Green Life

Spring bloomed and green life burst from the fertile soil.

Summer unfolded and thick leaves reached toward the sun, growing heavy with fruit.

Autumn arrived and its treasures were plucked, the stalk left barren.

Winter came and the green withered, yet held in its roots the promise for new life.

Samantha

Samantha was the love of Rick’s life. She was energetic, passionate, and a wonderful mother to their sons. They could talk until dawn, and her smile still stopped his heart. Seeing her face, every day, was as essential as breath.

Slowly, Rick placed the photograph back on the mantle. Samantha had been gone five years.

The Gift

My brothers and I sat near the pile of Christmas presents, waiting.

“Alright boys, dig in!” my father said.

Paper flew everywhere. I went for the biggest one.

Pulling off the paper and tearing open the box, I reached in for my prize.

What? A cow? A STUFFED cow?

Mom! That stuff’s for BABIES!

Red

The house was dark when she returned home. The kitchen – empty. The living room too.

From the bathroom, water dripped. She crept forward and flipped the light switch.

Red, everywhere. On the walls, their monogrammed towels. The tub was filled with it.

And inside the tub…

She woke up screaming. That sight haunted her daily.

Learning a New Instrument

C major, A minor, E minor, G major.

My fingers stretch across the guitar’s wooden neck, struggling along the chord progression.

G major. That one's tricky. G major.

I shake my hand, looking at deep, sore lines across my fingertips.

G major. Better. Okay, let's try again.

C major, A minor, E minor, G major.

Across a Crowded Room

Their eyes met across the crowded, alcohol-induced room.

He smiled. She blushed.

I can give her everything she’s ever wanted, he thought.

That’s the kind of guy I could bring to my parents, she thought.

“Cops are coming! Everyone out!” someone yelled.

Cups were flung. They had to run.

He never saw her again.

When I Grow Up

“Mommy, I want to be a racecar driver when I grow up!” little Ellen said excitedly, rolling a car along the floor.

Ellen’s mother looked down at the toy cars strewn around Ellen, which belonged to her brother. She shook her head.

“Do you want a baby doll for Christmas, sweetie?” asked Ellen’s mother.

It's Coming!

“It’s coming!” Cally exclaimed bravely.

“Betcha can’t stay!” Beth called from the bushes.

The rumble grew louder, the headlight blinding.

“Watch me!”

 “It’s almost here!”

A whistle pierced the cold night air.

“Not yet…”

 “Come on!”

It was large and loud and so close.

“Almost…”

“Jump!”

Cally screamed.

Four eyes watched the train zoom past.

The Introduction

I, like most writers, suffer from writer's block. It is an affliction of the mind that I have not been able to cure through time, exercises, and other trials before. I have tried many things to get me to write more consistently, better, and with things that interest me, and yet the problem comes back to visit often. It's probably not even curable. But as the next step in my battle against writer's block, I am taking on a new exercise of a more public nature.

I am going to write one flash fiction story every Tuesday and Friday. Why Tuesday and Friday? Mostly because I'm starting this on a Friday, and three days a week seems a little much at the start.

Flash fiction is a genre of story writing that I am quite taken with. I discovered it several years ago, when I had a radio show called "To Tell A Story" on my campus radio station. In that show, I read short stories and played accompanying classical music. While researching stories, I stumbled upon an addicting book at the library entitled Flash Fiction: 72 Very Short Stories, edited by James Thomas, Denise Thomas, and Tom Hazuka. I read several of the stories in a show, and the idea of such an incredibly short story really stuck with me.

Depending on where you go, the rules change about what flash fiction is, what it's called, and the criteria involved. The type of super short story that I'm going to be doing is one I've seen around several different places: writing a short story in 55 words or less. This particular form was partly developed by a contest held by New Times, a newspaper in California, in 1987.

Here are the rules as I interpret them. Many of this I got from the New Times website:

• The stories will be told in 55 words or less
• The word limit doesn't include the title, although the title can't be more than 7 words long
• Each story follows the conventional story rules of having a beginning, middle/conflict, and end
• What counts as a single word: a number, anything in the dictionary, a commonly use acronym (ex: NASA), or a contraction
• Punctuation doesn't count as a word. Which is awesome, because I love commas
• Hyphenated words count separately, unless they can't stand as two different words if the hyphen was removed. For example, four-year-old still counts as three words, but re-entry and e-mail count as one.

And that's pretty much it. If there's anything I left ambiguous, please point it out as I go and I can add it to the rules.

Telling a complete story in such a short amount of space is a challenge. That's why I like it. While I can't promise that the resulting stories I will write will be any good, I am ready to rise up to the challenge of writing them. And hopefully you, my readers, whoever you are and whether or not you exist, will hold me to this challenge I am taking on.

So here goes.