Lanejennings.weebly.com



Flash Fiction Examples“The Perfect Mark”by Melodie CampbellThe old lady was almost the perfect mark.Sasha held back an urge to smirk, and instead leaned forward to listen with polite interest.“Do you like cats, Miss… how do you pronounce that?”Sasha nearly grimaced, but caught herself. “Oh yes,” she said quickly, glancing around the condominium. Nothing in sight but good solid furniture. “Do you have one?”“Not yet,” twittered the old lady. “That’s why I need a personal support worker. To help me look after it.”Sasha smiled back. She was confident about getting this job — she’d never missed before. Plain hair, no makeup and conservative clothes… it was easy to fool them. And she charged way less than agencies, as long as they paid upfront in cash. It was good to deal in cash.As the old lady chattered on about cats, Sasha’s eyes strayed around the room. Expensive furniture, lots of figurines, silver candelabra on the sideboard, probably sterling silver within it. No doubt good jewelry in the master bedroom, and lots of cash. Old birds like her tended to distrust bank cards. Sasha relished the anticipation. It wouldn’t take her long to find out where the valuables were kept.“More tea, dear?”Sasha accepted more tea with a smile. The hands that held the teapot were dotted with brown age spots and the veins stood up in protruding ridges. Sasha had to move the cup deftly as tea came pouring out at an alarming angle.“Oh dear!” Chirped the old lady.“Is something wrong, Mrs. Mortify?”“Oh no,” She looked embarrassed. “I just need — if you’ll excuse me…” She teetered off the couch and shuffled off to the master bedroom.Bathroom, Sasha mused dreamily. She sipped her tea, enjoying it, and smiled with pleasure at her good fortune. Chances are the old bird wouldn’t bother to check references — they never did. Old people were so na?ve.Sasha leaned back on the loveseat and closed her eyes. It was going to be almost too easy.Twenty minutes later, Elvira Mortify came out of the bedroom wearing her coat, and shuffled over to the prostrate body of Sasha Sachanska. A twisted smile creased her face.With surprising deftness, she whisked the gold necklaces off the girl — three of them — as well as the thick gold hoop earrings, gold bracelets and engagement ring. They fit snugly into the inside zippered pocket of her tweed coat.Scrawny fingers reached for the purse, heading straight for the wallet.Eight hundred dollars! That should keep us going for quite a while, she mused. Vet bills were so expensive these days.The old lady retrieved a satchel from behind the couch, opened it, and took out a tall blue thermos. With great care, she emptied the contents of both teacups, teapot, and creamer into the cavity. Each piece of the tea service fit neatly into prepared pockets. She zipped up the satchel and stood up.The old lady took a last look around the room. Condominiums were really so convenient. Owners were always going away for weekends.The girl was still out cold. Chances are, she wouldn’t call the police — they never did. Too much pride… so foolish.And even if she did: one old woman looks pretty much like another. Young people can’t see past the white hair and wrinkles.Elvira looked down at her victim and shook her head. Young people were so na?ve.As she turned for the door, Sasha lunged for her ankles.The Knives of Her Lifeby Jennifer TodhunterThe night my step-dad found mum in bed with another guy was the same night he gave me his Swiss Army knife—the one he’d spent hours whittling wood with outside on our balcony. He jammed his clothes and books into a knapsack and told me he was sorry I wasn’t his for the taking. I tightened my jaw while he unfastened his world map from the kitchen wall, the one we’d spent hours pouring over while he told me about his travels, and said that was all right—I didn’t need him anyway. I could look after myself just fine.I kept his knife underneath a sweatshirt I used as a pillow, running its blades up and down my arms—soft enough to skim through the fine, blonde hair covering my bruised skin—while mum sat half-deep in a bottle and bee-lining for hell in the living room. When I had trouble sleeping, I lay underneath my bed frame and shaved curls from its wood, like the ones that eventually blew off the balcony. The more I practiced, the more familiar the knife felt in my hands, and the more detailed my etchings became until the bottom of my bed resembled a collection of beaches, jungles, and cities I wanted to escape into.Mum dressed me in slacks and collared shirts, kept my hair chopped short with a tail that stretched past my