Mixed Vegetables

For this week's Trifextra, a famous trio

Mixed Vegetables

Self-conscious Corn comforted supple Squash when she lost her flowers and her fruit swelled. Corn encouraged shy Bean to explore. Together, the two shorter sisters grounded Corn. Frost claimed the trio together, peacefully.

The Iron Writer Challenge: 31

I came across The Iron Writer Challenge on Twitter a few weeks ago. The concept is this: four writers are given four (unrelated and pretty darn random) elements that must be used in a flash fiction piece of about 500 words. Oh, and the story has to be written in the span of four days. I'm not sure why this seemed like a good idea to me with my full (over-full, really) schedule, but I signed right up. The elements for my challenge are: a live griffin (the mythical beast), a Delorean, a peanut-butter-and-banana sandwich, and a ventriloquist. Strangely enough, as soon as I read this list I had an idea. I'm on my fourth revision and ready to call it done, but since I still have another whole day, I'm letting it marinate just a little longer. It's certainly one of the stranger things I've written.

The stories will be posted on The Iron Writer site this Thursday. Be sure to check it out--and think about signing up for your own Iron challenge!

Baby's Breath

A quick five sentences on flowers for a busy Tuesday

Thanks to Lillie McFerrin for another reason to write tiny things!

Baby's Breath

Not the flower in question

In its squat vase, the dense purple-and-white bouquet sat on her desk like a smug, fat woman overflowing an outdated dress proclaiming in a mocking tone what the note said: "No hard feelings." 

She had known all the flowers' names when she was a little girl--the ones in her mother's and grandmothers' gardens, and the ones from the seed catalogs and nurseries--but what the white filler was called eluded her. 

She picked up the arrangement in one hand and her purse in the other and walked quickly down the hallway to his office. 

He looked up from his monitor just in time to see water spill onto the floor as the vase flew toward his head. 

"Hard feelings," she muttered, remembering suddenly the name of the white flower.

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.

Manillow

I wrote the following for Trifextra Week Seventy-Eight. It's a mere 33 words, as the challenge demands.

Manillow

We argue about color. Men have fewer cones, don't they? Our first house, we decided, was manillow, yellow and manilla (and maybe vanilla) to keep the peace. A joke, and a necessary one.

Promise of Plums

The following is 246 words written in about 30 minutes. I fell in love with this image a few weeks ago, so I decided to use it as a prompt. Happy Saturday to all!


Promise of Plums

The bear wasn't fuzzy as her mother had said. The bear's fur was thick, almost wooly, and even though it left an unpleasant residue on her small, plump hands, she kept patting the huge forehead. 

Photo Source

"Mother will want you to have a bath," she said with certainty. "Oh, yes. And you will have to use a whole bar of soap." She paused. "Yes, two whole bars of Ivory. And then you will be a polar bear, all nice and white!" She squealed and rubbed the bear's head excitedly. 

Always one to savor a scratch, she leaned into the girl a bit. Not being particularly hungry or violent beyond necessity, the bear was happy to observe this grabby pink creature for while. She pitied it a little, in her own way--its obvious frailty and misfortune of being both oblivious to predators and having no natural camouflage. The bear raised her snout and sniffed. The creature smelled vaguely like wild autumn plums, which made the beast salivate. A long, syrupy string of spit fell from her mouth and landed on the girl's shoe. Giggling, the girl clapped her hands and hopped on the muddy ground.

"Come on, now! It's almost dinner time and you must have your bath first!" She began skipping down the path and glanced over her shoulder. "Come on!" she called insistently. The bear sniffed the air and loped after her, hoping the little animal would lead her to a large pile of plums. 

Raw Material

I scribbled the following for this week's Five-Sentence Fiction prompt, Limitless. 

Raw Material

Magazine Alley, as she thought of it, was now mid-thigh deep and bordered by heaps of clothes which, when they had been piled there, had been clean. The table beside her best chair was covered in layers of useful things: scraps of paper with notes and recipes, stalled knitting projects, forgotten cups of tea with fuzzy tea bags attached, empty yogurt containers, and bits of fabric. The house, being so full, was quiet and comforting--a perfect setting for creativity. Raw material for making art surrounded her, but she wandered, sometimes stumbling on an abandoned shoe or dog toy, trying to figure out where to begin. She sighed to herself, thinking for the millionth time, The possibilities are limitless.

If you have a second, please leave me a comment and/or follow me on Twitter @gardenofedits. It's always nice to know someone is reading.

A Discussion on Bronze

The following was written for Anonymous Legacy's VisDare #30: Basking. It is 137 words, done very quickly (about 20 minutes) because I need to get to sleep. As always, please leave me comments. I enjoy reading them.

Photo Source

A Discussion on Bronze

For decades, he dreamed of having a friend who would linger with him as others bustled by.  The constant stream of passersby made him feel both gawky and invisible. One day, a man walked near. The bronze lion, having poor peripheral vision, only caught a glimpse of the slightly hunched man before this stranger began to climb up his tail. Even though the lion was quite old, the pressure of footsteps didn’t bother him a bit. In fact, he thought to himself, I might purr, if I could. As the man sat on top of his cool, flowing mane, his shoes rested lightly on the lion's proud brow. They sat in silence, but to the lion it seemed like a much-longed-for conversation. He managed a quiet rumble deep within. The man glanced in the direction of the train.

Rivulets

The following was written in response to Anonymous Legacy's Visual Dare #26. It is 124 words and took me roughly 40 minutes in five-minute bursts because of my reluctant sleeper. I hope it's coherent. I am an eager sleeper with too few opportunities.

Rivulets

Photo Source

The sunrise crept up her nose and tickled her eyelids too early in the summer. After so many mornings staring at the ceiling, she had identified a dog, a tree, a face, and a pigeon in the plaster’s rough texture. The face was old with deep ditches for wrinkles. If a person like that cried, would the tears dry up as they followed that winding valley? she wondered. Her eyes relaxed and blurred, making the images seem clearer and more detailed. She yawned deeply and closed her eyes. If she fell back asleep, sometimes she dreamed that the face was telling her about hard work and the sorrow of missing teeth. A tiny drop of water, almost imperceptible, landed just above her left eyebrow. 







I love comments. If you have a second, I'd love to know what you thought of this bit of flash fiction, whether or not you enjoy Neopolitan ice cream, or what your favorite Calypso song is.