Category Archives: A Month of Short Stories

Short Story of the Day, Flash Fiction, Fried Rice by Shih-Li Kow

Posted on by Bill Chance

“After a good dinner one can forgive anybody, even one’s own relations.”
― Oscar Wilde, A Woman of No Importance

This woman was waving a turkey leg out of her food trailer. When someone came up to buy one, she said, “Let me get you a fresh one hon, this is my demo model, I’ve been waving it out this window for hours.”

From my blog (I called it an “Online Journal” then), The Daily Epiphany, Sunday, March 5, 2000

Chan can cook

We have a friend staying with us for a few days and tonight we took the whole kit-n-caboodle out to eat, deciding on Chan’s – a popular Chinese joint here in Mesquite.

The menu is fairly ordinary, as these things go, but the quality is high, the servings are generous, and the food comes in cute personal metal woks instead of the usual foam trays. Best of all, the cooking is done behind a glass wall and you can watch. A line of up to six cooks and a handful of assistants line up in front of vertical jets of flame. Oil filled woks are at the ends, one deep frying coated stuff and the other cooking neat. In the center, giant woks are used to stir-fry everything to order, the assistants slicing and filling up bowls with meat, vegetables, or noodles, the cooks throwing it in, flinging the necessary sauces from a cluster of deep bowls, and washing up after each order; all with rapid efficient motions.

In the center was the head cook, twenty years older and a foot shorter than anyone else. He wore a baseball cap on backwards. His arms were thick and corded with muscle from slinging pans for decades. He used a long handled wok and a ladle, swinging and slinging and cooking as if it was a dance, flipping food, dodging high yellow flames or dipping in exactly the right amount of corn starch and soy sauce. Or shouting orders and directing the others, gesturing with his ladle like an orchestra conductor. His black encrusted pan looked like it had stir-fried a million orders.

The cooking is quick and the organization efficient but it is so popular that at the peak a double line stretched from the registers all through the place and out the door.

Nick and Lee were able to grab a prime perch against the glass where they could watch the wokking. I asked them what they thought of it and couldn’t hide my grin when Lee observed, “It’s just like Iron Chef!”

And a piece of flash fiction for today:

Fried Rice by Shih-Li Kow

from Flash Fiction Online

Shih-Li Kow Twitter

Shih-Li Kow Wikipedia Page

Short Story of the Day, Flash Fiction, Pearlin Jean by Charles Kirkpatrick Sharpe

Posted on by Bill Chance

And I, to whom so great a vision was given in my youth,–you see me now a pitiful old man who has done nothing, for the nation’s hoop is broken and scattered. There is no center any longer, and the sacred tree is dead.

—-Black Elk

Nasher Sculpture Center, Dallas, Texas

From my blog (I called it an “Online Journal” then), The Daily Epiphany, Saturday, August 4, 2001

Ghost Dance

There is too much heat and too much driving. I look into the tinted car windows and wonder who these people are and where are they going? Are they looking at me and thinking the same thing? I don’t think so.

There are too many huge houses, identical, newly sprawled across land I used to ride my bicycle through, open plains.

I dance my ghost dance and the suburbs will go away, the buffalo and the coyote will return. The concrete will fly upward. The asphalt will crack and rise in a riot of lifting. Brick and sheetrock tumble upwards, spiraling to the sky in a giant tornado, sweeping the plains clean – down to the black fragrant dirt.

And a piece of flash fiction for today:

Pearlin Jean by Charles Kirkpatrick Sharpe

Short Story of the Day, Flash Fiction, Executrix by Barry Yourgrau

Posted on by Bill Chance

“There is no real direction here, neither lines of power nor cooperation. Decisions are never really made – at best they manage to emerge, from a chaos of peeves, whims, hallucinations and all around assholery. ”
― Thomas Pynchon, Gravity’s Rainbow

Pizza Oven at Cane Rosso Deep Ellum Dallas, Texas

From my blog (I called it an “Online Journal” then), The Daily Epiphany, Sunday, August 18, 2002

Racing Car

We knew the kids would be cranky today, so there wasn’t much planned. The only thing we felt up to was a trip to Fry’s to look at some electronics. While there, we decided to buy Nick a new computer. He plays the newest games so he gets the most powerful machine – everybody else gets the flow-down. I’ll take his old one and my old one and try to Frankenstein together a computer that will get through a few more years of digital progress (Lee’s is still going strong – I’m afraid to mess with it).

