misc. flash fiction
by littlefallsmets
Entries 246
Page 6 of 10
theme "creep" title "the treachery of images"
Bruce Springsteen was born Bryce Sherrinford the Fourth, of the Kennebunkport Sherrinfords, graduated Yale, rumored to have been Skull and Bones president his senior year and only took on the wor...
prompt: curtain, title: a final bow
I was pulled from the earth by enslaved hands, in the beginning when I was just tufts of cotton, when all I wanted from life was to rise and spread seed, instead caught up with those men in the c...
prompt: pause, title: what dreams may come
“Elective Cryogenic Hibernation”. That’s what the scientists called it. They’d theorized about it for generations, slowly evolving from whimsical fantasy plot-device (what was Rip Van Winkle othe...
prompt: ferry, title: psychopomp and circumstance
It all started when I died, which isn’t so strange, because everyone dies. Thing is, that’s where most stories end but where mine began. I was hauling cross-country, loaded with compressed gas, w...
prompt: ease, title: the greatest
“That daring young man on the flying trapeze,” they sing up to me as I vault, they sing to me as I sign autographs after the shows, “flies through the air with the greatest of ease.” It’s nice an...
prompt: sweep, title: less a block, more a great wall
I tend to not believe in the idea of “the muse” to get things done creatively. It’s part of the reason I don’t guard my smaller ideas, my short poems, comedy bits or one-off short stories with al...
prompt: toll, title: a rose by any other
Dear Mr. Hemmingway, May we call you Ernest? Look, Ernest, we appreciate the work you’ve put in here but we’re going to have to pass on this manuscript as it currently exists. Your spare journali...
prompt: duck, title: it beats the alternative
The dinosaurs didn’t die out, not really, they just became the duck. Evolution doesn’t have a plan, it’s just whatever happens next and whoever has the genetic luck to accidentally survive. Our c...
prompt: undulate, title: the moral arc of the universe
For a stretch of time in the early 20th century, the most effective treatment for advanced syphilis was to intentionally infect with malaria on top of the syphilis. It induced a high-fever that k...
prompt: "ruin" title: "A.C. Moore or Less"
Some call it “ruins photography” or “ruin tourism” but the most vulgar term is also the most apt: “ruin porn”. Documenting crumbling infrastructures, in best case showcasing our abandoned but mos...
prompt "latitude", title "the infestation"
The buggies in my furs, they sometimes hurt but they’ve been on there so long I can’t help but feel like they’re a part of me. They make me itch sometimes but when Momma goes off to work, I know ...
prompt: flip, title: pushing paper
I could get you anything, anything you wanted, within reason, with a certain value for the word “reason”. It was so easy, of course, when the requests were mostly just street-drugs, prescription ...
prompt: cantankerous, title: after the gold rush
The idea of taking on the rap personae of a grizzled gold prospector sounded ridiculous to me as well when my agent first pitched it, but as he was quick to remind, this business isn’t just about...
prompt: smudge, title: fair warning
“Last we tried this, we went about it all wrong,” She told you from behind the desk in Her sleek minimalist office, “investing so much in one messiah to save you all at once, as much Myself as ma...
theme: favourite, title: the star of the show
“What was he like in your timeline?” one asked. “Well,” the other whispered, “I certainly don’t remember him being this fat.” They thought I couldn’t hear them, but I could, every single word. M...
prompt: comely, title: for dying out loud
Most of us don’t get to carefully choose our last words but he did. Most of us don’t die so neatly, it’s too sudden or we’re in denial or our minds too far gone from illness or fear to wax eloque...
theme: possibility, title: rhyme within reason
In the Realm of Possibility on the shore of Lake Whatweknow, sat a king within a castle guarded by a more-or-less probable moat. From the peaks of the Expectations to the low Despondent Sea, his ...
prompt: desultory, title: don't get carried away
We’d expected the Rapture to be fun, of course. We figured it would leave humanity without the sanctimonious stick-in-the-mud hypocrites and full-stop psychotics that’d ranted about it for the la...
prompt: beauty, title: beauty and the beast and werewolves
In the large print of happy endings, certainly when wild and powerful magic’s involved, there’s almost always some unintended horror deep down in the small print. Belle and the Prince indeed got ...
prompt: the apple story, title: goodbye my pretty
She’d heard the story of the wishing apples in the ruins before she understood the words used to tell it. She was always drawn to that tale but when still just a child, the adults tried to protec...
keyword: moan, title: rote memorization
This life is a series of lessons on the subject of letting things go. Avoid learning these lessons at your own peril because the lessons will continue to be taught, whether you want to accept the...
keyword: ache, title: a footnote on aberrant exo-cultural development
Consider the curious case of a planet called in its various tongues “Zemlja” “Di’qiu” or “Earth” which exo-ethnographers dubbed “Hospice Sol-Three.” It’s not rare to discover a planet whose senti...
prompt: comeuppance, title: what goes up
There are only two escalators in the entire state of Wyoming. Well, four, two sets, matching up-and-down pairs, just two sets in two banks in the same city, not even the capital Cheyenne, in its ...
keyword: quell, title: sturdy and unhinged
Most can’t say they’ve had the Secret Service begin to draw their guns on them but, then again, I’m not most people. Most folk can date level-headed partners without getting bored out of their sk...
keyword: collage, title: extraction
They say when you’re about to die, your life flashes before your eyes and while that’s kind of what it’s like, they’re not quite right. Flashing before your eyes describes a strict linear order, ...
Book Description
Wherein the typist shares flash fiction experiments from writing groups.