Category Archives: Friday Fictioneers

June 15, 2016

Grandpa and the Piano of Secrets

By David Stewart

I was sure the piano had eaten Grandpa. I only stepped away for a moment and he vanished.

As I approached, I could smell roasting flesh. Dear God, it had sucked him in and was cooking him!

“You monster!” I shouted, grappling frantically at the keys. A door in the knee panel fell open, revealing a ladder.

I found Grandpa in a cellar, hunched over a grill like a barbecuing troll. He spun around, then relaxed.

“I thought Grandma made you guys go vegan?” I said.

“Six years ago,” he said. “Right about the time I took up ‘piano lessons’.”

16 Comments | tags: fiction, flash fiction, Friday Fictioneers, funny, grandfather, meat, Piano, quirky, secret, vegan | posted in Friday Fictioneers

June 1, 2016

Spring Break with the Merry Maidens

By David Stewart

The sun sets on twenty drunken college students dancing in the cabin, with bass deep enough to shake the stone circle nearby.

It’s a great success. It’s my cabin after all, an inheritance from my grandmother, the one who gave me this old necklace.

The party spills outside around midnight. Dozens, then scores of men and women gyrate among the stones to the pounding music that is now coming from the ground itself.

The sun rises on me, naked except for Grandma’s old necklace. I’m alone in the stone circle, beer cans mingled with mead cups and carved drinking horns.

Read about the real Merry Maidens

14 Comments | tags: England, fiction, flash fiction, Friday Fictioneers, magic, Merry Maids, other worlds, spring break, stone circle | posted in Dusk, Friday Fictioneers

May 20, 2016

One Stop to Hwajang Station

By David Stewart

Come on, come on. That frantic thought is sculpted into the crowd’s poses and expressions. Some are sitting, but most pace awkwardly.

Far off, they hear the train rumbling. Visible relief flashes from face to face.

It’s an awkward two-minute ride. No eye contact, rocking back and forth, biting fingernails. Come on!

The doors open and people lurch forth, loping crab-like with thighs clenched, men out the right side, women out the left. A moment later, a hundred stall doors slam. A long, protracted sigh.

“They should put these in houses,” someone says.

“Gross! What is this, the Dark Ages?”

*hwajangshil (화장실) is the Korean word for bathroom. This story does not take place in Korea. You can only imagine the sort of world where it does take place.

23 Comments | tags: bathroom, fiction, flash fiction, Friday Fictioneers, funny, 화장실, quirky, trains | posted in Friday Fictioneers, Light

May 15, 2016

Dining at Chez De bris

By David Stewart

The pulsing music from the stadium above almost drowned out Sadie’s rumbling stomach.

“I hope it’s a football game,” Daryl said. “Football fans eat the best food.”

After football games, when the last happy fan had stumbled out, Sadie and Daryl would sneak out for a buffet of hot dog ends, dropped nachos, and half-full cups of beer forgotten under seats.

“I’ll go find out,” Daryl said. He came back an hour later with a flyer and a disappointed expression.

Sadie took it. “World Poverty Fundraising Rally,” she read. She looked at Daryl. “What kind of food do they eat?”

19 Comments | tags: fiction, football, Friday Fictioneers, homeless, hunger, poverty | posted in Friday Fictioneers

April 30, 2016

Well, I’m finally back, I think. I took a few unplanned weeks off for various reasons, including travel, sickness and general busyness. Luckily, the semester is mostly over, so I should have a bit more time in the future.

#1: Explain to captain that cake would boost morale for space station crew.

#2: Listen to lecture how flour would clog life support.

#3: Offer to temporarily turn off life support in galley.

#4: Wait for him to stop laughing.

#5: Pretend to drop idea.

#6: Wait for everyone to sleep.

#7: Take smuggled ingredients from personal locker.

#8: Preheat oven stolen from lab.

#9: Turn off life support in galley.

#10: Mute alarms.

#11: Take deep breath and start mixing ingredients.

#12: Try in vain to clean up flour floating everywhere.

#13: Start feeling woozy.

#14: Put cake in oven.

#15: Faint.

#16: Get rescued.

#17: Endure reprimand.

#18: Enjoy perfectly spherical suffocake with crew.

26 Comments | tags: baking, cake, fiction, flash fiction, Friday Fictioneers, funny, quirky, science-fiction, space, space station, suffocake | posted in Friday Fictioneers

April 10, 2016

He’d Make a Brilliant Lawyer

By David Stewart

My brother Terrance would make a brilliant lawyer. For him, any agreement was a Swiss cheese of loopholes.

He once bet me $1,000 I couldn’t live in an abandoned house for a month. I’d seen Fight Club, seemed okay.

I moved into one on the outskirts of town. I had a part-time job so I made the house my project. Once I could keep out the raccoons and the rain, it was pretty nice.

Terrance refused to pay. He argued that as soon as I’d moved in, it wasn’t abandoned any longer. Like I said, a brilliant lawyer.

The jerk.

22 Comments | tags: abandoned house, brothers, fiction, Fight Club, flash fiction, Friday Fictioneers, funny, lawyer | posted in Friday Fictioneers

March 31, 2016

Saved by the Date

By David Stewart

New marketing director Kyle Ramsey stood up in the conference room. “I have a brilliant new marketing campaign. Considering 90% of our product is purchased by white people, from now on, we will market exclusively to white people. We’ll save millions!”

Silence.

His colleagues stared at him, aghast.

Kyle started to sweat.

Then one woman smiled. “Ah, I see. This is an April Fool’s joke.”

Kyle looked at the date. Oh, thank God. “You got me! Haha, April Fools! Meeting over!” The others laughed dutifully. Kyle quickly closed the PowerPoint detailing his manically ill-conceived marketing campaign and fled the room.

18 Comments | tags: accidental racism, advertising, April Fool's Day, business, fiction, flash fiction, Friday Fictioneers, joke, marketing campaign | posted in Friday Fictioneers

March 24, 2016

Black Market Bacchanalia

By David Stewart

Down among the subway tunnels, past the sign of the pansy crapper is the lair where the Donkey-boys rave. Anyone’s welcome, but they have a trial—test magic, they say—a special stone passed across your forehead. If it turns blue, you’re free to party but if it’s red, you have to leave something behind.

I’ve gone twice: two reds and two terrible losses. The first time I hopped out; the second time hobos carried my legless body out.

Come back anytime, they said. If it’s blue, all is forgiven and all is returned. I just need a way back.

26 Comments | tags: Bacchanalia, black market, creepy, Donkey-boys, fiction, flash fiction, Friday Fictioneers, rave, underground | posted in Dark, Friday Fictioneers

March 17, 2016

The Giant’s Bride

By David Stewart

The Giant’s Bride

I was the first and only settler on Titan, a billion miles from the nearest sister human. I don’t need a man; I don’t even need a mankind.

I forsook them, plighting my troth to one who could never reciprocate my devotion: Titan, that lofty moon who innocently holds 300 times more fossil fuel than the entire Earth. Someday, if greedy corporate eyes gaze this way, I will thwart them.

Even so, as I watch the glassy methane river gurgle slowly past my house, as Saturn rises hugely like an effulgent goddess, I cry for the beauty of it all.