Tag Archives: flash fiction

Sunday Snippet, It’s You by Bill Chance

Posted on by Bill Chance

That man’s silence is wonderful to listen to.

—-Thomas Hardy

My Toshiba Netbook – rode my bike to a coffee shop.

It’s You

I was behind in my work – the magazine needed some short fiction from me – so it was a good thing I was able to get in my usual Saturday morning two hours of writing at Starbucks.

The voyeurism of overheard conversations at that Starbucks on Saturday morning was fun, interesting, and sometimes a creativity starter. It seemed that there was a penchant for confession – people came to the coffee shop to own up to the sins they had committed on Friday night. Lately, the quality of the conversation overheard at nearby tables has been slack but today it was fairly good.

Behind me two guys were having a long one-sided discussion. When I first sat down one said in a clear voice, “I still love you, and I hope we can still be friends, but there are issues.” I thought this would be really juicy, but it turned out to be a discussion about friction within a local Baptist church.

I could not help it, I had to look. Twisting in my seat I pretended to gaze at the board that displayed the coffee selections but I was really glancing at the two guys talking – well, the one guy talking and the other taking the abuse. I noticed there was another coffee-drinker sitting close to them – she wasn’t pretending, she was staring.

While I wrote, I listened to this guy go on for over an hour. The other guy was leaving the church and the talker wanted him to stay, I guess. The talker was the kind of person I want to bitch-slap. He thought he was a good talker – but he was a terrible listener, which is very important for a church person. He never shut up; never let the other guy get a word in edgewise.

I was able to make out a list of all the people associated with the guy’s church and their failings, weaknesses, and shortcomings. He complained how nobody ever stuck to his or her course, nobody was “a stand-up guy,” and how people were leaving for the big Baptist churches in Rockwall and Garland. He kept saying how the “church world” is the same as “the business world,” and would expound at length on his ideas and theories for expansion and success. He kept using phrases like “fundamental commitment to leadership.” I thought about how he bloviated about a church for over an hour and never mentioned God, Christ, or Faith.

Then, suddenly, a loud screech of a weighted chair rudely scraped across a stained concrete Starbucks floor, a breeze of motion and a gap of very loud silence.

I whipped around to see what was going on. The woman that had been sitting near them had slid her chair back, jumped up, and advanced on the men. She was red as a beet. She began to yell.

“Hey! Dude! It’s you! It’s you! It’s you! They can’t stand you, you run the place, you tell everybody what to do; you don’t listen to what they need… what they want – what the hell do you expect!”

“Excuse me?” the guy creaked out.

“Excuse me? Excuse me! Excuse the fuck you! I’ve been listening to… No, no, I haven’t been listening, I’ve been sitting here trying to enjoy my coffee, the high point of my week, and your bile and self-serving crap has been pouring over me. You are ruining my day! People like you… Men like you are ruining my whole life!”

The man made some quiet clucking noises while the entire coffee shop broke out in applause. The woman stormed out while the two men sat in shoulder-hunched silence.

I clapped a bit myself – but I never said anything. I had a short story to write.

Short Story of the Day, Flash Fiction, Mr. Burley by T Kira Madden

Posted on by Bill Chance

“I have never created anything in my life that did not make me feel, at some point or another, like I was the guy who just walked into a fancy ball wearing a homemade lobster costume.”

― Elizabeth Gilbert, Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear

Trilobites

From my blog (I called it an “Online Journal” then), The Daily Epiphany, Sunday, April 25 1999

Tourist Day

Today was a day to be a tourist

I even went out for breakfast. A local southern-fried kind of place. Grits for breakfast with iced tea so sweet it makes your teeth ache. In Texas tea is served in big plastic tumblers, free refills, no sugar unless you put it in yourself and watch the crystals fall bouncing off mountains of ice cubes. Someone here asked our Carolina waitress if they had unsweetened tea and she looked like she’d been hit in the back of the head.

