, before six master archers. Things still happened around Melovi!

Microfiction Practice #5: Nara

May 5, 2020 by John Leave a Comment

[Don’t know what this is? See this post for some background.]

Prompt #504:

Genre: comedy
Word: wide
Action: milking a yak

Story (100 words, per Microsoft Word):

A native Nepali, Sreva fascinated me; we began dating soon after meeting. Later, she invited me to her family’s Colorado yak ranch. Sreva’s father spoke no English, but led me to the barn one morning to meet the pride of their herd. “Nara,” he said, gesturing in the yak’s direction. He sat me on a stool beside Nara, handed me a pail, and mimed milking her.
I woke up in the hospital, my forehead hoofprint-dented; Sreva’s wide mouth barely restrained her laughter. “Dad’s joke,” she said: nara — not a name, as it happens — simply means male in Nepali.

Microfiction Practice #4: The Erasure

May 4, 2020 by John Leave a Comment

[Don’t know what this is? See this post for some background.]

Prompt #312:

Genre: drama
Word: superficial
Action: mopping the floor

Story (99 words, per Microsoft Word):

The housekeeper, Mrs. Parker, obsessively ran a mop over the same foot-wide tile of the ward’s cafeteria floor: over, and over, and over. That mirrored spot gleamed with a sheen of strange, focused intimacy. Someone would have to stop her soon: visiting hours began at 2:00. Residents’ families wouldn’t object to a floor even only superficially clean — but they’d complain about Mrs. Parker’s mophead: dry, filthy, a handful of filthy socks. The spot recalled a face: a curve of gray-brown hair across the forehead, a blurry swoop of silver mustache, a teasing smile.
Mr. Parker had passed overnight.

Microfiction Practice #3: Mush!

May 3, 2020 by John Leave a Comment

[Don’t know what this is? See this post for some background.]

Prompt #214:

Genre: romantic comedy
Word: action
Action: enlisting an ally

Story (100 words, per Microsoft Word):

Why had I hopped the dogsled in Iditarod? Dunno. I must’ve been (haha) barking mad; I was certainly freezing. Nor was I competing — they weren’t even my dogs for chrissake. But in the spirit of things, I shouted “Mush!” like you’re supposed to. Before the dogs could take off, though, there she stood: the Inuit woman in the seal-fur-lined parka. “Yes?” she asked, and seeing my confusion, added, “My name is Mush. And you?” The cops raced towards us — no avoiding them now. “My name,” I said, accepting my fate, “is now pretty much mud. Marry me, Mush?”

Microfiction Practice #1: Witmers and Sheila

May 1, 2020 by John Leave a Comment

[Don’t know what this is? See yesterday’s post for some background.]

Prompt #211:

Genre: action/adventure
Word: quixotic
Action: balancing the books

Story (98 words, per Microsoft Word):

Sheila’s quixotic pet project – planting an Earth Day flag in the rain forest – had surely been doomed from the start. Her accountant Witmers had said so on Day 1, repeated it on Day 2 and all the other days. Sheila didn’t care. “Just get us the money,” she said. Witmers got them the money, yes. But did he really have to grasp the expenses with such a tight fist? Could he not have reconsidered the truly fatal decision: helicoptering them in, but trusting the guides to get them out – the damned bargain-basement Sherpa guides in their Everest off-season?

A New Writing Challenge

April 30, 2020 by John 2 Comments

Details forthcoming, probably in a real post on Saturday. For now, though: I’ve entered a fiction-writing contest, the first round of which will take place next week. Stories to be submitted to the contest in each round will have to follow these rules:

be of a fictional genre randomly assigned to each entrant by the contest organizers, from among this list: Action/Adventure; Comedy; Drama; Fairy Tale/Fantasy; Ghost Story; Historical Fiction; Horror; Romance; Romantic Comedy; Sci-Fi; and Suspense/Thriller.
include a word randomly assigned by the organizers;
include an action randomly assigned by the organizers (this apparently will be loosely of the [verb]ing a/an/the [noun] format, à la the old Mad Libs game); and
be no more than 100 words long.; and
take no longer than 24 hours to write.

