Microfiction Monday – Fourth Edition
Special thanks to Marc Corbier and Jessica Standifird for their editorial assistance. This week’s artwork is by Sarah Kayss.
Home
by Stephen Gossett
The old house, standing naked and empty against the world, blank staring windows that cannot see. The door has locked out life. Flowers and shrubs growing and blooming, but for who? My youth peeled and blown away, only remembered as echoes. I had to cry today, standing in the deserted driveway. I am left bleeding and wounded. Through blurry eyes I try to see the old place in its former glory but it is small now. Time won out on its endless pursuit of the future.
Summer Nights
by Luke Strickler
I never had a rocky relationship in my teen years, but I did have a summer job at the mall. I got paid minimum wage. You got paid in whatever weird version of sex teenagers were doing. I stopped finding customers interesting. You stopped finding them interesting. And together we both drove home in separate cars listening to punk rock; me just having let out the last show, and you just having sat through it alone. The only difference is now I don’t like the taste of popcorn and you don’t like the name Alex.
Lost
by Tyler Woodley
If there was a time he wished he had never met that girl, it was now. That girl who haunted his dreams, she danced in his thoughts for him as if she owned his consciousness. So close sometimes, he could smell lilac. The summer dress she wore teased relentlessly; twisting elegantly, eerily silent. Dylan squeezed his eyes shut to envision her face, but it eluded him.
“She has green eyes, green eyes, green as emeralds. Emeralds.”
She gave one final twirl as she reached the very edge of Dylan’s imagination; a faint blue flash, then complete darkness.
A Better Plan
by Diana Kirk
When I was thirteen my mother kept a gun in her bedside drawer. Tears dropped on my arms as I held it, heavy in my hands, loaded with six bullets. The decision would be final. I at least felt that. I had to pull the hammer back but couldn’t decide where I should be found. Why hadn’t I thought this through? Her keys jangled at the door and I panicked, dropping it back in the drawer. It would be there tomorrow. When I’d have a better plan.
Lie Awake
by Nathan Hystad
I got off the sky train at the Omega sector. I looked around at the bleak planet and with a shudder pulled my trench tighter. The rain was ceaseless as I made my way to my new home. I walked around the green space for some time before I found my place. My name was carved in the stone, and I felt a tear mix with the rain on my face. I followed the instructions and laid down on the grass. My body sank into a casket. It has been hours, and I fear I did something wrong. I exist.
Microfiction Monday – Third Edition
Special thanks to Marc Corbier and Jessica Standifird for their editorial assistance. This week’s artwork is by Angela Maracle.
Mother Says
by Amanda Gowin
Your odds are one in three, there are two ugly stepsisters for every Cinderella. Used to be you could find a Prince by a tie, but now they all wear ties and say “ironic.” If you have to choose by tie, pick red not blue – they talk more, but at least think about gold, from the moment they’re born. Princes are weak, so make yourself weaker and smile. My big mouth lost your father to a stepsister. Put your heel in a crack and tumble, and if one of them catches your arm, don’t let go.
Rejects
by Michael DeVito Jr.
There is no badge commemorating your 1000th rejection on yetanotherdatingsite.com. Yet Principal Garcia “strongly suggests” I give all my students false expectations by rewarding them with something.
“Something?”
“Anything!”
“Life doesn’t work that way.”
“Here it does!”
So I make bright red “You Have Yet to Be Rejected” ribbons for every Jake, Josh, and Hannah.
At first grade assembly they stammer like newborn fawns on the stage.
I whisper, “Keep a hand over your heart. Protect your award.”
Don’t let anyone see what will be stripped away until it is absolutely necessary.
Powderpuff
by Trevor Dodge
At halftime my sister pushed me into a stall and made me. She wiggled onto the pressboard toilet seat with grimy brass hinges and didn’t use one of those tissue things to cover it first. She told me to put my lips there. My knees groaned against the tile floor. When she caught the game-winning touchdown 20 minutes later I couldn’t be as happy as Dad so I didn’t even try. The ice cream he bought all us on the car ride home. My sister with her friend in the back seat. Mine just melting. Mom just watching.
Maelstrom
by Nemma Wollenfang
The black waves are pitted with rocks, serrated razors that lacerate flesh from bone. Surf boils in a hectic froth; a maelstrom from which no heads surface. But I hear his cry, I hear his gasp and gurgle, and I wake.
“Is it the dream?” he asks.
