Tag: flash fiction

“Every day he read with dismay the things people he knew said online. He’d grown up with many of them, known them all his life. Yet when he read their comments or posts, he began to wonder if he’d ever known them at all. When had they become so full of hate? How could they so easily categorize and condemn entire groups of people? Many times they were people just like them, like him. Had they always been this way, just constrained by the standards of social and human decency to filter themselves? Was cruelty easier when expressed from a keypad or keyboard?

Over time, he began to disconnect from this electronic existence. Of course there were people and photos and events he’d miss, but the world of so-called connection was proving to be corrosive, even incendiary. To read and be silent felt like a betrayal of his convictions. But he had no desire to add to a noise that was too loud for anyone to hear a single voice. A soft voice. A kind voice.

At night he would take a quilt and climb with his dogs into the foothills behind his house to one of the meadows tucked among the walls of rocks and trees. He’d lie staring at the night sky, blurring his eyes until he could imagine himself inside Van Gogh’s Starry Night painting. He thought back to the art, the books, the music he’d loved when he was younger and a more naive version of himself. He thought a lot about Thoreau and his wish to live deliberately in solitude.

If Thoreau were living today, would he go off the grid?

Can I? he wondered.”

An excerpt from Tonya’s novel Fish in the Sky.

I take photos. I write. My volunteer job is taking photos of rescued dogs and cats transported by the rescue group whose records I manage. Since working and volunteering don’t leave me a lot of time to write, I’m spending 2017 borrowing from what these dogs and cats are writing. They said it’s okay.

“While it’s true that I’m related to one of the most celebrated families in America, it never opened many doors. In fact, fame is such a fickle fellow that more people know the reality TV star of the moment than my distant relatives.

However, I have hope. Sometimes I dream that my many-times-removed cousin plans to follow in her father’s footsteps. I’d work for her!”

Toby Kennedy, from his memoir No Place at the Table.

I take photos. I write. My volunteer job is taking photos of rescued dogs and cats transported by the rescue group whose records I manage. Since working and volunteering don’t leave me a lot of time to write, I’m spending 2017 borrowing from what these dogs and cats are writing. They said it’s okay.

“Once his grandfather had told him he would grow up to be the greatest chess player in the world. He was teaching Paolo everything he knew about the game. But when he was six, his grandfather had missed a stair and hurt his hip, and his aunt took him away to live with her because she could give him more care than Paolo’s parents could.

Though Paolo owned the chess set his grandfather had given him one Christmas, he had no opponent. Paolo’s mother, whose gift was growing things, held the title of ‘Botanicals Manager’ in the glass conservatory at a fine hotel. She worked all day. His father managed a cleaning crew at an office building downtown and worked at night. Neither played chess.

Paolo put a lot of thought into how to find an opponent, someone better than he was, deliberating on all the lessons in strategy his grandfather had taught him. One Sunday, when both his parents were home, he said, ‘I want to go to work with Papa.’ He knew there were women on his father’s crew who sometimes had to bring their children to work when they had no one to care for them.

His father smiled, thinking Paolo was finally taking an interest in his business, and his mother lifted her hands in the air. ‘It’s summer. Why not?’ she said.

So the first move began, though it wasn’t quite as challenging as chess. He was supposed to stay in the basement of the office tower, in a room with vending machines and tables, but after only a few nights, he learned the habits of the cleaning crew and knew when it was safe to venture out. His next move was to outwit the men in the dark blue security uniforms. It was too easy; they liked their soft chairs behind the lobby desk, and the security cameras were in another basement room he never saw them visit.

He discovered that while there were workers who stayed late into the night on some floors, the top floor was always empty. It was the nicest floor with the best furniture, the deepest carpet, and one Friday night he found what he was looking for in a corner office. The chess set was positioned between two leather chairs at a window. He spent only a moment looking down forty floors at the city below. Then his eyes fixed on the board of black and cream marble. It was the most beautiful set he’d ever seen, and he picked up several pieces, one at a time, testing the cold weight of each in his small hand.

He returned each piece to the board, chose a white pawn, and made the first move of the Budapest Gambit.

The weekend lasted forever, and on Monday night he began to worry that he was never going to be left alone in his basement exile. Finally he was able to dart up two flights of stairs then slide into an elevator. This was always the most dangerous move. He stayed small and still in the corner, hoping no one else would need to go higher in the building. Hoping, too, that no security guard went into the camera room for any reason. Though he never looked toward it, he knew the little eye in the upper panel was watching him.

Finally he was in the corner office. He shivered as he approached the table, and then he smiled, every muscle relaxing, every nerve quieting.

The black knight was in position. The game was on.”

Harry, from his novel The Summer of the Budapest Gambit.

I take photos. I write. My volunteer job is taking photos of rescued dogs and cats transported by the rescue group whose records I manage. Since working and volunteering don’t leave me a lot of time to write, I’m spending 2017 borrowing from what these dogs and cats are writing. They said it’s okay.