shoulders. “Ain’t nobody going to knock you up looking like a boy,” she’d say, her fingers yanking a braid out of the thin strand down my back. “The last thing I needed at fifteen was you.”I started skipping school, carving pictures of places I dreamed of into oak trees that lined the streets and avenues around town. Sometimes people would shoo me away. Other times they’d stop and watch, remarking on my talent. It wasn’t talent, though. The knife was an extension of my arm—a way to protect myself, and to make myself heard.I found an after-school job the day I was old enough for someone to hire me. Every dollar I saved was a dollar I was closer to leaving home. Afternoon shifts bled into whenever-I-wanted-them shifts, skinning onions and peeling carrots out back of a Chinese restaurant. The owner, Charlie, paid me cash, which I kept in an empty pickled radish jar under the counter so mum couldn’t steal from me. On slow nights, Charlie taught me how to cut with precision—julienne, brunoise, batonnet, paysanne, and chiffonade—then I’d wolf down his leftovers until my hunger was gone. I kept mum off my back by bringing food home, and she’d greedily stuff her mouth instead of using it to run me down.My jar of savings grew faster than it should have. Charlie padded what I put away, even though he denied it when asked. I used the excess to buy a starter knife, which I kept at the restaurant, practicing my skills and creating art out of vegetables I found on the floor of the walk-in cooler. I left zucchini grizzlies baring their teeth, red pepper cats wielding their claws, and snap pea bees with pointed stingers lined up above boxes of produce, watching over me like brothers and sisters. They were companions in my carved out world.Before long, I was working the line, my santoku thundering along a cutting board while Charlie, sweat-drenched and smiling, yelled out orders with vigor. There was something about the pitch in the kitchen that made it possible to forget about everything else. During the height of the rush, I didn’t care that mum would be waiting for me back home. All I wanted was to create. And when she slapped me around, telling me I’d been out too late and accusing me of keeping cash from her, I pictured the world underneath my bed and my siblings in the walk-in cooler, and I took her shit on the chin.I worked at Charlie’s restaurant for a little over a year before she paid her first and only visit. She showed up at the back steps while I was on break, sitting on an upside-down bucket and carving a carrot stick caribou. She looked like she’d been drinking for days, her cheeks a ruddy red, her hair half-matted to the side of her head. Her best coat, a light-brown belted trench, strapped tightly around her burgeoning belly.“You can’t work here anymore,” she said.I sat silently, working my knife.She took a step closer and grabbed me by the tail, giving it a solid yank. “Get your ass home where you belong.”My hands were shaking when she finally left, furious I didn’t obey her. I went inside and worked the rest of my shift with a throbbing cheek, lining my miniature companions along the edge of the range for courage. My mind whirred, but I didn’t cut myself—not once. I moved my knife with meaning.Charlie’s chef whites smelled of onions and oil when he walked me toward the front door that night, my pickled radish jar gripped between my tired hands.“You are welcome to stay,” he said. “There is a room upstairs. My wife can give you the key.”I shook my head. “I can’t.” I didn’t want to stay where mum could find me anymore.“Very well,” he said, then pulled a brand new chai dao knife from behind the counter and presented me with it. “Please know you are always welcome in my kitchen.”The gesture meant the world to me. I held tightly to my possessions as I stepped into the biting wind, and walked toward home. When I reached the base of the oak that sprawled over our balcony, I stopped and pulled my Swiss Army knife from the pocket of my chef’s pants. Drawing open its blade, I carved my initials into the tree bark, then pressed on, running my fingers over the pieces of the map I’d left myself along the way.“Rivers of Rock Lead Me Here”By Doenja van der VeenConcrete surrounds you, rivers of asphalt with banks of pavement cement take twists and turns until your head is spinning.