Then we were off to the area’s biggest attraction, the Battleship North Carolina . It was an interesting visit. The ship is very well preserved and a lot of work is done on the upkeep. A lot of the below deck areas are accessible and this might be the most interesting part; seeing how the daily life on the ship was done. We toured sleeping quarters, stacks of folding canvas bunks, giant kitchens, huge steam pots, dining rooms, post office, movie projector, convenience store, heads. An entire city below decks, behind armor plate.

Up above though, that illusion of a busy but tranquil life is destroyed. Crawl into a cramped gun turret and it isn’t hard to conjure the image of young men, still teenagers, fresh off the Iowa farms, crammed into the steel chambers. Humid air, hot South Pacific sun beating, heating the metal. Tremendous loud sound as the guns fire. Zeros drone overhead, dive suicide toward the ship. Anti-aircraft crews pray a shell will find its way as they stare straight into the onrushing enemy. Imagine the smell of fear sweat as every one goes about their job wondering if the bombs will hit the ship, if the armor will hold.

I’m thankful that I could simply walk off, over a gangplank and through the gift shop. Thankful I could sit for awhile on a bench. Thankful the most dangerous thing around was Charlie, the semi-tame local alligator trying to soak up some spring sun.

That evening we all went out to a regular dinner at the Marina’s Edge, a local seafood emporium. The food was excellent, I had Jerked Mahi Mahi, nice and spicy.

They did have something at the restaurant I hadn’t seen. You know those games where you put money in and a crane will move over and you try to get a piece of candy or a prize? They had one there, but it was mounted over a live lobster tank. It was called The Lobster Zone . Put in two dollars, use the crane to try and grab a live lobster. If you caught it, you eat it. Pretty weird .

I’m not surprised, but the animal rights folks aren’t too happy about this.

And a piece of flash fiction for today:

Mr. Burley by T Kira Madden

From The Rumpus.net

T Kira Madden Homepage

T Kira Madden Twitter

Sunday Snippet, The Dream Screen by Bill Chance

Posted on by Bill Chance

“That which is dreamed can never be lost, can never be undreamed.”

― Neil Gaiman, The Wake

Dallas Heritage Village

The Dream Screen

All his life, Sam could never remember his dreams – he would wake up with a vague feeling of frustration and discontent, but whatever was causing it would fade so fast he could never get his mind around it. For the last month, however, he had been having the same… or rather similar… dreams and they haunted him all day long. The dreams were especially bothering him because in the dream he was lying in his own bed, just like he was in real life. That made the line between dream and reality blurred and Sam was afraid that he would lose track on which side he was on.

When he was a child his parents had insisted he sleep on his back, arms at his sides, under a smoothly made sheet and comforter. They would pop into his room several times a night and if he had turned on his side or mussed his covers, they would wake him, berate him, and make him set everything back as it was.

“If you are to be organized and follow the rules while you are awake, you must follow them while you are asleep,” they would tell him.

And the training worked. For a half-century he slept on his back, with his arms at his sides, without tossing or turning.

But now, in his dream, he was on his side, with one hand extended holding a wireless track ball. In front of his face, glowing in the dark, was a screen – a tablet of some sort – with the internet on it. He couldn’t see what was holding the tablet up, but it stayed steady, almost filling his field of vision. He could use the trackball and its buttons to move around the internet, but he didn’t seem to be able to decide what to watch – his hands did if for him.

He told his grief counselor about the dreams.

“Is it disturbing to you?”

“Not during the dream itself. It bothers me when I wake up.”

“Why?”

“I don’t like not being under control. And now, I’ve been waking up in the same position, with my arm out, cradling an unseen object.”

“Why does that bother you.”

“It is so unorganized.”

His grief counselor was a doctor and he gave Sam a prescription to take before bed. Sam was certain that it was some sort of a placebo, but he took it anyway. It didn’t help.

When his counselor asked him what appeared on the screen, Sam obscured the reality and gave a deceitful answer.

In truth, the screen was showing, forcing him to choose, a very specific set of scenes. The screen was replaying moments from his life, some short, some longer. Some of these scenes were events in his past that he thought about often, but most were episodes that he didn’t consciously remember, until the dream screen showed them to him, and he they would arise from the depths of his memory, suddenly clear as day.

