Category Archives: Flash Fiction

Breanna

     Recess started. Breanna walked to the shade of her tree and sat down.
     “It is my tree,” she thought. “No one else comes here.”
     She opened her backpack and pulled out her book. Mrs. Finley had given it to her as a going away present, and she had let a few of her friends sign the book before she left. She stared at their signatures until her eyes started to blur, then she punched herself in the leg and blinked until her vision cleared. She let the book fall open and began to scan the lines like a rock skipping over a pond. When she came to the end of a paragraph she imagined the rock skipping one final time before sinking down into the murky depths where weeds clutched at her ankles. Then she picked up another pebble, safe on the shore, and tossed it across the next paragraph. Breanna became so lost in this fantasy that she forgot to pay attention to the words her stones were skipping across. She became so lost in it that she barely noticed the droplets falling onto the page. She became so lost in it that she did not even hear the group of girls approaching until they were standing all around her.
     “Breanna, right?” a voice said.
     Breanna jolted and slammed her book shut.
     “Yeah, why?” she asked, wiping her eyes with the back of her hand. The girl who had addressed her knelt beside her.
     “Are you okay?” she asked. Breanna felt a pit open up inside her, and the pit was black and empty save for the strands of memory waving in the darkness, the strands of memory that clutched at her ankles as she tried to free herself. She felt the pit open inside of her, and a sob rose to her lips like final breath of a drowning child.
     “What’s wrong?” the girl asked, putting a hand on her shoulder. The sob escaped, and Breanna began to cry. The other girls knelt down too and reached out to her with cautious hands.
     “Hey,” the girl said. “It’s alright. It’s alright. Everything’s gonna be okay.” She sat down next to her and draped her arm over Breanna’s shoulders like a warm towel, and Breanna cried and cried until she felt the memories release her, and she bobbed to the surface and could fill her lungs again.
     “I just…” she said. “I miss my friends.”
     And she cried again, but she wasn’t alone this time, and instead of weeds or memories there were hands. But they were kind hands, and they did not clutch or drag or suck her down. The memories waved in the depths and reached for her, but the hands anchored her in that moment by the tree, and the pit in her stomach was filled.

 

Short Story from a Painting – Vincent van Gogh, Starry Night over the Rhone

the-starry-night-over-the-rhone

I stopped at the end of the pier and gazed out across the bay.  A warm, salty wind whipped through my hair.  The sun had bowed out behind curtain of stars not more than an hour before, but the sky was still bright with lights, echoing the warm welcome of the air. Across the water were lamps from houses and shops that reached out in contrast over the deep and colored it with yellow swatches that moved like brush strokes across the water.  The stars shone out above and beneath the strokes in an arch that stretched from the sea to the sky in a blue mirror that was unbroken save for the motion of  the waves.

A briny gust from the sea whipped my hair about my head. Suddenly, I did not feel so alone. I closed my eyes and smiled, drinking it all in.  I listened to the fluttering of the breeze and the banging of the boats tied together against the dock.  I listened to the breathing of the ocean as the waves washed up and down the shoreline.  I heard the old wooden pier creek in protest against the battering waves, and felt it sway ever so slightly from side to side.

There was some magic in the atmosphere, and I spread my arms wide and laughed aloud to greet it. I looked around me for someone to share the moment with. I saw no one – till the sound of talking drew my gaze back down to the beach. A man and a woman were walking toward the dock arm in arm. She leaned on his shoulder and closed her eyes. He pressed his cheek against her forehead as they walked. I almost called out to them, but something held me back.

Realizing what that something was, I scanned the horizon one last time and inhaled deeply, then turned and hurried back up the dock to let the couple experience the scene for themselves. I hated to leave that place, but in so many ways it has never left me.

This was a piece I wrote a long time ago in an effort to practice descriptions, using different senses, and painting with words. It’s interesting to drop yourself into a painting and try to really experience it instead of simply looking at it. It’s even more interesting to try and record the experience you have when doing this.  I don’t mean simply talking about it though. I feel like it’s so easy to fall into the trap of merely telling our readers what we think instead of showing them, but having an experience yourself is always more engaging than just reading about it. Our task as writers is to use that fact to our advantage and do our best to allow our reader to have those experiences for themselves.

Research suggests that certain parts of our brain are unable to tell the difference between reality and a well-simulated reality. This means that we can make our readers laugh, cry, and be upset over events that never happened. We can even make them fall in love with people who don’t even exist in the real world – but the key is to be able to immerse them in our created worlds. If we cannot learn to master the art of showing, our readers will never be able to fully engage with our writing.

If you want to try this, find a painting that resonates with you and put yourself into it. Make sure you describe what it would be like to be there, not just what’s happening or what you see in the painting. I tried to make mine into a sort of narrative, but that’s optional. Make sure you share your finished product! Don’t be afraid of sharing your work. Not ever piece has to be a masterpiece, and  we cannot create the masterpieces unless we’re willing to sketch and try out new things.

Finally, remember that you do not have to be published to be a great writer. Vincent Van Gogh (the artist whose painting inspired me to write this piece) sold only one painting in his entire lifetime, and yet today he is one of the most well-known painters of all time. He could have decided that his work wasn’t appreciated or worthwhile. He could have stopped painting and done something else with his life, but he loved to paint. He painted for the love of painting. He didn’t let people tell him that he couldn’t achieve his dreams, and he didn’t let his lack of success stop him from trying to achieve those dreams. He is my favorite painter not only because his  paintings move me, but because his unfailing determination to achieve his dreams inspires me to not give up on mine.

5 Two-Sentence Horror Stories

  1. The night after the accident I thought I heard the squeaking of wheels and faint laughter in the unfinished basement. In the morning I found his twisted tricycle in the middle of the floor with little bloody hand prints on the handlebars.
  2. One day I found that something had gotten into the cereal in my pantry, so I set out a mouse trap for it. I had to move after I found the naked, miniature body of human being crushed in the trap. 
  3. Before she got sick, my daughter loved riding our willow tree in rainstorms. Sometimes on stormy nights I still see her shining eyes and long, wet hair swaying in the upper branches between flashes of lightning.
  4. The boy cast his line into pond and reeled quickly, like his dad had showed him before he disappeared. The line caught on something and wouldn’t budge—until the boy pulled with all his might, and out of the water flopped his father’s severed head, hooked right through the lip. 
  5. They told me a woman had been trapped and burned to death in the house, but that didn’t bother me too much. Until a particularly hot summer night when I watched in horror as paint was violently scraped from the walls by frantic, invisible fingernails.