It is, in short (ha!), a microfiction-writing contest.

With the assistance of several Facebook contacts, I’ve come up with a list of 37 “actions.” I also used a random-noun generator page I found on the Web to give me a list of 50 nouns. Putting this together with the 11 possible genres, this yielded a total of over 20,000 possible combinations. I then ran a little program to randomly select 1,000 from among all these possibilities, and you can find that list here (in the form of an Excel spreadsheet).

Of course the contest organizers will have their own lists of random words and actions — lists which they will not publish in advance — so this isn’t a real test. Nonetheless, I hope to practice for the first round, at least: every day, starting tomorrow, I’ll pull a randomly selected combination of those three main constraints from the list of 1,000 randomly selected possibilities. And I’ll write a 100-word “microfiction” based on it. And of course, I’ll post that little story here, together with the prompt which led to it.

(I will not post here the actual contest entries I may come up with, lest I run afoul of some little micro-rule or other designed to guarantee the contest rights to first “publication.”)

We’ll see how this goes. Things being what they are, here and everywhere else right now, I may well opt to continue the experiment through the rest of May.

In the meantime, expect my first practice story by tomorrow afternoon sometime. I anticipate no applause.

Watching (But First Recognizing) Yourself

December 28, 2018 by John Leave a Comment

[Image: “Screened,” by a Flickr user who identifies him/herself only as “new 1lluminati”; used here under a Creative Commons license (thank you!).]

From whiskey river:

But I also know of yet another life. I know and want it and devour it ferociously. It’s a life of magical violence. It’s mysterious and bewitching. In it snakes entwine while the stars tremble. Drops of water drip in the phosphorescent darkness of the cave. In that dark the flowers intertwine in a humid fairy garden. And I am the sorceress of that silent bacchanal. I feel defeated by my own corruptibility. And I see that I am intrinsically bad. It’s only out of pure kindness that I am good. Defeated by myself. Who lead me along the paths of the salamander, the spirit who rules the fire and lives within it. And I give myself as an offering to the dead. I weave spells on the solstice, spectre of an exorcised dragon.

(Clarice Lispector [source])

…and:

Here is the best true story on giving I know, and it was told by Jack Kornfield of the Spirit Rock Meditation Center in Woodacre. An eight-year-old boy had a younger sister who was dying of leukemia, and he was told that without a blood transfusion she would die. His parents explained to him that his blood was probably compatible with hers, and if so, he could be the blood donor. They asked him if they could test his blood. He said sure. So they did and it was a good match. Then they asked if he would give his sister a pint of blood, that it could be her only chance of living. He said he would have to think about it overnight.

The next day he went to his parents and said he was willing to donate the blood. So they took him to the hospital where he was put on a gurney beside his six-year-old sister. Both of them were hooked up to IVs. A nurse withdrew a pint of blood from the boy, which was then put in the girl’s IV. The boy lay on his gurney in silence while the blood dripped into his sister, until the doctor came over to see how he was doing. Then the boy opened his eyes and asked, “How soon until I start to die?”

(Anne Lamott [source])

…and:

The more you think, the faster you cut your own throat. What is there to think about? It always ends up the same way. In your mind there is a bolted door. You have to work hard not to go near that door. Parties, lovers, career, charity, babies, who cares what it is, so long as you avoid the door. There are times, when I am on my own, fixing a drink, walking upstairs, when I see the door waiting for me. I have to stop myself pulling the bolt and turning the handle. Why? On the other side of the door is a mirror, and I will have to see myself. I’m not afraid of what I am. I’m afraid I will see what I am not.

(Jeanette Winterson [source])

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This Here, This Now, This You

September 28, 2018 by John Leave a Comment

[Image: Untitled photograph by Mike Liu; it was taken in 2016, at San Francisco International Airport. (I found it on Flickr, and used here under a Creative Commons license –thank you!) About the image, the photographer says only: “I always seem to take the same photograph from the same spot of the same subject after getting off the plane. It is because I think the airport is a place of minor miracles, where connections are lost and made and reunions are the everyday trade.”]

