Flash

Snowy Tow

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The snow came down, coating trees and drifting into mounds beside the road. Rosie didn’t think every drift had a car in it, like the one she was looking at, but the thought pressed on her as she tried to focus.

It was a simple job. Wait for calls on snowy nights and then drive the truck into the snow to rescue unfortunate drivers. This was probably her last call of the night. Once 3 a.m. rolled around, it was someone else’s turn.

After checking with the driver, she towed the car onto the road. Ten minutes of work and talking and the driver was on their way again. As she sat in her car and filled out the last bit of paperwork, her attention kept drifting to the mounds of snow. She’d lived around here all her life. She knew the fields down route 44 were lousy with heavy bushes and hills, but something kept pulling her eyes to the sea of white.

She set the clipboard aside, bundled up, and waded into the snow. It was up to her shins, but a particular mound kept calling to her. She walked up to it and started digging with her hands.

Twenty minutes later, she was back in her truck, driving. It had been only snow over a large bush. As she rounded a bend, looking for the county route home, she got a call. There was someone else who needed to be pulled out on route 44. Dispatch sent her back out, even though her shift was over, since she was close.

She turned the truck around and started looking for a car in the snow. She spotted it a few minutes later and smiled, despite herself. She’d been right about the drift, just half an hour early.

I’ll Never Forget

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Writing serial fiction is much harder than I anticipated and this particular story is giving me trouble. Since I don’t have that to post yet, have a bright poem about smiles to counteract the miserable winter weather I’m experiencing.

A brief little flash, a proudly-worn curve,
A tentative quirk, a break of reserve:
A twist of the skin caused by a nerve
Is all that I need to blithely observe
The mark of spirit that’s always in style,
That which we so simply call a smile.

I remember much, at least as of yet.
Though places and names, reasons I’m upset,
My first loves, injuries, and childhood regret,
Are all things that I will likely forget;
I will never lose, no matter the while,
The sight of a face creased in a smile.

Horror Movie

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He knew his apartment did not have a good setup for horror movies, but he couldn’t resist them. His couch only fit in the living room with its back to the rest of the apartment and the room was too narrow for other chairs. Even the constant creaking of floors and the furtive sounds of movement whispering through his walls couldn’t convince him of his folly. Attendance at his viewing parties had dwindled after he moved here and now he watched horror movies alone.

He was used to surround sound from his old apartment, so he didn’t notice that not all of the sounds were coming from his home theater until the first thing fell off his counter. After fixing the mug’s handle the following morning, he kept a closer eye on his kitchen and a closer ear on the sounds of his apartment. He took careful note of every sound made by the neighbors and wrote down every creak of walls as the building shifted in the wind.

The following movie night, he was ready. It was a zombie flick he’d seen before, but he picked it because it had always sounded fake to him. As the movie went on, he noted every noise that came from behind him, glancing over his shoulder for the source. He saw a pan hanging beneath his cabinets shift in the still apartment air and noted that as well.

For three weeks, he took notes. At the start of the fourth movie, he shifted so he was sitting on the floor in front of the couch. He had his notebook ready, but he heard nothing from behind him. Once the movie was over, as he headed off toward his bathroom and bed, he heard something new.

Thanks for moving.

The Countess

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Jacob locked the door of his brownstone and stepped to the edge of his front porch, looking up at his most-recent acquisition as a wave of giddy pride washed over him. His brownstone was a perfect match for its four neighbors, only varying as a result of flower boxes and window dressing, but he felt like it glowed compared to the others. He took one last look over it before turning to walk down the five steps to the street.

It was a Saturday morning, just after nine, so traffic was still quiet and the cobblestone street directly in front of his home was empty aside from the few parked cars belonging to the residents. He straightened his sweater, stuck his hands in the pockets of his jeans, and hummed to himself as he walked down the street. Everything was perfect.

“FORTY-SEVEN.”

Except that. Jacob started walking faster, hoping the woman who sat at the end of the brownstone row wouldn’t stop him.

“FORTY-SEVEN!” The woman waved a tattered bit of cardboard at him, the writing all but impossible to read as she swung it through the air. As Jacob approached, she staggered up from her seat and waved the cardboard even faster. “FORTY-SEVEN!”

Jacob rifled through his wallet as he walked, pulling out a fifty. Once he reached the woman, he tossed it into the violin case at the woman’s feet next to some lint, many coins, and a scattering of other bills. “Here’s fifty, now let me be!” The woman stopped waving her cardboard to look at her case and Jacob ran off down the street.

As he reached the end, he stepped into a puddle and his leg sank up to mid-calf. His shout of “Damn it!” was met with a laugh and a shout of “FORTY-EIGHT.”

Flash Fiction and Post-holiday Blues

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Since I’m stuck deep in the Post-holiday blues and am almost too tired from them to care, have a bit of flash fiction. If I’m still this down tomorrow, I promise I’ll post some poetry instead.

I wrote this piece a few years ago, while spending a summer working on a show being put on at my college. It was Les Miserables, and this piece was the result of a challenge from one of my coworkers, who took a rather antagonistic (but still appreciated) role in encouraging me to write. He wanted me to write something about someone with a cell phone in the French Revolution, so I obliged. I had a thing for flash fiction warm-ups that summer, so I did this while preparing to write that night and he loved it. I hope you enjoy it and that you’re avoiding any kind of holiday-related blues.

With a crack and flash, guns fired. Someone screamed. Someone died. A cannon roared in the distance. Part of the barricade exploded and fell in as the cannons facing them blazed and belched their iron-fisted demands of surrender or death. Revolutionaries screamed in defiance with their last breath, refusing to retreat or take down their red flag.

Deedle-oo-doo deedle-oo-doo deedle-oo-doo-dee.

“HOLD”

Absolute silence. Nothing moved.

“Mark, if your cell phone goes off one more time during rehearsal I am going to throw you both in the river!” The director waved his arms as he yelled and started pacing through the theater.

Everybody but Mark pulled their cell phones from their pockets and ignored the irate director. Not a single person held a gun, but every pair of hands held a cell phone. Who can ignore the call to revolution, much a less a call from a friend?