Since Nick had his birthday party and a new computer, I let Lee pick out something for himself. He decided on this little ten-dollar racing car kit. It’s from Japan, and runs on two double-A’s.

At home Lee opened the box on the coffee table and began trying to follow the obscure, badly-translated, instructions. The car is small, four-wheel drive, and full of tiny, delicate parts. Lee did really well, though – figuring out the drivetrain gears, shafts, and bearings like a pro.

He was worried when the drawings showed the application of what he thought was glue to the gearboxes. “If I get the glue in the wrong place, the car won’t work,” he complained to me. I took a close look and realized the stylized bottle with the little drops on the diagram wasn’t glue at all, but grease. “Oh, grease… sure,” said Lee and we cut the little bottle and dropped some drops of the white lithium lubricant in the proper spots.

I helped him with some tough screws, showing him how to use a set of jeweler’s screwdrivers we keep on hand for Candy’s glasses. “I was using a bent paperclip,” Lee admitted, “Those little screwdrivers work a lot better.”

By late afternoon, the thing was finished. It looked really cool. It has these guide wheels sticking out here and there – I guess it’s designed to run on some sort of model car track that must be popular somewhere. I’ve never seen one like that.

The problem is, the car is wicked fast. It does okay on carpet – where the thick pile slows the thing way, way down. Lee tried it in the kitchen on the smooth tile, though, and there it jumped out like a cannon shell. The little blur shot the length of the room and smashed into the oven before we could barely react, let alone catch the darn thing. Parts flew everywhere. No permanent damage, though, and soon it was all back together and working again.

I can’t believe the speed the thing gets out of two double-A’s. I wish I could figure out a place where we could really let it run.

And a piece of flash fiction for today:

Executrix by Barry Yourgrau

From Bomb Magazine

Barry Yourgrau webpage

Barry Yourgrau Twitter

Short Story of the Day, Flash Fiction, Houses that Flip by Lenore Weiss

Posted on by Bill Chance

“We all live in a house on fire, no fire department to call; no way out, just the upstairs window to look out of while the fire burns the house down with us trapped, locked in it.”

― Tennessee Williams, The Milk Train Doesn’t Stop Here Anymore

The Headlines Screamed, Baithouse Disappears

From my blog (I called it an “Online Journal” then), The Daily Epiphany, Saturday, March 27, 1999

Stuff around the house

No reading, no writing, no working out.

Finished the storm door. Worked on the computer. I’ve been spending hours a day for what seems like weeks working on computers – my laptop – my desktop – my PC at work – other peoples machines- if I have to watch Windows reboot one more time I’ll go nuts. I’ve been slaving away upgrading the home desktop it so it will play Lee’s games. The kids have broken a cabinet door in the kitchen, from hanging on it, swinging back and forth. I removed it and glued it up, holding it together with pipe clamps while the glue dried.

Most of the day, however, is spent up on the roof. The sewer line between the washer and the rest of the house is plugged up again. There must be something nasty down there that keeps holding up bits of washed out laundry, fabric fibers, and stopping the flow. When that happens our washer won’t drain and soapy water gushers out the vent pipe.

I am fixated now, tilting at windmills, I’ll get that mother out. We have hired plumbers before but obviously they have not cleaned everything out.

On the roof with a sewer snake I bought, pushing it down the vent pipe. I’ll twist it and pull it out, the sharp spiral head full of old lint, sewage, black water, and bits of some sort of metal strips. That’s what’s causing the holdup. Those filthy pieces of oxidized iron have been down there probably since the house was built. I have no idea how much of it there is, how long it will take be to get it all out, even if I can get it all out.

It’s hard, nasty work. Cold mist falls, I pull 30 feet of heavy steel spring in and out, perched on the steep roof, my hands bleeding from tiny cuts, my clothes filthy with the sewage that comes out with the pipe auger.

Candy is pissed because I’m not in a very good mood.

And a piece of flash fiction for today:

Houses that Flip by Lenore Weiss

From Portland Review

Content Writing by Lenore Weiss

Short Story of the Day, Flash Fiction, ‘Snow’ by Jason Jackson

Posted on by Bill Chance

“Well, I know now. I know a little more how much a simple thing like a snowfall can mean to a person”
― Sylvia Plath, The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath

Lee and his snowmen, February 29, 2000

From my blog (I called it an “Online Journal” then), The Daily Epiphany, Tuesday, February 29, 2000

Tiny Snowmen

We had a bit of an ice storm a couple weeks ago. Although pitiful by northern standards, Lee, having lived in global-warming ravaged north-Texas all his life, was very proud of his two tiny snowmen. We keep small carrots in the house for salads and to feed the crickets that we feed to the toad – also good for snow-noses. No lumps of coal for eyes.