“You okay there, lady?” A small boy tugs at your sleeve“Yeah, thanks.” The answer seems to satisfy him and he runs off, sneakers breaking the surface of peaceful puddles.It feels as though your insides could tumble out any seconds and send all your organs crashing to the street. The instigators of your nausea have left your body; all that’s left is the feeling, the one that’s lingered, subdued, since you came into the doctor’s office 3 weeks ago.Your footfalls are lighter now but you still trace your fingers along the bright shop windows to keep you steady.Tracing with your eyes the features of the crowd, the surrounding chaos, you find maroon and ochre, fall colors which you found so dull but now seem a relief after weeks of white on white on grey faces and bright lights.The sounds of London, hissing of buses, scratching of a million feet on worn streets are a sweet symphony; no longer heard from your window or marred by a steady beeping noise or the scuffing of slippers on tiles.You’re looking for her. For a face not covered in secondary sorrow who doesn’t have endless degrees and a million promises to her name.She’s the first call they made. Her voice was tinny yet sounded realer from where she was in America than any noise you’d heard, in weeks, in Kensington.“It’s gonna be okay,” she said then.“Maybe.”“It will.”“I’ll be let out for a few days, they said that until the tests are back the symptoms aren’t bad enough to keep me here.”“That’s good, I’m flying back tomorrow. You know where to find me.”“See you Thursday.”There’s a click and you’re back on a high street, the night sky colors reflected in ever-present clouds.You do know where to find her but not when there’s an array of symptoms waging war on your body and all your senses are being tricked and tumbled and spun like cotton candy by lights and crowds.Familiar brownstone finally brings her to you. Having walked for what feels like all night you lean against the door and ring the doorbell. The door, labelled 43 with bronze scratched lettering, opens. She’s wearing the mint sweater you gifted her, three autumns ago, heavy knit and soft against your hands when you hug her.“It’s so good to see you,” she says when your hands are stuck in the rough denim of your jeans again.“Yeah.”“When do the tests come in?”“Tomorrow.”She frowns, her delicate complexion crumpled.She takes you upstairs and both of you lay down and stare at the ceiling, where a fan spins around despite the tea she put on to warm you.You fall asleep on her wooden floor.When you wake, both of you get ready in silence surrounded by the art she’s collected over the years. Tacked above her mirror is a picture of both of you at the London Eye when she first moved here, underneath it you see your reflection quirk a smile. Light beams reach through the framed windows and reflects shadows through the plants on her window sill. The light comes to rest on her silverware and you eat eggs at her kitchen sink accompanied by her idle chatter.Walking out of the living room you slip the dense knit sweater over your head without a word.She leads you out onto the streets, light now, bouncing rays of sun across pools of water on the street. You follow her down the concrete waterfall and you trust her to guide you past the rocks at the bottom.“In Our Eyes”by Genesis MartinElizabeth is five years old. She’s fascinated with bubbles, and finger-paints masterpieces furiously. When on a swing set, she believes her heels can scrape the cotton-candy sky. “See how high I can go!” Her silvery tone rings in her father’s ear like the sound of a jar lid popping- present and new. Elizabeth’s mother is dedicated to their lazy Sunday mornings. She spends the better half of the day scrubbing the surfaces Elizabeth has stained with her pancake batter fingerprints. She’s too young to realize she nurtures her mother’s soul in her amber eyes, and her father’s will within her ribcage. Elizabeth is too young to realize she holds the world in her small yet strong palms.Elizabeth is eleven now. She prefers to be called “El” because “Elizabeth is an old people name” she’ll say at the dinner table as she mashes her peas with the spires of her fork. She doesn’t fingerpaint anymore because she is “much too old to do little kid things.” She now takes the school bus in the morning and watches the tall oak trees bend at the wind’s command, as she daydreams of being a veterinarian, or novelist, or whatever she decides that day. Her mother watches her with solemn warmth as El stops asking her to tuck her in at night. When she was a littler girl, they’d make believe a palace of princes, and fantastical creatures that existed within the lavender walls of her room. El doesn’t ask for her father’s hand when thunderstorms wash over their home, and when rain distorts the transparency of the windows making her feel suffocated and small. She is too young to understand that her imagination is the food of life.El