Shivers roll through me as I nod.
“It’s not real, you know. I’m here.”
Arms like pythons tighten and I relax into his warm embrace.
The following night, once he has taken to the sea for King and country, I wake for neither thunder nor rain… nor the cries of the lost.
Delivery
by David Sorensen
He’s standing outside my door again. If I looked through the peephole I’d see that sickly, flat-toothed grin, but I’m too chicken-shit to get up off the floor. This is the fourth time he’s come, and I’ve only been here five days. Sometimes it’s a bill through the slot on the door, sometimes a magazine, never a post card or wedding invitation or note from my secret admirer. I hear the flimsy catalogue paper flop on the linoleum and slither into place as his footsteps trail off. I should get a dog. I wonder if I can get one delivered.
Microfiction Monday – Second Edition
I hope you enjoy the second edition of Microfiction Monday Magazine. Thanks once again to my assistant editors, Marc Corbier and Jessica Standifird.
Day of Fathers
by Suzy Vitello
That June day half my life ago, two fathers came to me. The first father, my father, pillowed me from shock. His strong arms, his fuzzy beard against my cheek, warm breath in my ear, “He’s gone.” The other father, my freshly dead husband’s father, stood apart from us, melded to the floorboards of our moist, fecund cabin. His empty hands grabbed for flesh, but could only find the tender skin of his baby grandson. A family, all of us. Sliced and erased of a husband. Of a father. A son. Spirit.
Billy
by Jessica Standifird
Always wanted to be a lawyer. We were poor, though. Mama’d point her knittin’ needle at me and say, “You got big dreams for such a little man. Ain’t never gonna’ see the lawyer’s side of a courthouse.” At school they said justice was blind. Ran home like I was on fire with the Lord. Busted through the door ‘n went straight to Mama’s sewin’ bag. Grabbed that knittin’ needle, plunged it deep into my eye, screamin’ victory. Should have heard the fuss Mama made. Doesn’t fuss about the house I got her in Henderson, though. Wrought-iron gate ‘n all.
The Slide
by Bret Fowler
The mudslide took the yard, the porch, and more. I slip in the mud, filling my boots with brown water and soaking my dress. Another slide could wash me away in a second, but I can’t stop. Not until it’s whole. Until I’m safe. In the gray-brown muck there’s the shine of a garbage bag. A gray withered finger pokes through a hole. I reach for it and pull until it slurps free. I smile. Even after everything, his wedding ring still gleams. It’s the last piece of him. This time I’ll bury the bastard in the desert.
Senior Games
by Paul Beckman
On the porch of Harmony House rocking, and drinking iced tea, Bertram pointed to a shadow across the street and said, “Like clouds, you can see different things in shadows.
“Let’s try the shadow behind that man at the bus stop.”
I said, “Okay,” Mary said, “Kid’s game,” and Tess mocked, “How about hop scotch next?”
Bertram said, “You go first.”
I said, “It’s a man with an arrow in his neck carrying a box.”
Just then the man fell over, an arrow sticking out of his neck.
“Good guess,” Bertram said, backing into the house with his bow.
When Susan’s Daughter Sank
by Caleb J. Ross
When Susan’s daughter sank to the bottom of the swimming pool, she was supposed to stay. I reduced her to a drowned raccoon, like the ones always bobbing in Susan’s pool. But her eye followed me, so I hide. The daughter will be rescued, revived enough to finally kill her mother and me. She hated me for not being her real dad, the dad who taught her to burn and skin animals. She hated her mother, too, for sending him to prison after he tried his flames and flaying on Susan. We’re afraid together, Susan and me. Parenting leaves scars.
The Hatchet
As the weekend approaches it’s the perfect time to grab pen and paper, computer and keyboard, blood and guts, and arrange your words into a work of art. And maybe that work of art will be rendered in 100 words or fewer.
Telling such a short story is no easy task. Good story telling has conflict, characterization, is vivid, and makes you feel something. It isn’t about telling less of a story or including fewer details, but about efficiency of text. It’s about picking the details that imply a whole lot more than their brevity would suggest.
Consider the following examples from this week’s microfiction stories. In “Romania 1989” by Angela Maracle, we have the line:
“No good, he is Gypsy”
Just five words. But the way the dialogue is phrased gives us the speaker’s accent and tell us about cultural ideals.
