FICTION
- by Kimberly Brandon
These flash fiction stories are based on a word picked randomly from the dictionary.
Leaving Town
Word: Blackguard
They don’t call me Sam or Sammy. Never do they call me Samuel. They don’t call me nothing respectful or decent. I am Shoe Shine Boy, or Boy. All of them call me that, except Mr. Hilcock. He calls me Blackguard. Got himself a fancy education and he’s a military man. Told me that a Blackguard is a term used for shining shoes in the military. He tips me real good, tips me the same what I charge for the shine, and always tells me to keep my chin up.
“Shoeshine?” I ask the banker man? He ignorers me, like he always does. Thinks I’m a waste of good air. He’d probably charge folks for air if he could.
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- by Sarah Christine Bolton
Montana falls always turned cold so quickly. It was almost as if the powerful winter that would hold the world captive for seven months didn’t want fall to even have a chance. I remember it was cold, really cold, that fall day when we were invited to the Anderson’s dairy farm for a chili dinner. I didn’t want to go. I would have much rather stayed at home, reading in my bedroom on the window seat, with the heater blowing up hot air onto my legs.
But here we were, driving and driving. Their small dairy farm was far out of town, after the asphalt ended, after the nice gravel roads ended, after the gravel roads ended, and when the muddy dirt roads started.
Mrs. Anderson came out to meet us when we drove up, barely taller than her youngest boy. She gathered all three of them around her, in their flannel shirts and jeans and muddy boots. They stood, tallest to shortest, and smiled politely while they met my parents, smiled shyly at my brother and I. After the adults had moved inside, away from the cold, we stood in silence, kicking mud clods. The middle brother kicked one hard enough to thud against the leg of the youngest.
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- by Redmond Wallace
Working on something is so hard to do in the foul air of laziness. It smells of the barrel of fresh killed dove carcasses on the opening day of season. All the folks come out as genteel though most sure as hell ain’t. They just know how to do it real good so they can get what they want out of folks. Like a damn dove hunt. Just standing around slaughtering birds all fucking day.
I was walking the streets one winter night. I was 24 but I don’t know what day it was. I do know it was cold and dark out. I hadn’t had much to eat in the past week and too much sleep. My mind was driving me crazy and the only escape was in the concrete in front. Many tales have been told of the weird night and many more will come. Something about the dark skies and insane lives that come out under cover inspire us all to wishing we, too, could be a part of it. Even the cruel and grotesque circus of sin that revolves around the diseased clubs and puke stained bars is the romantic’s playground. No one dreams of the nine to five and the daily battle with the alarm clock, they dream of wearing wild costumes and being part of the scene. I watched some of these cats stumble about in every level of intoxication. The drunks are the most annoying but the junkies get you feeling like no place could be more revolting. In those times I amble the streets, I prefer the silence of solidarity to the company the sick creatures make. They speak only of how fucked up life is and I am usually in a state too close to that reality to want someone else’s opinion on it. All I really want is for her gentle caress. A hot meal would be good but kindness is at a premium these days. It seems most have found they can get what they desire through ambitious greed and us givers are used like toilet paper.
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- by Robert McGowan
Talent is essential, but it isn’t everything.
Which is to say:
You can’t get there without talent,
but you can have talent
and
still
not
get
there.
A venerable truth anciently understood, no new insight of mine, cutesy typography aside.
But for some it can be a shocking-fresh fact, hard to work through.
Kat, for example.
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