Flash Fiction For Flash People Vol. 1

What’s up! I want to welcome you to my first flash fiction volume. This volume has five rejected or brand new stories. All the stories are less than 1,000 words, but of course they needed to be that length to be flashy.

I decided to name this volume after the punk rock compilation album Fat Music For Fat People, released by Fat Wreck Chords in 1994. The music on that album was very important to me back then, just as writing is to me today. It just seemed very fitting.

Without further ado, I hope you enjoy Flash Fiction For Flash People Volume 1.

Shadows of Secrecy

Stella started sleeping with a bedroom light on and facing the door. 

She didn’t do these things because she feared the dark or was superstitious. She had to do them because her shadow liked to sneak around like a tempted kid tip-toeing on Christmas Eve to see what Santa Claus left them under the Christmas Tree. 

Yes, that’s right. The shadow detaches itself from Stella and leaves through the back way to who knows where.

Stella woke up to her shadow sneaking out again. She watched her shadow move across the wall and disappear through the gap at the bottom of the door.

She followed her shadow down their street to the neighborhood park this time. She caught her shadow making out with someone else’s shadow on the merry-go-round.

Stella was shocked because she knew who the kissing shadow belonged to and disapproved.

“That shadow is nothing but trouble.” 

She confronted the shadows and told her shadows that the sneaking out and secrecy needed to stop because it wasn’t safe and sound.

But her shadow didn’t stop, so Stella had to start sleeping with the lights on and facing the door. That’s how she’s handled her shadow from sneaking out.

A Few Last Day’s Treasures At Surfside Beach

My family has stayed on both sides of the Surfside Beach fishing pier. Weirdly, both those houses on opposite sides of the pier were about a twenty-minute walk to the pier. 

I know because I walked toward the pier hunting for shark teeth from both sides. It’s one of the things I like to do at Surfside Beach.

I also enjoyed looking for shark fins to crop up from my beach chair under an umbrella in the sand.

It’s the last day of my beach vacation, and neither has presented itself to me. Please make it happen today, as my family is leaving tomorrow.

All week, these kids beside us have been running into the colonies of seagulls with their arms up like a bear to frighten them into the air. I know they’re young, but this is annoying, intimidating behavior to watch.

I am smirking now because one of the kids just got a well-deserved crapping on.

Oh, look, there’s a shark’s tooth.

Time Fragments of Regrets

The morning time on Tom Hensley’s car radio read 7:49, and he needed to be at eight. But this morning, he overslept and rushed out the door without breakfast. Tom stayed up watching his favorite reality show’s season finale and reunion show.

Heading to work, he knew he would not make it on time. At this point, he would only be a little tardy, but instead, he decided to be even more tardy by stopping by his favorite Cajun-seasoned fried chicken fast-food restaurant. 

What’s the difference between being late ten minutes or thirty minutes, he reckoned.

“I would like a number one combo and a Cheerwine,” Tom ordered inside the restaurant. The teenager working the counter punched in the order and handed Tom a medium-sized cup. Tom went to the self-serve soda machines and filled the cup with ice and cherry-flavored soft drink. Then, he waited and sipped while his food was prepared.

A few minutes later, the teenager notified him, “Here’s your chicken biscuit and fries. ” Tom accepted the brown lunch tray of food and grabbed napkins and ketchup from beside the soda machines on his way to a booth in the southwest corner of the restaurant.

He unwrapped the biscuit and took a huge, savory bite. The bite is happiness. 

Tom next dipped three fries into ketchup and crammed them into his mouth. The fries are good, but not as great as the chicken biscuit. 

After these bites, he’s delighted by his decision to stop for breakfast and doesn’t care that he’s late. 

What is the difference between ten and thirty minutes late?

Typically, starting the day in your favorite chicken biscuit restaurant would be ideal, but Tom Hensley is about to get some unwanted visitors at his booth this morning.

“Damn! Them again,” Tom said under his breath. He sees an older man and a teenage boy heading toward him.

“Can we please join you,” the older man asked Tom.

“I’d rather you not,” Tom responded.

The older man smirked and said, “We were always the comedian.” By now, the teenage boy was seated across from Tom, and the older man slid into the booth’s bench beside the boy. The man and boy sat down like they’d known Tom for ages.

“Tommy and Thomas, make yourself at home. Are we going to do this again?” Tom Hensley asked.

The teenage boy slammed his fists on the booth table. “Yes! As many times as we need. Did you fix things with Scarlet yet?” 

“Calm down, man. I don’t remember being so angry and rude at sixteen years old,” Tom smirked, “Not yet, but I told her that I’d like to talk.” 

Tom knows that his response will be unpopular with Thomas and Tommy. So it didn’t surprise him when Thomas (the older man) and Tommy looked at each other with the same exact facial expression—the identical expression that Tom displays when he’s feeling dissatisfied with someone.  

“How did you find me? Never mind.”

“We talked about this last time,” Thomas reminds Tom. The last time was when Tommy and Thomas crashed Tom’s dinner at his favorite fried seafood restaurant the previous month.

“And we’ll probably have it again next time,” Tom responded. 

Thomas shakes his head from side to side. “No, no, no, no, this time. You need to try harder. Our future with Scarlet could be in your hands.”

“I’m getting sick of this time loop crap, Thomas,” Tom grunted, “and what about you Tommy?” 

“I’m trying, but we still break up despite all my efforts,” Tommy sighed. 

“Before you ask, I haven’t made any leeway either,” Thomas confessed. 

