Tag Archives: it

Short Story Of the Day – What is the River? (flash fiction) by Bill Chance

Posted on by Bill Chance
“We all float down here!”
― Stephen King, It


Klyde Warren Park,
Dallas, Texas

I have been feeling in a deep hopeless rut lately, and I’m sure a lot of you have too. After writing another Sunday Snippet I decided to set an ambitious goal for myself. I’ll write a short piece of fiction every day and put it up here. Obviously, quality will vary – you get what you get. Length too – I’ll have to write something short on busy days. They will be raw first drafts and full of errors.

I’m not sure how long I can keep it up… I do write quickly, but coming up with an idea every day will be a difficult challenge. So far so good. Maybe a hundred in a row might be a good, achievable, and tough goal.

Here’s another one for today (#56) More than half way there! What do you think? Any comments, criticism, insults, ideas, prompts, abuse … anything is welcome. Feel free to comment or contact me.

Thanks for reading.

What is the River?

Sitting by the stream the little boy talked to his strange new friend:

“Where does the river come from? Where does it go?” the boy asked.

“It is simply there. The river does not move.”

The child released the tiny boat and watched it around the bend.

“But it is moving.”

“The water is moving. The water comes from the ice in the mountains and goes to the salt in the ocean. The water comes and goes. The river does not move.”

“But what is the river if it is not water?”

“That is a good question. The water is different every minute. But the river is always the same. The river has to be something other than the water… but what… I don’t know.”

The Boy looked at The Clown.

“Tell you what, boy,” The Clown said, “Let me go think about it for a while. When I figure out an answer, I’ll come back for you.”

“You promise?”

“Oh, I will, I will, I promise.”

The boy watched as The Clown began to shimmer and bend and then slither down through the drain slot in the curb. The Clown looked out from the shadows at the boy for a second, then disappeared.

A Month of Short Stories 2017, Day 16 – War of the Clowns by Mia Couto

Posted on by Bill Chance

Klyde Warren Park,
Dallas, Texas

 

Over several years, for the month of June, I wrote about a short story that was available online each day of the month…. It seemed like a good idea at the time. My blog readership fell precipitously and nobody seemed to give a damn about what I was doing – which was a surprising amount of work.

Because of this result, I’m going to do it again this year – In September this time… because it is September.

Today’s story, for day 16 – War of the Clowns by Mia Couto

Read it online here:
War of the Clowns by Mia Couto

The following morning, the two remained, obnoxious and outdoing
each other. It seemed as though, between them, even yucca soured. In the
street, meanwhile, those present were exhilarated with the masquerade.
The buffoons began worsening their insults with fine-edged and finetuned
barbs. Believing it to be a show, the passersby left coins along the
roadside.

—-Mia Couto, War of the Clowns

Today, we have a brief bit of flash fiction by Mia Couto, an excellent writer from Mozambique.

At first, the parable seems like a bit of literary fluff. But it also feels terribly familiar. It feels like watching the evening news.

Are you afraid of clowns?

The biggest movie right now is It – from the Steven King novel. Like today’s flash fiction, It plays on our fear of clowns. The clowns in today’s parable are even more frightening, in the end, than the horrific Pennywise. They are the end of the world.

Interview with Mi Couto:

We know we are made of memories, but we don’t know the extent to which we are made up of forgetfulness. We think of oblivion as an absence, an empty space, a lack. But in most cases, with the exception of neurological disease, forgetting is an activity—it’s a choice that demands the same effort as remembrance. This is equally valid for individuals and communities. If you visit Mozambique, you’ll see that people have decided to forget the war years. It is not an omission. It’s a tacit decision to forget what were cruel times, because people fear that this cruelty is not a thing of the past but can again become our present. And moreover, in rural parts of Mozambique the notion of nonlinear time is still dominant. For them, the past has not passed.

—-from Paris Review

Laissez les bons temps rouler