Tag Archives: flash fiction
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
copyright J Hardy Carroll
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
copyright Marie Gail Stratford
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
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
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.
32 Comments | tags: beauty, fiction, flash fiction, Friday Fictioneers, methane river, Saturn, Titan | posted in Friday Fictioneers, Uncategorized
copyright Emmy L Gant
First Sale
“I don’t know. How much would you want for it?”
“50?”
“How about 20?”
“I guess.”
“Of course, it’s got that garbage can in the shot. Kinda ugly.”
“It’s a Persian flaw.”
“You took it in Paris.”
“Fine, Parisian flaw.”
“I suppose if I buy this, you’ll consider yourself a professional, right?”
“Well, I would be, right?”
“And, you’ll say professionals should be independent.”
“All the ones I know are.”
“You’ll go off to live in some faraway city, attending trendy parties, having existential discussions in cafés. Becoming a different person.”
“Could happen.”
“Fine, I’ll buy the photograph.”
“Thanks, Mom.”
42 Comments | tags: fiction, flash fiction, Friday Fictioneers, independence, Paris, photograph, photographer | posted in Friday Fictioneers, Uncategorized
Captain Rabid did not inspire confidence, beginning with his name and ending with his apparent desire to kill his entire crew. On his first day he dismissed the ship’s doctor in order to motivate the men not to get injured or sick. He routinely ordered them to charge enemy ships head on, despite the fact that it gave the foe a perfect chance to rake the ship from stem to stern. Eventually enemy ships would just turn and run, not wanting to fight a crazy man.
One of the midshipmen had a pool going to guess the reason for this apparent insanity. The top choice was that he was suicidal; the second choice was homicidal. Less popular choices were that he had a father who was a hero and was trying to follow in his footsteps. In last place was the idea that he just wanted to get fired and go home.
* * *
Captain Rabid opened his diary.
Dear diary, I have done everything exactly wrong and still I am employed. The ship’s pool is at almost 100 pounds. Tomorrow, I will claim it, then have a naughty phrase concerning the admiral’s mother painted on the side of the ship. I should be at home in my garden by the end of the week.
9 Comments | tags: Alastair's Photo Fiction, fiction, flash fiction, funny, rabid, sailing ship | posted in Light, Uncategorized
I found out this week that our university’s literary journal is going to publish my story, Braiding Mythology. Now I’m apprehensively waiting to see what my colleagues will think of me after they read it. I dedicated that story to my wife, and I am dedicating this one to her too.
(If you’re wondering how this picture led to this story, look closely at the green battery.)
Copyright Sean Fallon
There is nothing new under the sun.
I once created a group of scientific superheroes. I called them the “Miss Elementals”, one for each element on the periodic table.
First Marvel sued me because Miss Iron was too close to Ironman.
Then the creator of Sailor Moon sued me because of Miss Mercury.
Miss Krypton led to a lawsuit with DC Comics.
I finally abandoned the project when Goldman Sachs sued me over Miss Gold.
It’s okay though. I have this new idea about superheroes based on the planets of the solar system. That’s never been done before, has it?
16 Comments | tags: DC Comics, fiction, flash fiction, Friday Fictioneers, funny, Goldman Sachs, Ironman, Krypton, periodic table of the elements, Sailor Mercury, Sailor Moon | posted in Friday Fictioneers, Uncategorized
The Legend of Arthur King
“Good evening, and welcome to the BBC News at Six. He calls himself the reincarnation of the legendary king of the Britons, but his passport says Arthur King. Mr. King is on a quest to rid the country of what he calls ‘invaders and filthy foreigners.’ He was recently arrested after threatening to ‘blow up Essex’. Our history correspondent Alastair Forbington interviewed him today.”
The picture shifts to an inmate in Belmarsh Prison.
“It’s disgusting, you know, the way these foreigners are taking over everything. When I was king, Briton was ruled by the true British. Not like now. Now, the Anglo-Saxon horde has so completely overrun our fair island that you can’t throw a stone without hitting one of them. They’ve even gotten into our place names. Essex? That’s just ‘East Saxon’. England? That means ‘Angle-land’. And the sad thing is, we just let it happen, little by little. Starting right now, I’m calling for a crusade against these foreign devils. All true Britons come meet me in Gwynedd and slowly, we will take back our country.”
“I see. So you are declaring war on every last man, woman, and child on Great Britain, including yourself?”
“If that’s what it takes. One more thing, we need to stop using this barbarous ‘Angle-ish’ language. From now on, it’s Brittonic or nothing.”
9 Comments | tags: Alastair's Photo Fiction, Anglo-saxon, anti-immigration, Belmarsh Prison, Essex, fiction, flash fiction, King Arthur, nativism, satire | posted in Light, Uncategorized
“What’s this car run on?”
“It runs on love,” I said.
The investor stared at me. “Really?”
“Yeah.” I was sweating. “You think about someone you love; it powers the car.”
“I’m out,” he said. “I don’t want to break down because of an attack of road rage.”
Actually, the car ran on belief. If you believed it worked, it did. But belief was too nebulous. You had to concentrate on something. I picked love.
The next year, I saw an ad for the Chevy ‘Murica. It ran on American greatness. They sold millions.
I should have gone with that.
23 Comments | tags: alternative energy, American greatness, Chevy, fiction, flash fiction, Friday Fictioneers, love, Murica, quirky | posted in Friday Fictioneers, Uncategorized
The Green-Walled Tower 