In “Darla’s Notebook” by Bob Thurber we have the line:
Another told the story of Red Riding Hood being raped not by the wolf but the woodcutter
In seventeen words we not only get the reveal of what happened, but by using Red Riding Hood we get a characterization of the people involved. The girl is young and innocent; the person who hurt her should have been a protector.
As an exercise (one that I highly recommend to other writers since it forces you to really focus on what parts of your story are fundamental), I’ve taken a passage from the beginning of a novella I’m presently working on and whittled it down from 626 words to a mere 100, all while trying to preserve the story content and impact. Here are those first 626 words in their present form (feel free to skim):
The sound of the door opening late at night, even when done slowly and carefully, has always been enough to wake me from even the deepest sleep, flooding my nervous system with adrenaline and making my heart beat up in my throat. It’s got to be well past midnight. I’m home from college for the weekend, in my old bed in my old room. A sliver of light enters the room as the door cracks open, but there’s no tall, dark shadow like I’m expecting, and the footsteps are too light.
Soon there’s a whisper. “Jake?”
It’s Benny, my five-year-old brother. The tightness in my chest eases and I say, “What are you doing out of bed?”
“Mom wouldn’t let me stay up and say hi.”
“I got in way past your bed time,” I say.
He folds his arms on the bed and rests his chin there, staring at me in the dark, his bed-messed brown hair backlit by the hall light.
“Everything okay?” I say. “You didn’t have a nightmare, did you?”
He moves his face closer and whispers, “I had a accident.”
“Again?”
“I didn’t even drink any water. I don’t know how it happened.”
I sit up, leaving the warm comfort of my blankets for the cold house. Dad always turns the thermostat too low at night. I sigh and rub my face.
“Are you mad?” Ben whispers.
“No, I’m not mad.”
“Mom gets mad. Don’t tell her, okay?”
“I won’t,” I say. “Let’s get you cleaned up.”
As I follow Ben out of my room in the dark, I stub my toe on one of the dozen boxes scattered around and have to bite my tongue not to curse in front of the kid. Ever since I left for college, Mom started storing all sorts of random crap in here. Old books, clothes, pictures, Christmas decorations. A broken microwave. I’m pretty sure the one I just hit my toe on is filled with tools.
I lead Ben across the hall into the bathroom. In the light I can see the entire front of his green dinosaur pajama bottoms are soaked as he stands on Mom’s pristine linoleum. He holds his hands together in front of his crotch like that might hide it as his freckled face blushes with embarrassment. I grab a folded washcloth out of a drawer and wet it with warm water, add soap, and hand it to him.
“Get the wet clothes off and wipe yourself down,” I say. “I’ll get you some clean ones.”
Then I leave him, go to his room, and step on the sharp head of a plastic dinosaur before I flick the light on. Sharp pain shoots up the arch of my foot and this time I let “fuck” slip out between my teeth. The kid’s room is a mess—dinosaurs, trucks, Legos, and a light saber all over the floor. Mom always makes him clean his room before bed so this must all be from some late night play session because he couldn’t sleep.
I strip his bed and load it all up in the washing machine in the hall closet. I find blue pajama pants and a Superman t-shirt in his dresser and bring them to the bathroom where I find him stripped naked and shivering.
“I’m really cold,” he says.
“These will warm you up.” I set the dry clothes on the lid of the toilet, grab his wet clothes and the washcloth off the floor, add them to the washing machine and start it.
Ben comes back out into the hallway, dressed, arms wrapped around himself, still shivering. “Can I sleep with you?” he asks.
“As long as you promise not to pee on me.”
“I promise,” he says.
And now comes the hatchet. KACCHHHITTTTT, and the following 100 words are left:
Home from college, sleeping, door creaks, small footsteps. Benny, my five-year-old brother whispers, “Jake?” in the dark.
“Nightmare?” I say.
“No…”
“Accident?”
“Please don’t tell Mom.”
“I won’t.”
Leaving warm blankets for the cold house, I follow him out, stub my toe, wince. Bathroom light illuminates Benny standing on pristine linoleum in soaked pajamas. Hand him a washcloth. “Strip and wipe.”
In his room. “Fuck.” A plastic dinosaur slices my foot. Load his bedding in the wash. Bring fresh pajamas as he shivers.
Getting dressed he says, “Can I sleep with you?”
“Promise not to pee on me?”
“I promise.”
It’s a different form of writing and it has a different feel to it for sure. The trick, again, is to keep only the sharpest images—the ones that imply the rest, and get rid of any superfluous words or redundancies.