Even though he semi-hid them around the side of the house, the big kids found them that night and kicked them down.

And a piece of flash fiction for today:

‘Snow’ by Jason Jackson

From TSS Publishing

Jason Jackson Twitter

Short Story of the Day, Flash Fiction, The Hundred Hidden Kisses by Carol Scheina

Posted on by Bill Chance

“The sunlight claps the earth, and the moonbeams kiss the sea: what are all these kissings worth, if thou kiss not me?”

― Percy Bysshe Shelley

Bowls and Tacos, Deep Ellum, Dallas, Texas

From my blog (I called it an “Online Journal” then), The Daily Epiphany, November 26th, 1998

Lake Bob Sandlin

Thanksgiving Day, Lake Bob Sandlin State Park

I woke up this morning in the popup and was cold. I hadn’t packed my sleeping bag or brought very many warm clothes- one pair of jeans and one flannel shirt, the rest shorts and T-shirts. Cold and apprehensive this might be a chilly vacation. But I shivered on down to the bathroom with my Barney-Bath Time Fun! towel for a shower. Meanwhile the Texas sun rose up into the trees and presto-change-o it was warm and all was right with the world.

We all decided on a hike for the day. We were camped in the Fort Sherman area, spot #2 and the trailhead was only a few spots down, between #5 and #6 and off we went. Not too far down the trail on a flat section between two creeks there was a stone marker:

Homesite of
James (Jim) Francis
& Ann Eliza
Coston
1890 1924

It is hard to believe this thick woods, these tall trees were once a farm, not so long ago. It isn’t virgin forest, but at least it is a complete and varied habitat. No single species professional forest. I memorized the trees along the nature trail stretch, there were little poles with labels, Lee would carefully spell out each one.

Short Leaf Pine(tall and stately)
Eastern Red Cedar(a beautiful tree with gorgeous stringy smooth bark)
Sweetgum(Stunning red stars for leaves and spikey seed-balls for Lee to collect)
White Oak (tall as the pines)
Flowering Dogwood
White Ash
Winged Elm
Mockernut Hickory
Red Oak
Tree Huckleberry
Red Mulberry
Willow Oak
Possum Grapevine (not a tree, really)
Red Maple
American Elm (very few of these left)
Blackjack Oak

At the end of the nature trail we crossed the road and went on down to the trout pond.

This is a little lake that the state stocks with trout every now and then. It is a calm spot, the water dyed a dark color from the leaves that fall in and steep like tea. The thick autumn woods, orange, yellow, brown, green reflected perfectly in the water; the twin forest disturbed only occasionally by the rings of wavelets as fish hit insects on the surface.

A little past the pond, Lee started to get tired (walking is tough on his short legs) so he, Candy, and the Giant Killer Dog turned back. Nick and I continued on, they would get the van and meet us at the playground by the fishing pier, at the other end of the trail. We wound our way through the deep dappled woods, the trail covered in a thick rich carpet of leaves. Crossing the road again, we pushed on to the Brim Pond, then turned off the trail to take a short cut to the road through a brushy field. It was tougher than it looked, I carried Nick on my shoulders so he wouldn’t have to walk through the brambles.

It won’t be long before he’s too big for that.

Next to the playground is an old cemetery. While Nick and Lee swing on the swings, climb on the bars, I can’t resist finding the gate in the fence and taking a look at the stones. There are only a handful.

Under an old oak in a patch of perennials, were two tiny rectangles of old limestone. Not enough room for dates, not enough even for names. Only the initials M.E.M. on one, T.H.M. on the other. I assume these were the original stones. A few feet in front were two more elaborate monuments – still old and worn, but newer looking than the small ones.

These new stones were square in cross section, about two feet in height, pointed, like tiny Philip Johnson skyscrapers. One had a design, a stylized lily and said:

Mary E Miller
Born Mar 13,1834, Died Feb 3, 1907

The other:

T.H. Miller
Born Feb 12, 1835, Died Apr 21, 1893

It also had a poem:

A loving husband, a father dear
a faithful friend
lies buried here

The top of this one had a stylized star and the legend
LEAD KINDLY LIGHT

Nearby – a modern stone, no date.

