Microfiction Thread

[Setherick]

Post your microfiction (250 words or less) here.

---

{I revised a piece I'd started three years ago into a piece of microfiction. I'm limiting myself to 250 words per piece, but I still have 28 words to play with so suggestions are welcome.}

Suburb

Anthony exhaled and centered the girl in the crosshairs of the telescopic sight on his M40A1 rifle. Her pink and white sun dress ruffled in the breeze. A blonde doll dangled loosely in her hand. The blood around her mouth had crusted. Her dull eyes stared unblinkingly forward.

Anthony's team had been called to cull the outbreak in the largely unbuilt suburbs of Los Angeles. Homes had stood vacant before the outbreaks. Some were little more than concrete foundations cracking in the California sun.

Anthony slid his finger out of the trigger guard. The girl stopped and snapped her head sideways attention fixated. Anthony swung his rifle in the direction of the girl's stare. A silver SUV was parked in the driveway of an unfinished home with its driver's door open. A woman ran toward the girl calling to her.

“Fuck,” Anthony muttered and swung his rifle back on the girl.

The woman ran into his line of fire. The girl stretched out her arms letting the doll drop to the ground. The woman picked up the girl and hugging her close spun so they were facing Anthony. Anthony centered the crosshairs as the girl sunk her teeth into the woman's arm.

He fired.

The girl fell at the woman's feet. The woman looked up and Anthony saw the blood running down her arm. He centered the crosshairs again.

[Setherick]

I made a slight revision to this today (noted above in bold) after talking to one of my friends who does creative writing. I want the line to help explain the reason why Anthony's single line of dialog is "fuck" in the story.

I'll probably end this out to 1000 words eventually and concentrate on the sniper's reaction on realizing that if he wouldn't have hesitating, the mother wouldn't have had to be shot.

Also, edited the thread title.

[Setherick]

{Malyss requested that I post more of my microfiction. Here's a piece that I wrote today that I'm not to sure about. I see microfiction in terms of a character study and I'm not sure if I've discovered this character yet.}

An Apocalypse in Miniature

Annie turned the snow globe over and watched the white plastic flakes float down upon the rural town scene. She laughed at the lack of scale. The flakes were taller than the church's steeple and a single flake covered the entire school's playground.

She missed her school's playground in the winter. She missed the wetness of the snow as it soaked through her mittens as she packed a snowball and threw it at Cheryl. She missed the sting of her hands as she warmed them above the radiator.

She missed Cheryl.

She wondered where Cheryl was. She cried as her dad had carried her from their house. He had woken her in the middle of the night before the sirens had started wailing. The only thing she managed to grab from her room was the snow globe.

Annie heard the murmur of their hushed conversation between her dad and another man in the hallway.

“We're lucky to have made it out,” her dad said, “Some families weren't so lucky. They didn't have the money to purchase a space.”

“That's a shame,” said the other man, “But there were a number of families that were too poor.”

Annie shifted on her cot and leaned against the cold cinder block wall. Far above on the surface, the snow of nuclear winter was falling on the blackened city.

Annie turned her snow globe over and looked at the sticker on the bottom. It read: From Cheryl

[malyss]

Thanks. I'm enjoying these mini-stories.

[Setherick]

Thanks. I'm enjoying these mini-stories.

Thanks for reading them. Having an audience gets me back to writing them. I do so much critical work I never take enough time out of my day to do creative writing anymore.

---

{I wanted to try some dark humor for this latest one. I'm going to keep the post/apocalyptic theme going and see if I can't write enough good ones to put into a chapbook.}

Lottery Tickets

Branton placed the grooved edge of a quarter on the unscratched slot of an instant lottery ticket. The first two slots had cherries in them.

“Damn,” Branton muttered, “bar.”

Branton tossed the lottery ticket over his shoulder that did not have his rifle slung on it. It made the latest marker in a trail stretching back to the gas station he and Zack had scavenged.

“What are you talking about?” Several feet in front of Branton, Zach stopped and turned back.

“These damn lottery tickets,” Branton answered. “Always get your hopes up and then give you crap. Just like a real slot machine.”

“Why did you take those things anyway?”

“Need something to pass the time. Not like the gas station had anything. Not even beer or cigarettes.”

Zack nodded. They had been walking the highway for days. The cars and houses and businesses they found had all been stripped of everything but gnawed and scattered bones.

“You don't think...”

“Think what?” Branton tore another a ticket off its bundle.

“Oh, never mind.”

Zach turned and started walking again. Branton watched the rhythmic thumping of Zach's slung rifle against his pack before looking down at the ticket. He scratched off three 7's. Without saying anything, he put the ticket in his pocket and tore off another.

[malyss]

I think you have found your calling. These are really good.

Seriously, you should consider compiling them and publishing them. I don't just say that without consideration. I hadn't really heard about micro-fiction before, but this is opening my eyes to a whole new way to write.