Sadness shrouds the men in the booth like a cloak. Thomas, Tommy, and Tom become silent and look everywhere except at each other. Thomas is looking in the direction of the soda machines. Tommy is looking through the window at a truck backing out of a parking space. Tom is looking at his half-eaten chicken biscuit. “Damn.”

“Maybe it’s time to consider that Ashley doesn’t want to be with us!” Tom broke the silence after swallowing the rest of his biscuit.
Tommy shrugs, and Thomas gives Tom a cockeyed look.

They are the same human beings—just different ages of the same man. Tommy Hensley when he was a teenager, Tom Hensley at his current age, and he started going by Thomas Hensley in his older years. 

Somewhere between Tom and Thomas, he was granted a single wish. Stricken with years of regret and melancholy, he wished to be with Scarlet. His regret was cheating on Scarlet in high school, and his melancholy was from the empty life he imagined he had without her.

The wish propelled the different-aged Hensleys into a time loop that always overlapped with Tom’s period. In the beginning, their meetings were deliberations, lengthy discussions of optimistic plans each one could make in their eras to mend things with Scarlet. But that beginning was an infinity ago, and now they’re defeated, tired, and mad—but not angry, mad, the mental type of mad. 

This cycle will continue forever, and they’ll never get to their wish.

“I’ll send another message,” Tom said.

“Can I have a fry,” asked Tommy.

“Sure.”

Lou Reads Two Haikus At The Earl Grey Wolf Coffee Shop Open Mic Night

Every Wednesday, The Earl Grey Wolf Coffee Shop welcomed anyone who played the guitar or wanted to read their poetry to their open mic night.

The coffee shop never packed the place out on these nights, but it saw an uptick in patrons because the open mic sign-ups typically brought some of their friends and moms to the Wolf.

The talent wasn’t always spectacular, but that wasn’t always the point of open mic nights. The Wolf’s owners wanted to provide anyone, like Lou Kellog, with a stage once a week to do their things.

Lou was a shy freshman at the high school down the street, so it was out of character for him to sign up to share some of his poetry at the next open mic night.

Here’s what happened after one of the owners called Lou’s name that night.

He walked onto the coffee shop stage, which wasn’t actually a raised platform but a border rug in the corner.

“Thank you. My name is Lou, and I prepared two haikus. One rhymes, and the other doesn’t.” Lou coughed. He opened a padfolio and read the first poem into the microphone after some feedback.

“The end of the week
my heart, body, and soul seek
rest, gravy, and meat.”

Lou told a monotone joke to the half-full room about that being the haiku that rhymed. After a few laughs, he proceeded with the second poem.

“My waistline was fried
cause my body was battered
the southern state diet.”

After Lou finished his second poem, a woman in the back stood up and began to applaud. He bowed to everyone at the Earl Grey Wolf and left the stage with his mom, the only person clapping in the back.

Everyone in the coffee shop thought the whole thing was equally bizarre and brilliant.

Lou graduated high school and became an award-winning and famous poet.

The Earl Grey Wolf still has a photo of Lou, where the poet wrote, “Cheers to where it all began!”

The 34 Calls of Frustration

All day long, Old Man Howard loathed his two house phones. He loathed every time they rang and every call he answered.

Between breakfast and his bedtime, the only people who called were telemarketers. No friends or family ever called.

Howard felt like he was on every call list in the nation. He’s convinced of it.

He counted thirty-four irritating calls one day.

“Is this Mr. Don Howard at 2323 First Street? We buy houses in cash and wondered if you’d like to sell?”

Caller number twenty-nine was overly interested in wanting to buy his house that day.

“Mr. Howard, it’s your lucky day. You’ve won the trip of a lifetime.”

Caller number thirty wanted to let him know he had also won a free Caribbean cruise that day.

It was maddening for him.

Howard had slammed the kitchen phone on the table like a gavel before hanging up on caller thirty-one.

“I’m trying to eat in peace,” he yelled into the phone receiver when the thirty-second caller interrupted his grilled cheese and tomato soup dinner. He had left the same phone off the hook after the caller tried to get him to add HBO to his cable.

He had never behaved like that before. Usually, he listened to the telemarketer’s spill entirely until the end, but that day, he turned blazing hot over the lot.

There was a cold cheese sandwich and soup that he wanted to finish quietly.

The day hadn’t given Howard that chance.

The phone in his bedroom had begun to ring. He had forgotten about his second phone. Caller number thirty-three just dialed his number. He feverishly jumped up from his kitchen table, stomped to the back of his house, and jerked the phone cord from the wall. He had given zero damns.

“That should take care of the ear-splitting.”

He had fallen asleep in his recliner, watching college basketball. Wake Forest had been winning at halftime. He had awoken to a phone ringing in the garage, number thirty-four.

“No. Enough,” Howard growled.

The old man slowly got up from his recliner and grabbed a 7-iron golf club from his golf bag. He planned to smash whatever was ringing in the garage with his club.

The garage was dark. There’s another ring, so Howard swung the club in that direction and made contact with something, and it hit hard.

“Ugh!” Howard heard a human voice in pain amongst the darkness, and something smacked the cement floor.

He turned on the garage light (probably what he should’ve done first) and saw Younger Man Howard lying hurt on the ground, holding his right arm.

“What are you doing, son?” Old Man Howard asked.

“I called multiple times earlier, but it never rang. I was worried, so I came to check on you,” Younger Man Howard replied.

Old Man Howard buried his exhausted face into his hands and wanted to cry.    

He counted thirty-four irritating calls on this day.

<END OF VOLUME 1>

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