He remembered all these scenes after he woke. Even the ones he had previously forgotten, became a big part of his life, anew.

Sam finally decided to open up to his counselor. “Are these disturbing scenes, fearsome events, that you have subdued in your memory?” his grief counselor asked.

“No, quite the opposite. They are the little golden moments of my life. The happiest times. Most are not any big deal – as a matter of fact, when they happened I usually didn’t even understand their importance. It wasn’t until later, or even until the dream-screen brings them back, that I realize how happy and meaningful they are.”

“Well, Sam,” his grief counselor said, “I think your subconscious is simply bringing back the best memories of your past to give you some relief from the awful terror of the present. Maybe it is reminding you that things were better once, and maybe, they can be again.”

Sam nodded his head. He was being polite – he knew the grief counselor was wrong.

As time went by, Sam became used to the dreams. He bought an expensive pillow designed for people that slept on their sides so he would be less sore when he woke up. Sam began to sleep longer and longer until his day was made up of sleeping with only a quick meal and other necessities that he rushed through in order to lay back down and enter the world of his dream-screen as quickly as he could.

Sam was amazed at how many wonderful, tiny things had happened during his life. He knew that his supply had ended, however, there would be no new ones. Eventually, the scenes began to repeat. He realized he was watching something the dream screen had showed him before.

The second… and third… times through the memories were not as happy, they somehow faded with each showing. That was when Sam realized that his time was growing short.

Short Story of the Day, Flash Fiction, A Time There Was by Hastings Kidd

Posted on by Bill Chance

“A bone to the dog is not charity. Charity is the bone shared with the dog, when you are just as hungry as the dog.”

― Jack London

Bark Park Central Deep Ellum Dallas, Texas

From my blog (I called it an “Online Journal” then), The Daily Epiphany, Monday, March 11, 2002

Back

Driving back, I had a choice of several routes. Not really country but not city, the area is dominated by tony horse ranches (complete with billboards advertising the best quality of equine semen) interspersed with developments complete with gigantic Tudor-style mansions surrounded by acres of rolling lawn and artificial ponds. I saw one guy riding a four-wheel ATV down to his mailbox to get the afternoon missives.

Checking the radio reports, the traffic in the city sounded nasty – with rush hour building. The helicopter reporter called in a handful of accidents – all right along my route home. So I decided to keep moving outside the city, going east through McKinney on to Farmersville. It’s farther that way, but at least I was able to avoid the city traffic, which I didn’t really want to fight pulling the popup.

It really was a nice drive, getting a little tour of the countryside north of the Metroplex.

And a piece of flash fiction for today:

A Time There Was by Hastings Kidd

from Flash Fiction Online

Sunday Snippet, Mall from Hell by Bill Chance

Posted on by Bill Chance

“Civilized life, you know, is based on a huge number of illusions in which we all collaborate willingly. The trouble is we forget after a while that they are illusions and we are deeply shocked when reality is torn down around us.”

― J.G. Ballard

Toad Corner, Dallas Arboretum

Mall from Hell

He dreams of a shopping mall from hell
At the center, the intersection of walkways
Is a lobotomy kiosk
Crowned with a shiny silver
Ball peen hammer
Youths with untied shoes
Line up in front of the food court
Where the famous
Deep Fried Toad Dicks on toothpicks
Are cooked and served up by
Lolita in a paper hat

Sunday Snippet, Insomnia by Bill Chance

Posted on by Bill Chance

“How to Commit the Perfect Murder” was an old game in heaven. I always chose the icicle: the weapon melts away.”

― Alice Sebold, The Lovely Bones

8 50 Caliber Machine Guns, Commemorative Air Force, Wings Over Dallas

Insomnia

I ride the trains at night. I can’t sleep and I have a monthly pass, so why not.

It was almost three in the morning and I was sitting on the Darkwater platform on one of those little seats that fold down.

There was a maintenance worker, a tired looking old man, washing the platform with a faded green hose. He pretended not to notice me and I pretended not to notice him.

The thief came from nowhere, pulled a gun on the maintenance man, and demanded in a loud and obscene voice that he hand over his cell phone.