Jesse Benson
Grayrock Vols
Texas Militia
Confederate States Army

Finally, another simple stone,

J.F. Coston
Texas
CPL CO C5 REGT Texas INF
Confederate States Army
1838 1903

This one had some faded red flowers placed on it.

And a piece of flash fiction for today:

The Hundred Hidden Kisses by Carol Scheina

From Flash Fiction Online

Carol Scheina Homepage

Carol Sheina Twitter

Short Story of the Day, Flash Fiction, With One Wheel Gone Wrong by A. M. Homes

Posted on by Bill Chance

People are strange when you’re a stranger
Faces look ugly when you’re alone
Women seem wicked when you’re unwanted
Streets are uneven when you’re down

—-The Doors

On the way home from the store with a bag of Miller High Life.

From my blog (I called it an “Online Journal” then), The Daily Epiphany, Thursday, February 13, 2003

Ugly People

It had been a long, tiring day at work. A cold drizzle fell and the traffic was terrible. The hidden invisible sun set behind the darkening gray dusk so that it was night before I negotiated the endless streams of brakelights to reach my neighborhood. I had an errand to run, some item to buy (I don’t even remember what it was, now) and had little choice but to stop by the Albertson’s grocery in my neighborhood.

I don’t usually go to Albertson’s – it’s on my boycott list. In order to get their sales price on an item – you have to have a special discount card. That’s a bar-coded dohickey (most people carry a little teardrop-shaped fleck of plastic on their keychain instead of an actual rectangular wallet-card) that is issued to you once you fill out an invasive survey – sucking out all sorts of personal information. They use this to track your buying habits – and to target advertising (Spam? Telemarketing calls?) right at you.

This is something I don’t like and won’t do. Candy has filled this out and received her card – so I suppose I should too – the harm’s already been done. Or, better yet, I could fill one out with false information (Name – Dixie Normous, Address – 1600 Pennsylvania, Income – More than you can imagine…. that sort of thing) and then I’d have my barcode on my keychain and I could use the grocery closest to my house. But I won’t. It’s the principle of the thing.

At any rate, today I was too tired to drive an extra block and the item I needed wouldn’t be on sale (I remember that, though I don’t remember what it was) so I gave up my principles pulled in and shambled around the displays of peat moss, pass the giant entryway bulletin board covered with magazine come-ons and through the door into that odd stale produce, moldy ice, and sweat smell of a second-rate grocery store.

I hadn’t been in Albertson’s for a long time, but I didn’t remember how ugly everyone was. A grocery store at that time is a depressing place – people are all stopping off on their way home from work – yet it is late enough to only catch the people that work long hours. Most are buying cigarettes and microwaveable food. Unfortunately and unbelievably, it’s dry where I live and you can’t even pick up some wine or a six-pack. The best you can do is some frozen pizza-pockets, Marlborogh Lites, and maybe orange juice.

There is a resigned sullen shuffling quality to everybody. Their clothes are cheap and stained, faces fallen, wanting to get home. The Muzak is drowned by squeaking cart-wheels and crying children and the only words heard are, “Price check on vaginal anti-yeast cream” or the ubiquitous “Paper or plastic.”

The cash-only five-items-or-less line snaked way out but I knew it would be quicker than the other lines clogged with overflowing carts, food stamps, and bad checks. Still, the woman in front of me slowed everything down when the discount card on her keychain wouldn’t register on the barcode reader. The checkout clerk with bad skin huffed and carefully punched in the long list of numbers printed below the bars. It took him five tries to get it right.

I still can’t remember what it was that I bought.

And a piece of flash fiction for today:

With One Wheel Gone Wrong by A. M. Homes

From Oprah

A. M. Homes Homepage

A. M. Homes Twitter

Short Story of the Day, Never End with Termination by Marcus Pactor

Posted on by Bill Chance

“Mario, what do you get when you cross an insomniac, an unwilling agnostic and a dyslexic?”

“I give.”

“You get someone who stays up all night torturing himself mentally over the question of whether or not there’s a dog.”
― David Foster Wallace, Infinite Jest

Found tacked to a corkboard by a photobooth, Molly’s At the Market, French Quarter, New Orleans

From my blog (I called it an “Online Journal” then), The Daily Epiphany, Tuesday, January 2, 2001 Twenty years and one day ago. It’s odd to read about respiratory illness from the days (decades) before COVID

Sleep deprivation

There seems to exist, in this best of all possible worlds, a cruel virus, one that swirls around specifically at holiday time. When I’m home, with time on my hands, a chance to do some things I actually want to do for once… and the virus strikes. A world of headache, sinus drainage, ache, and worst of all, uncontrollable coughing.