“Seriously, people say you can’t tell us apart. It was only natural that I become the lead singer in a Bangles cover band. It’s all in the sideways glance.”

Betsy, writing an article about local band the Whizbangles.

I take photos. I write. My volunteer job is taking photos of rescued dogs and cats transported by the rescue group whose records I manage. Since working and volunteering don’t leave me a lot of time to write, I’m spending 2017 borrowing from what these dogs and cats are writing. They said it’s okay.

“Not all fairy tales begin with ‘Once upon a time…’ Some begin with a clap of thunder–BOOM!–or the satisfying crunch of bicycle tires on gravel.

This fairy tale begins with a whisper. The softest of whispers that only the largest of ears could have heard, and Luke had very large ears.

‘Pssst,’ Luke heard.

He looked behind him. He looked in front of him. But he was alone.

‘Why are you looking around? I’m down here!’

Luke looked at the ground, but all he saw was a tiny beetle, and he knew beetles couldn’t talk. He looked around again.

‘Down here!’ the voice insisted.

Luke leaned down until his nose was almost touching the beetle, whose mouth did indeed move as it said, ‘That’s better.'”

Paco, writing the beginning of his children’s story “Bobo the Beetle.”

I take photos. I write. My volunteer job is taking photos of rescued dogs and cats transported by the rescue group whose records I manage. Since working and volunteering don’t leave me a lot of time to write, I’m spending 2017 borrowing from what these dogs and cats are writing. They said it’s okay.

“Make fun of it if you want. Insult it as cheap and cloying. But I’m telling you, Mogen David is not just wine. It’s magic. I had my first taste of it when I was eleven.

‘Do you think she ought to?’ my mother asked my uncle as he offered it to me.

‘It’s only a thimble full. It won’t hurt her to taste it.’

She looked at Daddy, who shrugged.

I’d been reading the second book in the Chronicles of Narnia, and that night I fell asleep still holding it in my hand. When I woke up, I wasn’t in bed. I was in the middle of a group of children and a lion standing over me and arguing.

‘This never happened before!’

‘She wasn’t in the original story. She has to go!’

‘Where do you propose we send her?’

‘You’re the king! You figure it out!’

‘But this is your story, Caspian.’

‘Please,’ I said, scooting a safe distance from the lion, ‘can’t I just join you? Don’t people always appear in stories because you need them, even if you don’t realize it yet?’

Say what you please–that I was a drunk little girl–but eleven years later, I can tell you that without fail, a spoonful of Mogen David before bed has taken me all over the world and through the galaxy. Books are not what you think they are–typescript on static pages. Combine a book and this magic elixir and you have a key that unlocks the portal to a secret universe.”

From Carmela’s forthcoming novel Mogen David and Me.

I take photos. I write. My volunteer job is taking photos of rescued dogs and cats transported by the rescue group whose records I manage. Since working and volunteering don’t leave me a lot of time to write, I’m spending 2017 borrowing from what these dogs and cats are writing. They said it’s okay.

“The number twenty-seven had always been lucky for him. It had been his number when he played football in high school, and though he hadn’t been a star on the gridiron, he’d never been seriously injured, so he counted that as a win. He was twenty-seven when he got his job at Valiant Industries, which he still loved. Twenty-seven had once been the first number on the back of a fortune cookie fortune, so he’d used the entire sequence of numbers and won three hundred dollars. That was a fortune for him at a time when his shared rent was eighty bucks a month, and even that had been hard to scrape together sometimes.

On this Monday, he wasn’t looking at much of anything as he held the subway strap. Then his gaze lighted on the bare arm of a girl several people ahead of him and the tattoo just above her elbow: Happy 27.

He couldn’t see any part of her but her arm, and he attempted to stay focused on that when the doors slid open and people jostled him as they moved out en masse. Once on the platform, he tried to find her in the crowd. His sense of destiny would not be denied.”

An excerpt from Periwinkle’s contemporary romance manuscript.

I take photos. I write. My volunteer job is taking photos of rescued dogs and cats transported by the rescue group whose records I manage. Since working and volunteering don’t leave me a lot of time to write, I’m spending 2017 borrowing from what these dogs and cats are writing. They said it’s okay.

“They say, ‘Dance like no one’s watching.’ Where’s the fun in that? I want to dance like everyone’s watching! I love the attention! I want the acclaim! I don’t want it all, but I do want to be one of Lady Gaga’s dancers. Gaga! Call me!”

From Cali’s article “Little Girl, Big Dreams.”

I take photos. I write. My volunteer job is taking photos of rescued dogs and cats transported by the rescue group whose records I manage. Since working and volunteering don’t leave me a lot of time to write, I’m spending 2017 borrowing from what these dogs and cats are writing. They said it’s okay.