He did hand it over, without hesitation. I was thinking how big of a loss this was to him, how many platforms he would have to hose down to buy a new phone when the thief shot him, twice, and he went down in a quickly expanding pool of blood.

The thief turned and ran down the stairs. I followed, not slowly but not running either. At street level I saw the thief disappear down an alley between two dilapidated brick industrial buildings. I followed.

The thief was waiting for me. He was yelling something at me – but I couldn’t make out the words. His gun was big – I recognized it as a Glock 21 forty-five caliber. It was a real hand cannon and it was pointed at me.

My Walther PPK 9mm dropped from the holster in my sleeve into my hand. It is a lot smaller than his Glock. But I am practiced, very fast, and I never miss.

Short Story of the Day, Flash Fiction, How Difficult by Lydia Davis

Posted on by Bill Chance

“If your kid needs a role model and you ain’t it, you’re both fucked.”

― George Carlin, Brain Droppings

Window sign, Tattoo Parlor, Deep Ellum, Dallas, Texas

From my blog (I called it an “Online Journal” then), The Daily Epiphany, Wednesday, November 7, 2001 – a smidge over twenty years ago:

Feng Shui

The other day we were driving around, talking about this and that, complimenting someone (I don’t remember who) on their house and how it was decorated.
Lee piped up from the back seat, “I like that house, it’s very Feng Shui!”
“What did you say?” Candy asked.
“It’s very Feng Shui,” Lee replied.

Where does a nine-year-old learn about Feng Shui? It was a bit of a shock to hear a little kid use that term.

“It’s from Doctor Dolittle Two,” Lee said.

And a piece of flash fiction for today:

How Difficult by Lydia Davis

from fwriciton

A cartoon version of How Difficult

Short Story of the Day, Flash Fiction, Keeping an Eye on You by Robert Garner McBrearty

Posted on by Bill Chance

“But the thought of being a lunatic did not greatly trouble him; the horror was that he might also be wrong.”

― George Orwell, 1984

My bicycle locked up to the TRex in Exposition Park, Dallas, Texas

From my blog (I called it an “Online Journal” then), The Daily Epiphany, Friday, January 31, 1997

Real dinosaurs

I’ve been thinking about Lee at the Dinosaur play we went to last week. Thinking about the start of the second act when the dinosaur, the three-horn, the Triceratops, no- the actor, no- the actress wearing the Triceratops costume emerged from the rear of the theater and moved down our very own aisle, making dinosaur-type noises (what kind of noise does a dinosaur make?) and glaring and gesticulating at all the enthralled children.

Lee was grinning, smiling, waving back with a little half wave. His radiant face was plastered with an unbelievable expression, one of absolute wonder and amazement, he looked like, well, he looked like he had seen a dinosaur. In the play, the protagonist (a paleontologist) and her daughter had traveled back in time by way of an incantation the daughter intoned. They ended up at the very nest of the dinosaur whose remains (egg shells and bones) they had been unearthing at the beginning of the play.

Lee knew this wasn’t a real dinosaur, he knew it was an actor inside an attractive, but not very realistic dinosaur suit. What was it? A Dinosaur or an Actor? What’s the difference? None to him. As an adult I, of course, hold no illusions of it being real, I could tell that, not only was it not a dinosaur, it was evenone of the other actors in the play, an actress, the actress playing the museum president. Actress-Dinosaur, ThreeHorn-Triceratops, DinoActress-MuseumPresidentActress, which is it?, which is real? and which is the illusion?

Children accept the fact that for all practical purposes there is no distinction between fantasy and reality. Adults forget, or choose to ignore this fact.

No difference you say? Reality and fantasy, no distinction? Run across this street then and get hit by that cross-town bus, there’s your distiction.

Yeah, that bus is real, all right, I think we can agree on that point. But why did it hit me? Bad luck? Destiny? Did the Tarot cards predict this?