is now eighteen. She knows how heartbreak can roll your soul between its iron fingers and spread it thin- like she remembers the pancake batter as it hits the inferno-ignited pan all those Sundays ago. The walls of her bedroom are navy blue like a night sky that leads to infinity. Strong cardboard boxes line the walls, securing her memories within their parameters. Her mother and father separated two years ago, leaving El’s heart sprinkled like dust across the surfaces of the people she loves. Swingsets are a dream behind her and may as well be folded neatly into one of the boxes in her room. She knows she can’t graze the sky with the soles of her feet. “Once you know the distance from here to the moon, the idea of space isn’t so interesting” she’ll say with a shrug as she grips her car keys in one hand, door handle in the other. Her mother’s eyes shed tears that run like salty streams down her face that spell out Elizabeth’s childhood when she arrives at university. Her father’s hair reminds El of the pepper shaker that remained on the counter in her kitchen back home. She is too old to see that while she gets older, they are too.Over a decade has passed, and El is now thirty-two. She has a preoccupied, yet loving husband, a four-year-old son, and a small yet comfortable home. El has taken herself back as Elizabeth for “professional reasons” and is usually busy with her lively career as a pediatrician. She doesn’t take the time to wondrously watch cream as it swirls within the dark liquid of coffee, or how the newly risen sun is caught by the stain glass window and casts a radiant rainbow of pigments in her very own kitchen. But, she does notice the liveliness captured in her son’s lava shaded eyes that mirror her own, and how his heart beats thickly with the uncertainty of his imagination. Elizabeth watches him in wonderment as he pretends the bathtub is a bottomless ocean. She’s too old to understand him.Elizabeth is now held between the weathered pages that she knows create the last chapter of her life. Both her mother and father have passed. The seconds begin to slow. She is always waiting. Always counting the seconds as they ooze through the narrow tunnel of time, like morphine drips into a bottomless IV bag. The stillness of her existence so quiet, she can almost hear the hands of a clock ticking between her ears. Her son is older now, and off with his own family like she once was. Her irises are still embers of orange and gold, but they are held with leathery skin and deep set wrinkles. She questions how children can be so amazed with a bottle of bubble soap. Elizabeth watches as children run with dirt smudged faces down streets until they pinch into nothingness. The days drag on as she anticipates the burning glow of the sun as it sets. One day, the next day doesn’t follow. She finds herself the way she began; with a little bit of nothing, and everything to create.“Heliocentricity”By Audrey LaneShe was born with a condition the doctors referred to as heliocentricity; a warm, crimson sun pulsed at the center of her torso. “Long ago,” her nurse explained. “All human beings had stars within themselves, much like you. According to the Book of Secret Anatomy, their primitive bodies had velvet curtains where we have ribs today so as not to blind each other. Now that we all share a sun in the sky, there’s no need for everyone to have one of their own. It’s vestigial; you know, unnecessary—like your appendix.”She hadn’t noticed the inner star until somewhere around her tenth birthday. When it began, her skin looked like the surface of a paper lantern. She took up juggling in her teen years; the extra gravity allowed her to toss objects into bizarre ellipses and perihelia with a flick of her wrist, but it could only last so long. By the time she turned twenty-one, her body had grown too radioactive for her to appear safely in public.The surgeons had to wear eclipse goggles to perform the first incision. Everyone present around the operating table was in awe of the extraordinary beauty that was found within her ribs. Each bone was a rod of transparent crystal curled around an organic orrery. Nine planets hovered along the axis of her cosmic spine where the digestive organs would normally rest. Though awe was abound, anesthetic was a costly and limited resource, and there was still a job to do.When it was over with, they let her keep the old sun in a jar of formalin. It didn’t last long without a body in which to incubate; within a month, it had collapsed into a forgotten black hole on her bookshelf. There wasn’t much to be said about the halogen bulb they replaced it with beyond the fact that it needed to be changed every few years to keep her internal worlds alive.She missed that intense feeling of gravity stirring at the core of her being, and in the years that followed, she began to have vivid dreams that it was still there. It seemed impossible at this point, yet every now and then, she was sure that she had caught the glimmer of a distantly orbiting moon out of the corner of her eye.