The tough decision is whether or not to take cold medicine. It helps the symptoms, but really messes me up. A gulp of Nyquil and I sleep like the dead, but it stuffs my head with what feels like warm wet cotton for days afterward.

One night I tried it alone and was rewarded with an awful hacking cough every time I tried to lie down. I would bounce up and down – sneezing and heaving all night, watching the relentless movement of the clock, the red digits advancing, entropy irrevocably increasing.

That night really messed my sleep schedule up. I began sleeping later and later and staying up ’til the wee hours. I’m not a morning person anyway and am susceptible to this weakness of lassitude.

I knew it would be a struggle to get up early to make it back to work today so I tried going to bed early last night. No dice… couldn’t sleep. The alarm went off anyway.

I remember reading in the Gulag Archipelago Solzhenitsyn saying that the worst torture was when they would simply keep him awake for days and days. Sleep deprivation. I hate it too.

Today I was a zombie at work. Dizzy, sleepy, needing REM rest. After being off for so long it was hard enough to remember my passwords and what the hell I was supposed to be doing at the place – in my deprived condition I was a mess. All I could do was dream of getting home and to sleep and watching the clock slowly tick around.

And a Short Story for today:

Short Story of the Day, Never End with Termination by Marcus Pactor

From 3:AM Magazine

Marcus Pactor Twitter

Short Story of the Day, Runaway by Alice Munro

Posted on by Bill Chance

“A story is not like a road to follow … it’s more like a house. You go inside and stay there for a while, wandering back and forth and settling where you like and discovering how the room and corridors relate to each other, how the world outside is altered by being viewed from these windows. And you, the visitor, the reader, are altered as well by being in this enclosed space, whether it is ample and easy or full of crooked turns, or sparsely or opulently furnished. You can go back again and again, and the house, the story, always contains more than you saw the last time. It also has a sturdy sense of itself of being built out of its own necessity, not just to shelter or beguile you.”
― Alice Munro, Selected Stories

Horse by Raymond Duchamp-Villon
Large Horse by Raymond Duchamp-Villon

From my blog (I called it an “Online Journal” then), The Daily Epiphany, Saturday, September 12, 1998 – this is the conclusion of the story of when one of our kids’ pet Fire Bellied Toads escaped and I bought a replacement without telling them

A runaway returns

I had a lot of trouble sleeping last night. Tossing and turning and turning and tossing, I ended up on the couch in the TV room. I kept hearing a noise from the window. A tapping, or maybe a melodious scraping sound coming from the window. My exhaustion muddled mind imagined all sorts of horrible possibilities for this sound; when I’d turn on the lights, there would be nothing there.

Finally I realized that what I was hearing was simply the sound of raindrops hitting the glass. It has been almost four months since it has rained at our house, I had forgotten the sound completely.

Today I was out of sorts, headachy and tired. We ran some errands in the morning (soccer games canceled because of muddy fields) and Candy dropped me off at home while she took the boys to a church carnival. I made an omelet and was sitting on the couch eating, watching “Planet of the Apes” and generally trying to imitate a vegetable when a movement in the kitchen caught my eye.

There he was, hopping across the tile floor, heading out of the kitchen, our missing toad. I guess he’s been hiding behind the cabinets or something; luckily I was there to see him make his run. He was hopping pretty well, seemed no worse for wear for his few days on the lam. I scooped him up before the Giant Killer Dog woke up and deposited him back into the aquarium.

We had to come clean with the kids, had to tell the truth about why there were now three fire bellied toads in there. They weren’t upset at our deception, only happy that we now have three toads.

They decided to call the new one “Runaway.”

And a Short Story for today:

You could argue about whether or not Alice Munro is the best short story author of all time… but there is no argument that there are none better. She did win the Nobel Prize for literature for her short stories – something very rare. This story, from the New Yorker’s 2003 fiction edition is a little longer than most of the fiction I link to here… but it is worth the time (as is anything Munro has written).

