Over the past month, I have finally established a working relationship with experimental flash fiction. With the unusual circumstances we’ve all been living under (what? you hadn’t heard? well, read a history book ten years from now) I’ve had issues with focus on any proper project; but I wanted to do something that would keep my skills honed, and honestly just help me have fun with writing again. So, partly inspired by this post, I’ve been challenging myself to write one or two very short pieces of flash fiction from prompts each day. And so far it’s been successful. Some of the pieces are good, others indifferent, but the process of writing them has almost always been enjoyable. And because this blog has been silent for far too long, I thought I’d share a few that I think are the best just for the fun of it.
I’m not exactly sure what specialized definition these pieces fall under—drabbles? micro-fiction? I’ve been writing them by hand in a little palm-sized notebook and not fussing about wordcount, just keeping each at 1-3 pages long. But they’re all under 500 words and most are under 300. For me, being someone who is usually fiercely independent about what subjects and themes to write on, writing from prompts has been an interesting way of stretching myself. (I’m using this prompt list and this one.) But it’s also been fun to impose my own variation on the challenge and twist very generic prompts into a historical-fiction interpretation. Anyway, here are half a dozen of my personal favorites so far:
Prompt: a single lily, a cliff, 3 hours
Out on the cliff, with the wind tugging at my cloak and the deep booming of the sea coming up from below, uneasy doubt gripped at me for the first time. Was it madness to be out here alone?
No one else could have known our secret signal. I had felt sure of that for every minute of the three hours since I had rounded the curve of the staircase and stopped short, my heart thudding mercilessly in my chest, staring at the single white lily in its vase on the table in the hall alcove, faintly luminous against the polished wood panels. I had been sure when I stole out of the silent house once everyone was in bed—sure until the cliff-top winds had blown the assurance out of me, and the shadows of flying cloud and lurking boulder had borne me ominous company up to the top of the path.
I heard the sound of a foot grinding on loose stone on the path behind me. I turned to look, the wind pushing from my back and enshrouding me in my cloak as if it had suddenly changed its mind and wanted to protect me.
“You,” I whispered.
Prompt: “The floor tasted like…”
The floor tasted like alkali and coal dust. For a second he thought about staying there—getting up only meant getting hit again, and probably harder. But between the feet of the men nearest him and through the open door, he glimpsed hot blue sky and the crisscrossing web of steel rails in the yard shining in the sun, and the shimmer of desert beyond. The superintendent had brought him and others thousands of miles to do a dirty and dangerous job, and the strikers were cocksure that the Ohio men weren’t tough enough to stick at their posts under threats and pressure. It was up to him to prove them wrong. He put the palms of his hands to the grimy floor and pushed himself up to his feet.
Prompt: Where Will It Be Found?
She sat in the middle of the drawing-room, her back ramrod-straight and a lace handkerchief in her hand, her hair glistening snow-white. Footsteps passing back and forth overhead, and the man standing deferentially a few feet away trying to look as if he did not know exactly what she was thinking.
She had known for a long time that one of her own could not be trusted. She had known, somehow, even before the police inspector had apologetically informed her of it, that no one could have left the house last night. Her great-grandmother’s emeralds, which had once been worn at the court of royalty, were still somewhere in this house.
Four of them, all of her own blood. The police were searching their rooms now, and in a little while she would know, and would look unflinching into the face of the truth.
Prompt: Three Reasons
“The Clarion ought to be covering that meeting, Mr. Hendricks! Why won’t you let me go? I’m a reporter, or supposed to be one. Don’t you trust me? Give me one reason, just give me one good reason why I shouldn’t take the car and go up there and cover that meeting tonight!”