From whiskey river (first paragraph):

Take a moment from time to time to remember that you are alive. I know this sounds a trifle obvious, but it is amazing how little time we take to remark upon this singular and gratifying fact. By the most astounding stroke of luck an infinitesimal portion of all the matter in the universe came together to create you and for the tiniest moment in the great span of eternity you have the incomparable privilege to exist.

For endless eons there was no you. Before you know it, you will cease to be again. And in between you have this wonderful opportunity to see and feel and think and do. Whatever else you accomplish with your life, nothing will remotely compare with the incredible accomplishment of having managed to get yourself born. Congratulation. Well done. You really are special.

(Bill Bryson [source])

…and (last four stanzas):

Roses, Late Summer

What happens
to the leaves after
they turn red and golden and fall
away? What happens

to the singing birds
when they can’t sing
any longer? What happens
to their quick wings?

Do you think there is any
personal heaven
for any of us?
Do you think anyone,

the other side of that darkness,
will call to us, meaning us?
Beyond the trees
the foxes keep teaching their children

to live in the valley.
so they never seem to vanish, they are always there
in the blossom of the light
that stands up every morning

in the dark sky.
And over one more set of hills,
along the sea,
the last roses have opened their factories of sweetness

and are giving it back to the world.
If I had another life
I would want to spend it all on some
unstinting happiness.

I would be a fox, or a tree
full of waving branches.
I wouldn’t mind being a rose
in a field full of roses.

Fear has not yet occurred to them, nor ambition.
Reason they have not yet thought of.
Neither do they ask how long they must be roses, and then what.
Or any other foolish question.

(Mary Oliver [source])

…and:

A day when one has not pushed oneself to the limit seems a damaged damaging day, a sinful day. Not so! The most valuable thing one can do for the psyche, occasionally, is to let it rest, wander, live in the changing light of a room.

(May Sarton [source])

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Seeing What Is Only Suggested

September 7, 2018 by John Leave a Comment

[Image: “#storypix 2018-08-19,” by John E. Simpson (shared here under a Creative Commons License; for more information, see this page here at RAMH). This is one of a nightly series posted on Instagram, in which each caption represents a fragment of an imagined narrative which the corresponding picture no more than hints at — a separate story for each picture. The caption for this one says, “The guy claimed to have X-ray vision. Maybe that should’ve explained how he managed to just walk out of jail, but the Agency didn’t seem to think so.”]

From whiskey river:

My house here is painted the yellow colour of fresh butter on the outside, with glaringly green shutters; it stands in full sunlight in a square that has a green garden with plain trees, oleanders and acacias. It is completely whitewashed inside, with a floor made of red bricks. And over it there is the intensely blue sky. In this house I can love and breathe, meditate and paint.

(Vincent van Gogh [source])

…and:

When I suddenly see myself in the depths of the mirror, I take fright. I can scarcely believe that I have limits, that I am outlined and defined. I feel myself to be dispersed in the atmosphere, thinking inside other creatures, living inside things beyond myself. When I suddenly see myself in the mirror, I am not startled because I find myself ugly or beautiful. I discover, in fact, that I possess another quality. When I haven’t looked at myself for some time, I almost forget that I am human, I tend to forget my past, and I find myself with the same deliverance from purpose and conscience as something that is barely alive. I am also surprised to find as I gaze into the pale mirror with open eyes that there is so much in me beyond what is known, so much that remains ever silent.

(Clarice Lispector [source])

…and:

“Sketch” Sunday Afternoon NY
(excerpt)

—awright so we’re all
gonna die but now is the
time to sing & see, to be
humble, sacrificed, late,
crazy, talkative, fool-
ish…

Time, rather, to be proud,
indispensable, early
sane, silent, serious…

(Jack Kerouac [source])

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