Runaway by Alice Munro

From The New Yorker

Short Story of the Day, Flash Fiction, The Wash by William Fore

Posted on by Bill Chance

“Although frowned upon by the Reverend Johnstone and his captains, these visits across the dunes served a useful purpose, introducing into their sterile lives, Ransom believed, those random elements, that awareness of chance and time, without which they would soon have lost all sense of identity.”
― J.G. Ballard, The Drought

Autumn grasses, Courthouse Square, McKinney, Texas

From my blog (I called it an “Online Journal” then), The Daily Epiphany, Sunday,June 11, 2000

Walking in the rain

North Texas has been in a drought for… actually, about the last three years. It’s been that long since we’ve had enough rain to saturate the ground. I’ve forgotten about what real rain is like and my children haven’t even really seen it. We have had rain almost every day for the last few weeks… that didn’t used to be unusual this time of year, but it’s something we haven’t seen in quite some time. Any rain we’ve had in the last three years has been instantly soaked up by the dry ground, adsorbed, removed, and used to swell shut the cracks that vein across the parched clay every summer.

Today, it was raining particularly hard. Not a thunderstorm, no deadly lightning, but the long, heavy soaking rain – the life-giving rain. We had plans to go to a friend’s for the afternoon and they don’t have children so Nick and Lee were collecting boxes of toys to take with them. That way they would have something to do other than careen around and tear our friend’s beautiful house and possessions to shreds. Lee was collecting games for the Nintendo 64 while I hunted down the appropriate adapters so we could hook it up to any sort of electronics our friends have at their place.

Lee couldn’t find some sort of addition… some add-on pack that is used to attach his Gameboy cartridge so he could use his hand-held collected Pokemon in the N64 Pokemon Stadium game. After looking for it all through the house I had him call his friends and luckily, it didn’t take long until we located the missing pack at another kid’s house down on the end of the block.

So Lee had to go down and get it and he asked if I would walk with him. We grabbed Candy’s new big umbrella and opened the front door. Lee saw the extent of the torrent out there and asked if we could drive. I said, “No Lee, it’s only to the end of the block, we can walk in the rain, we won’t melt.”

He has a fear of storms, not an entirely unhealthy one. Lee is at the age where he is being allowed now to do some of the things that he couldn’t when he was a little younger; such as walk to a friend’s house in the neighborhood by himself. Lee takes everything to heart and still wrestles with these things. He is afraid of a lot of stuff that was forbidden to him as a small child. He can’t understand how something can be so dangerous, so full of terror one day, and no big deal the next.

Part of that is a fear of storms. He has been warned so often to watch out for lightning, stay inside when there is thunder, don’t swim in threatening weather, that he doesn’t like going outside if it’s raining. I assured him that I’d stay with him, it wasn’t a thunderstorm, we would be perfectly safe simply walking down to the end of the block and back.

So we stepped out with the umbrella, Lee standing close to me so we could both take advantage of the portable shelter. The ground was finally saturated so the heavy rain was all running off; the streets, sidewalks, yards, all covered with flowing water. We live on a slight rise so flooding is not a concern. It has been so wet the fire ants are all building desperate chimneys of mud straight up from their mounds in an attempt to escape the deluge. Unfortunately for them, this makes their nests easy to spot and apply a tablespoon of white powder insecticide.

Lee quickly lost his fear of the storm. I caught him grinning as we walked side against side, both barefoot, wearing shorts and T-shirts. The water along the sidewalk was deep everywhere and deeper is some spots and Lee took great little boy joy in padding his feet through the rainwater pools.

And so did I.

Something about fresh rainwater, it feels good. Warm water, soft water, rushing between your toes, splashing. Some of the water on the ground was tinted an ever-so-slight brown, a weak tea steeped from last year’s dead grass clippings still concealed in the lawn. There was no wind at all and the drops came straight down, big and thick and warm. The rain made a constant pinging on the taught fabric of the umbrella and a faint rustle as it tumbled through the leaves of the trees… the only sounds. For once, the constant background rumble of eighteen wheelers on the nearby Interstates and cloverleaves was muffled by the sheets of falling water.

The neighborhood smelled clean, washed, fresh. Lee was really enjoying the walk. There is nothing like the thrill of a fear overcome. The surprise discovery that something dreaded turns out to be enjoyable. We reached the end of the block and knocked on the door; his friend produced the adapter and I shoved it down a deep pocket and rolled my shirt over it to protect the electronics from the damp.

Lee was impressed by the amount of water running down the street. I wanted to drive the kids to the spillway of the White Rock Lake dam. It becomes an incredible raging torrent – a big change from the usual laconic curtain of water flowing down the concrete – but we didn’t have time.

Lee and I had to satisfy ourselves with our one-block walk in the rain, hopping in puddles, ducking the umbrella below tree branches.

In many ways it was the highlight of the weekend.

And a piece of flash fiction for today:

The Wash by William Fore

From Flash Fiction Magazine