“Yes, I can see it now, the cards will predict your future. You have drawn the Greyhound Card, along with the Hanged Man. I predict you will be smacked by the Lexington Avenue Cross-Town bus at seven thirty AM June 23rd 1998, after leaving Starbucks, looking at your watch, trying to catch the train.The bus will have an ad on the side, for Tyrone’s Seafood (Plate O’ Shrimp – $4.99), the driver’s name is Roger Slothrop.”

“But that can’t be true! I don’t even drink coffee!”

Our daily struggles we blame on the stars, on our parents, on the government, but who is to blame?

I suppose we need to watch out for that bus, but it would sure be nice to be able to pay for a ticket to the children’s theater and get to see a real dinosaur.

And a piece of flash fiction for today:

Keeping an Eye on You by Robert Garner McBrearty

from Flash Fiction Magazine

Robert Garner McBrearty Webpage

Short Story of the Day, Flash Fiction, Mannahatta by John Keene

Posted on by Bill Chance

“Canoes, too, are unobtrusive; they don’t storm the natural world or ride over it, but drift in upon it as a part of its own silence. As you either care about what the land is or not, so do you like or dislike quiet things–sailboats, or rainy green mornings in foreign places, or a grazing herd, or the ruins of old monasteries in the mountains. . . . Chances for being quiet nowadays are limited.”

― John Graves

From my blog (I called it an “Online Journal” then), The Daily Epiphany, Monday, March 13, 20008.

Into the wind

There’s this thing about being in a canoe, or a small sailboat even, on a lake in the wind. When you are going into the wind you’re going very slowly and in the case of a canoe you’re working very hard to push against the resistance. But since the waves are going the other way, opposite you, it seems like you’re moving very quickly, rushing along. It’s only when you watch the shore that you see the glacial progress you’re making.

On the other hand, when you turn around, and go with the wind at your back you, hopefully, will move right along with the waves and appear, when you look at the water, to almost be standing still. Again, it takes some proper point of reference, some object on the shore, to gauge your true rapid speed.

Nick, Lee, and I rented a canoe today, and went from one end of Cedar Lake to the other.

We started at the little park store, which has rentals. We had to wait because the operator who lives in a recreational vehicle beside the store and lives by himself had to close up for an hour and go into town. When he came back he could rent us the boat. He made us fill out all the paperwork, apologizing, “Please fill this out in case the State audits me.”

Candy asked, “Well, have they ever audited you?”

He said, “Yes, once. They came out a couple years ago but I told them that my wife had passed away that week and I couldn’t deal with it so they went away and haven’t come back.”

So we rented the little aluminum canoe for an hour, six dollars an hour, and we went out in it while Candy waited on the shore with the giant killer dog. The rental place is in a cove down at one end of the lake and due to the drought we’ve been in for the last couple years the lake levels are way down. It was difficult to get out of the cove because the water was so shallow.

I wanted to go the length of the lake, all the way to the dam but as we moved out into the center I wasn’t sure we would make it. The stout wind would catch the front of the canoe, where Nicholas sat ineffectually flailing at the water with one paddle, and spin it around so I would have to paddle hard and carefully to keep us pointed at the dam. Two other families had rented canoes right after us and they were unable to get out of the cove due to the wind.

After being spun twice I decided to move over to the west coastline, as close as possible, and pay close attention to steering the canoe – we were able to make progress that way. It was work, pushing against the wind, taking all the strength I had in my shoulders. It felt good to be paddling a canoe again; I’m really pretty good at it. I had a canoe of my own once, for a little while when I lived in Panama – a hollowed out log really – that I could take down to the lake and paddle around with. I guess that’s when I learned how to handle a paddle with some dexterity. In college sometimes in the spring we would go down to the Ozarks, rent canoes and shoot some easy rapids. Over the years Candy and I have gone to Caddo lake or some other camping place by the water and rented a boat.

Nicholas and Lee had never been in a canoe before. Lee was surprised to find out it was made of metal, he thought they were all made of wood. They both said the canoe was more stable than they thought it would be, they thought it would be harder to keep it from tipping over. I told them a lot of that was because I was working pretty hard at keeping it straight while they flailed around. Especially Nick at the front trying to paddle.

