Daddy's Busy Now

Trifextra! A wonderful 33-word challenge. I love these.

Melvin wuvs you.

Daddy's Busy Now

“While you sleep, your father hunts monsters. He beheads them and guts them, then he sells their hides to companies that make teddy bears. That’s right, even Melvin is part monster. Sleep tight!”

Polyester Intentions

This week's Five-Sentence Fiction prompt, fabric, inspired this short piece.
*Updated an hour after initial posting due to a typo and general dislike for the lack of flow

Some days I feel happy with quickly finished flashes, and some days I just don't. This is one of the latter kinds of days. Hope you enjoy anyway, and thanks in advance for reading.

Polyester Intentions

I meant to make a quilt, but when I began dissecting the shirts' seams, the fabric shrieked. Cotton pulls apart relatively quietly, but I discovered that Dacron and other synthetics cry out loud. I quit when I tore off a pocket and something spilled from the seam. I recognized it immediately as pipe tobacco and pressed the pocket, now detached, to my face. Thirty years later, the box of shirts looks down on me daily from my closet shelf, still waiting to become a quilt.

A Seedy Location

33 words on happiness brought to you by the latest Trifextra Challenge and a before and after

I thought it might be fun to share a before and after. The first paragraph is my entry for the weekend Trifextra Challenge, and the second is my original draft. It's a tiny sample of what happens when things get pared down for flash fiction--for better or for worse. 

A Seedy Location
I bury. Wait. Water. Cover. Repeat. Offer to the reluctant March sun. Cat prods them in the window, hoping they will explode on the floor. Green surfaces. A tomato proclaims winter will end.




59-word draft
I bury and wait. Water and cover. Make available to the warmth and the reluctant April Sun. The cat prods the cells with her paw, brushes against them hoping to see them explode on the floor and take their place. But one day, a bit of green emerges--a tomato or pepper--and I know the winter will end.

Early Conversations

I wrote the following for this week's Trifecta Challenge. It's 315 words, some of which are not even real words. 

Early Conversations

“Momomomom. Bob. Brog.”

She smiled. “Tell me more.” She knew he did not yet grasp that sounds he made could mean specific things, but she enjoyed hearing his repertoire as she mulled over the task in front of her.

On the floor, he banged the side of a steel mixing bowl with a hard plastic ring, wincing at the noise. His babble quickly turned into a whine, the sound of winding up that would become full-blown wailing without intervention.

“I get cranky sometimes too, but I can’t nap whenever I want to. Why won’t you nap? You have my permission. As your mother, I give you permission to nap when you are sleepy.” His complaint intensified. She sucked in as much air as she could hold, leaned down from her chair and blew a loud, wet raspberry into his face.

He grinned and emitted the noise of a balloon rapidly deflating during a fire alarm, continuing to bang on the bowl as she turned back to the table and picked up her pen. The only thing worse than writing Christmas cards was writing them on December 19th. Luckily, the photo of the three of them took up most of the room and there was only space for a few lines. Biting the end of the pen, she considered pressing the baby’s hand into a green ink pad and making handprints in the blank space instead of figuring out what to write on each of the cards. It seemed very Pinterest-y. But she knew cooperation was unlikely and scrubbing green ink off everything was even less appealing to her than writing Christmas messages.

“Bromom. Blom. Omm.”

“Yes, Mom’s writing Christmas cards,” she murmured.

“Mom.”

She glanced down at him. He looked up at her intently and repeated, “Mom.”

“Do you mean it this time?”

“Mom!” he yelled, his tooth flashing briefly as he whacked her leg with his toy.

Odd Notions

For this week's Trifextra Challenge, I give you . . . 

Odd Notions

I had always wanted to put my hand in Auntie’s "button jar," the heavy tobacco tin in her sewing room. When I did, a profusion of buttons--and one human tooth--spilled out.

An Achievable Bliss

This tiny piece was written in response to Lillie McFerrin's Five-Sentence Fiction challenge, Bliss. I loved the photo that accompanied this prompt, but I went in another, jokier direction. 

An Achievable Bliss

“You know what would be amazing?” she asked, leaning forward across the small, glossy café table. The woman on the other side of the table smirked and shook her head slightly, shrugging.

“Four hours in a room with a bed, a book, and nothing else to do but read.”

“I think that’s called a holding cell.”

“Oh, right,” she sighed dreamily, sipping her chai.

Window Redressing

Another Visual Dare. The photo was a challenge for me. To be honest, I found it a little dull and had a hard time getting a handle on what the story was. Here's 144 words written in around 25 minutes.

Window Redressing

Photo Credit

People passed without even glancing, and it irked her. The concept, execution, and clothing choices had taken weeks to finalize. She had personally overseen the glass cleaners, who were slow and left streaks. When they left, she'd had to tape a Windex-ed rag to a leftover curtain rod to remove the last smudges. And for nothing, according to the store manager, who had questioned the display and whom she had assured a big increase in sales from last spring. "Fix it," he'd said sharply three weeks after the installation. So here she was dodging cars while dragging a tote the size of a riding lawnmower across the street. Beach balls, small, round mirrors, fishing line, brightly colored towels. Boring. A guy would deliver a couple of bags of sand in the afternoon. "Sorry, guys," she whispered as she stepped into the window. "Party's over." 

Thanks to Anonymous Legacy for these challenges and for encouraging imagination and recreation with words.

The Laughter You Hear As You Walk By

The following is a quick Trifextra challenge for the weekend.

The Laughter You Hear As You Walk By

Source

Pretending to be the people who cast them onto the street, shadows giggle, stoop, and lurch. With exaggerated postures, they gleefully scream while their creators make new friends to join in the fun.