Here are a few things to consider when crafting microfiction:
- Is there conflict? What will people get out of reading it?
- Is there characterization? Are the characters’ motives clear?
- “Show don’t tell” still applies. Resorting to summary makes it difficult for a reader to connect with a story.
- Vagueness is not a substitute for depth. There should be enough in there that the reader gets the full picture.
Now write, you talented scribes!
Microfiction Monday–First Edition!
It’s the moment you’ve all been waiting for: the inaugural edition of Microfiction Monday Magazine! Five incredible stories by five incredible writers. Special thanks to Marc Corbier and Jessica Standifird for their assistance in making some tough choices. Artwork by Marylea Madiman. Enjoy!
Now is the Winter
by Dan Coxon
Outside, the blizzard ebbs and moans. In here it’s simply cold. My nose is numb, my eyeballs ache. I can’t recall the last time I felt the purple ghosts of my feet. I read somewhere that your blood is the last thing to freeze. The heart never stops trying to warm its sticky reservoirs. Like tea. Like a million rivulets of mulled wine. I peel off my gloves and start cutting.
Truth is a Bearded Lady
by Stephen Graham Jones
My husband has two hearts. He told me. When he was a kid, sideshow people were always lurking around to kidnap him into the carnival. But he got away each time, just barely. If he hadn’t, we wouldn’t be together right now. But he only tells me about his second heart. His other wife thinks he’s like everybody else. She thinks he just has one heart, can just love one woman. I know the truth, though. He trusts me with all his secrets. If either of his hearts is bigger, then it’s the one he’s given me.
Romania 1989
by Angela Maracle
The Americans run from crib to crib, looking for children with the whitest skin. I pick up a dark-haired baby, flick away flies.
“No good, he is Gypsy,” my interpreter says.
There are no colors, no toys in the orphanage. Bottles are propped against pillows.
“I want this baby,” I say, clutching him, even though I came for a girl.
I can’t take all of them. Some of them grab my skirt through the bars. We step over broken glass, and a stray dog passes by in the corridor.
The baby twists away from me and cries.
Train
by Jon Gluckman
My uncle took me into the basement to show-off his train set. As he pulled a chain hung from the rafters, a sickly yellow light dissolved the darkness and silenced the crickets, illuminating a world in miniature. He had created hell on a sheet of plywood, where tiny houses on fire simultaneously populated and depopulated tiny towns. When he pushed a small black button screwed in beneath the table, a recording of people screaming began to loop. Bloody half stumps of commuters crawled from a multitude of car accidents toward a lake slicked with oil where they would surely drown.
Darla’s Notebook
by Bob Thurber
After my sister ran away forever, Mom found a notebook filled with crazy drawings and gloomy poems. One poem was titled FUCK and went on pretty much like that for several pages. Another told the story of Red Riding Hood being raped not by the wolf but the woodcutter, and another listed eleven ways you can kill a man so that he will die agonizingly slow. My mother showed the notebook to her boyfriend Carl who tossed it in the washing machine, added bleach, and set the machine on Heavy Load.
Submit! Submit! Submit!
I’ve already had the honor of reading through many great submissions and am very excited about the five fantastic pieces selected for our inaugural June 2nd edition.
Keep those submissions coming! I’d like to publish five pieces every Monday, and there are a lot of Mondays in a year! So polish up those teensy masterpieces, tell all your friends, and submit, submit, submit!
Multiple and simultaneous submissions welcome. We are also still seeking artwork!
First Publication Set For Monday, June 2nd
Keep those submissions coming! I’ve already read several great pieces and am looking forward to more. Those who’ve already submitted can expect a response within the next few days. Presently I’m aiming to publish the first set of stories on Monday, June 2nd with more stories every Monday thereafter. I’m also seeking artwork to accompany each edition. Submit by clicking the “Submissions” link on the homepage. Like us on Facebook if you haven’t already and be sure to tell your friends! Multiple and simultaneous submissions welcome!
Open For Submissions!
Microfiction Monday Magazine is now open for submissions. We seek to publish exceptional fiction told in 100 words or less.
Submissions should tell a complete story, avoiding summary and packing the biggest punch possible. There are no restrictions on genre or content. We are also accepting artwork submissions.
Click here for more information about the magazine, and here to submit prose or artwork.
Microfiction Monday Magazine 