[Setherick]

I'm looking for micro fiction zines to submit these too. Most zines I've found want flash fiction between 500-1000 words and, seriously, I don't have the time to double to quadruple the length of any of these stories. I really want to keep producing self-contained 250 word stories. Let me know if you guys find any zines looking for that.

[Setherick]

{I was too busy to post anything yesterday. When I first started making notes for this, I figured the story would be a lot longer (500-1000 words), so I'm not sure if I like this the way it is or if I think it's just a fragment. It's definitely the shortest one so far.}

Phone Booth

Lile held the pay phone receiver to his ear. The anticipation of a reassuring dial tone came to him. The line was dead.

“Hello! Hello! I can't hear you!” Lile screamed into the phone.

Lile laughed. He wondered if before he would have had had someone to call. He punched 9-1-1 on the dial pad.

“Hello, operator? Yes, I'd like to report an emergency,” Lile spoke into the phone, “Everyone appears to be dead!”

The deserted streets echoed his words back to him and Lile let the phone drop from his hand. It dangled by its twisted black cord.

[Boyos]

Eh not bad, but the others were much better!

[Setherick]

Eh not bad, but the others were much better!

Yeah, I more I think about it, it'll need to be longer. I've got some other ideas I want to toy with before I come back to it, including a major rewrite of the Snow Globe story.

[Boyos]

The Snow Globe story is my fave, I cant waite to here it.

The payphone story was good, just feels kinda, not empty, but not full. Not sure, just something not quite there. All in all its still good just yeah maybe short. It feels like just a few more lines would make it perfect I dont know, not much of a wrighter my self.

[Setherick]

The Snow Globe story is my fave, I cant waite to here it.

The payphone story was good, just feels kinda, not empty, but not full. Not sure, just something not quite there. All in all its still good just yeah maybe short. It feels like just a few more lines would make it perfect I dont know, not much of a wrighter my self.

I was having trouble finding the character in it. I'll come back to in a week or so and see what the problem was. The spur for the story was a note I'd written down five or six years ago in a notebook that I found recently. The original idea wasn't set in a post/apocalyptic setting, so I figured I'd try to write it in.

[Setherick]

I've been off my creative writing rhythm because of having to submit my dissertation proposal last month and churning out words for the Codex (over 6000 at last count with 4000-5000 more yet to write). But I do have two post/apocalyptic microfiction stories that initially appeared in this thread in the latest issue of Utopus Discovered, the Society for Utopian Studies newsletter: http://utopusdiscovered.wordpress.com/2010/05/11/a-healthy-welcome-diversion/

[The_Last_76]

It seems today, it's either Copperart or Corporart. Artists have abandoned the left wing for the Golden Wing.

In the not so distant past, it was not uncommon for paint-splattered artists to take up their palettes in support of socially relevant issues. What ever became of these cultural caring communities of comrades? For what could have been more exciting than sharing a rat-infested disintegrating den of iniquity with half a dozen, poverty-pretending middle-class cultural crusaders and the odd juvenile junkie, toss in a gaggle of pre-post feminist ferals raising their armpit hair as one in the name of protecting the proletariat from a partonymic patriacrchy? This haven of hepatitis B would make a perfect incubator for those inclined to the cultural missionary position.

In those heady days of the seventies and eighties, the governments of the time supplied generous grants to the arts community. One may be justified in asking what use has the average taxpayer for the alleged works of art produced, but these philistines cannot be expected to grasp the inner meaning of a leadlight sarcophagus containing the butchered corpse of a pregnant bilby skewered with a number twelve tortoise-shell knitting needle, which is obviously a metaphor for the Western imperialist disembodiement of the feminine spirit in a proto-iconoclastic methodology. Such works are frowned upon by the gerneral public! But what would they know?

And at the opening of this twentifirst of all possible centuries, it seems the bohemian artist has made way for a new breed of artless tax dodgers wearing clothes from the Salvation Armani. Yes, art is not dead - it just drives a Pajero.

But I digress.

I have been accused of being a mere wordsmith even though I have never used the word Smith in my life.

Contrary to popular belief, in the beginning was no the word. In the beginning was the badly scrawled image of a hairy mammoth. These very early men and woman could neither pronounce nor spell hairy mammoth. Hairy mammoth! Say it out loud. This noise, this modern grunt, did not come into existance until very recently. It is with this realisation that I have decided to return to not just my roots but every one elses. I have decided to write a series of extremely short stories. To call these mini-narratives stories is demeaning. It's demeaning of life. What is demeaning of life?

I'll shut up now.

[The_Last_76]

The heavy staff felt reassuringly lethal in Josef's hands. The bastard priest was on the ground, his face was a bloodied jig-saw puzzle, teeth chipped and nose broken. He was bruised all over and his vestments were adorned with a fresh layer of vital fluid. The dull bronze medallion of the cult of Sigmar shone weakly through a coat of gleaming blood.

"Still want my gold to keep silent, you backstabbing bastard?"

He swung twice more, his ears deaf to the bleated cries of the ruined form of a man.

That would teach the impudent bastard to try and extort him. And to think he had counted the priest as one of his friends.