“The Blind Man”By Kate ChopinA man carrying a small red box in one hand walked slowly down the street. His old straw hat and faded garments looked as if the rain had often beaten upon them, and the sun had as many times dried them upon his person. He was not old, but he seemed feeble; and he walked in the sun, along the blistering asphalt pavement. On the opposite side of the street there were trees that threw a thick and pleasant shade: people were all walking on that side. But the man did not know, for he was blind, and moreover he was stupid.In the red box were lead pencils, which he was endeavoring to sell. He carried no stick, but guided himself by trailing his foot along the stone copings or his hand along the iron railings. When he came to the steps of a house he would mount them. Sometimes, after reaching the door with great difficulty, he could not find the electric button, whereupon he would patiently descend and go his way. Some of the iron gates were locked, their owners being away for the summer, and he would consume much time striving to open them, which made little difference, as he had all the time there was at his disposal.At times he succeeded in finding the electric button: but the man or maid who answered the bell needed no pencil, nor could they be induced to disturb the mistress of the house about so small a thing.The man had been out long and had walked far, but had sold nothing. That morning someone who had finally grown tired of having him hanging around had equipped him with this box of pencils, and sent him out to make his living. Hunger, with sharp fangs, was gnawing at his stomach and a consuming thirst parched his mouth and tortured him. The sun was broiling. He wore too much clothing — a vest and coat over his shirt. He might have removed these and carried them on his arm or thrown them away; but he did not think of it. A kind woman who saw him from an upper window felt sorry for him, and wished that he would cross over into the shade.The man drifted into a side street, where there was a group of noisy, excited children at play. The color of the box which he carried attracted them and they wanted to know what was in it. One of them attempted to take it away from him. With the instinct to protect his own and his only means of sustenance, he resisted, shouted at the children and called them names. A policeman coming round the corner and seeing that he was the centre of a disturbance, jerked him violently around by the collar; but upon perceiving that he was blind, considerably refrained from clubbing him and sent him on his way. He walked on in the sun.During his aimless rambling he turned into a street where there were monster electric cars thundering up and down, clanging wild bells and literally shaking the ground beneath his feet with their terrific impetus. He started to cross the street.Then something happened — something horrible happened that made the women faint and the strongest men who saw it grow sick and dizzy. The motorman’s lips were as gray as his face, and that was ashen gray; and he shook and staggered from the superhuman effort he had put forth to stop his car.Where could the crowds have come from so suddenly, as if by magic? Boys on the run, men and women tearing up on their wheels to see the sickening sight: doctors dashing up in buggies as if directed by Providence.And the horror grew when the multitude recognized in the dead and mangled figure one of the wealthiest, most useful and most influential men of the town, a man noted for his prudence and foresight. How could such a terrible fate have overtaken him? He was hastening from his business house, for he was late, to join his family, who were to start in an hour or two for their summer home on the Atlantic coast. In his hurry he did not perceive the other car coming from the opposite direction and the common, harrowing thing was repeated.The blind man did not know what the commotion was all about. He had crossed the street, and there he was, stumbling on in the sun, trailing his foot along the coping. ................
................

In order to avoid copyright disputes, this page is only a partial summary.

Google Online Preview   Download