Today we made it all the way to the dam. No big deal, no great feat, but the kids seemed to enjoy it. We circled the concrete drainage structure, a tall cylinder sticking out of the water with a wrought iron valve wheel on top. Then we turned and headed back.

The wind and waves bore us along at a rapid speed on the return. It took us maybe forty minutes to reach the dam and only ten to get back. Poor Lee knelt on his knees in the center of the canoe during the whole trip and could barely stand when we pushed up onto shore. His young legs recovered their flexibility quickly enough.

I’m afraid my shoulders didn’t recover quite so fast.

And a piece of flash fiction for today:

Mannahatta by John Keene

from TriQuarterly

John Keene Webpage

Short Story of the Day, Flash Fiction, Ramona by Sarah Gerkensmeyer

Posted on by Bill Chance

“When the heart speaks, the mind finds it indecent to object.”

― Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being

Found 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, Monday, December 14, 1998.

The city at night

I’m writing another entry sitting in the van, waiting in a parking lot. This time it’s a long way from home. I have a focus group at eight thirty, on the tenth floor of a big office building, at Park Central on the northern arc of Dallas’ LBJ freeway loop. I have better things to do with my time than sit here, but they’ll pay me a hundred dollars, cash. Allowing an hour to get here, it only took twenty minutes, so I found this lot in a commercial strip right off Central Expressway. About a half hour to kill before I drive back to the building, that’s how long the batteries in this old Dell can hold out.

I had wanted to go exercise after work and there is a club located between there and here. I fogot my damn shoes again, can’t very well work out in steel-toed safety boots, so I stayed in my office a couple hours late. Time is becoming so precious, it drove me nuts. Nowhere to go, no money, nothing much to do .(I was so sick of work, it was tough to get anything extra accomplished). So I sat and did some light computer stuff and watched the hands turn.

At least the van is a good place to type. The middle bench seat is roomy enough for me to hold the laptop on my lap, there is enough stray light from the parking lot to illuminate the keys without washing out the screen. Also, the van isn’t stalling. I was about to give up yesterday, when I put another fresh tank of fuel in her, and presto- no more problems. My guess is that the recent cold snap condensed water into the gas tank, it took a refill to work itself out.

Across the street from here is a big hospital. This is where both Nick and Lee were born. It seems like I’ve been there a hundred times, for childbirth classes, medical emergencies, routine checkups. We don’t have the HMO anymore, so we don’t come back here now. One reason I dropped it was because I was concerned about the drive from Mesquite, it scared me to think of Candy driving over here in the awful traffic with a sick kid strapped in beside her.

The traffic is scary. The intersection of LBJ and Central may be the busiest in the Metroplex, maybe the country. Lines of white, lines of red. Going either seventy or stopped. I constantly look at these thousands and thousands of cars speeding past and wonder where all these people are going. What are their dreams? Are they happy? Do they really want to go where their car is pointing? Why are they in such a hurry to get there?

Honk! Honk! Honk! The car alarm on a big sedan is going off. A woman gets out. Is it her car? Is she confused by the alarm and can’t shut it off? Or is she stealing the thing? I don’t care. It stops, she gets back in. Nobody calls the police. There the car goes.

Behind this strip, this line of office supplies, fast food Chinese, medical equipment, and podiatrist, is the dark slash of a creek. I know that linear wilderness better than I know the wild street; the White Rock bicycle trail runs back there. It starts five miles to the south at the lake and winds along the creek embankment, using the floodplain to cut through these civilized islands unseen and undisturbed. The day was dry and warm, I wish I had my bike and was able to get some late season fresh air back there today. Or I wish I had a nice light and could run the trail now. Swooshing along in the dark, heart pumping, legs pumping.

Oh, well.

I think I’d better wrap this up, save the file and get going. I’m not sure exactly where to park (there is a maze of garages around the office complex) and I don’t want to be late. They won’t give me my money.

Thanks for listening to me ramble, thanks for helping me kill a few minutes away from home, thanks for the memories and the city at night.

And a piece of flash fiction for today:

Ramona by Sarah Gerkensmeyer

Sarah Gerkensmeyer Homepage

Sarah Gerkensmeyer twitter