‘Grandpa’ Hendricks, editor of the Clarion, leaning back in his rocking-chair, thoughtfully adjusted his spectacles on his nose, and returned his thumbs to his suspenders. “Waal,” he said, “fer one reason, the old car’s busted. She won’t go nowhere till she gets her hind wheel fixed. Fer another, there ain’t going to be one bit of meaningful business transacted at that meeting, since Lester Brown can’t be there, and he’s the only one who can make that committee stick to a point. And fer another,” said the editor, taking out his pipe and inspecting its bowl, “Miss Wilkins brings the meeting minutes home with her, and she lives just a step across the street from the office. You can drop in and ask her for a sight of them in the morning. It’s what I always do when Lester don’t make a meeting.” He craned his neck to look up at his new reporter over his spectacles. “Now, there were some things you wanted to learn about the newspaper business?”
“I—I guess I’d better go home,” said the boy feebly. “Goodnight, Mr. Hendricks.”
Prompt: Chance
We faced each other by the railroad tracks outside town, each with a knapsack on his shoulder and each as stubborn as the other. “We can’t both go,” said Chet. “It’d break Ma’s heart.”
“I’ll just get drafted next year anyway.”
“The war’ll be over by next year.” We all believed that then.
“Ma’s used to us doing everything together.”
“She’s not used to doing without both of us. One of us has got to stay home.”
“Well, why should it be me? Why does it have to be you that goes just because you decided it that way?”
Chet pushed his cap back and looked at me for a minute in exasperation. “Look,” he said, pulling a nickel out of his pocket, “we’ll flip for it. Heads you go, tails I go. That way we’ll both have an even chance. Fair enough?”
I thought about it for a second, and nodded. “Fair enough.”
Chet tossed the coin in the air and it came down, and the buffalo side of the nickel shone up at me from the dust by my foot.
It was a year later, after the telegram had come, and I was going through the stuff Chet had left behind in our room with a lead weight at my heart, that I found a nickel with a buffalo on both sides. And I’ll always wonder whether the one he pulled out of his pocket that day by the tracks was the same way.
Prompt: a bishop, a burglar, piccalilli
The bishop gave a weary sigh as he turned in at his garden gate, the quart jar cradled in the crook of his arm. For five years he had been unable to avoid Mrs. Johnson giving him a jar of piccalilli every time she made a batch, even though he had frequently ventured remarks in her presence about how spicy foods didn’t agree with his stomach. But Mrs. Johnson was either very inattentive or very determined.
As the bishop fumbled for his key, his elbow brushed against the door and it creaked open an inch. Careless of him not to have made sure it shut properly on his way out, he thought absently, as he stepped into the dark hall. Not bothering with a light, he moved toward the dining-room, thinking only of setting down that blasted jar of piccalilli on the sideboard and setting aside till morning the problem of finding someone who needed it more than he did so he could give it away with a clear conscience.
A part of the shadows near the sideboard moved suddenly, with a clink that sounded very much like the silverware in the drawer. And then before the bishop could think, the shadow became a large dark figure that came at him with arm upraised, grasping something that looked like a crowbar. The bishop—or rather his reflexes—reacted by hurling with totally accidental precision the only weapon he had: a well-filled quart jar. There was a deep sound as of a burglar who has just had his nose broken, the smash of a quart jar on the floor and the clang of a crowbar beside it, and the bishop was brushed aside by someone getting out of the dining-room, staggering blindly through the hall and out down the front steps as quickly as possible.
The bishop, understandably shaken, switched on the dining-room light. It looked as if the burglar had been interrupted early in his endeavor; only one drawer of the sideboard had been pried open. The only other signs of disturbance in the room were the crowbar on the floor and a large splash of piccalilli and broken glass.
It would be much harder, the bishop reflected, to make Mrs. Johnson believe this story than any other way he had contrived of giving away the piccalilli before.
Which is your favorite? Have you tried writing flash fiction?
photo: Ulrike Leone // Pixabay
Abby says
Hi Elisabeth!
Just got your email with the Bridge to Trouble announcement. Looking forward to that! Also I really enjoyed these flashes. 🙂 Keep it up!
Elisabeth Grace Foley says
Thank you! Glad you liked them!
Maria Korsman says
I enjoyed all of them but my favourite was 3 reasons. I hope you continue to share with us!Thank you.
Elisabeth Grace Foley says
You’re welcome! Yes, that one was fun to write. 🙂