Flash Fiction 40 Anthology - July 2009 Read online

  Flash Fiction 40

  An Anthology of 40 Winning Flash Fiction Stories

  INTRODUCTION

  More than 280 writers took up the challenge and posted a story. It was a dynamic experiment in what is quickly becoming the new wave of publishing: crowd sourcing and open review.

  In this anthology, you'll find "Fairy Tales" as well as 39 other winning stories from the Flash Fiction 40 Contest. These stories encompass every genre-from literary to horror and beyond-and are 40 outstanding examples of the rapidly evolving flash fiction form. Savor the stories one at a time or spend a few leisurely hours reading the collection in whole. I know you'll enjoy reading these 40 great flash fiction pieces as much as I did.

  -Maria Schneider, Editor Unleashed

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  Grand Prize: Fairy Tales, by Laurel Wilczek

  At Last, By Nina Perez-Bauschka

  Being a Cop, Langley McKelvy

  Blind Justice, Jessica A. Weiss

  The Brain Eaters, Terri Lynn Coop

  Buck and the Twee Fairies of Interstate 20, Gary Cuba

  Circles, David Gillett

  Defection, Linda Wastila

  Dreaming Lies to Change the Truth, kaolin fire

  Fate's Heavy Hand, Jim Bernheimer

  Food of the Gods, judy b.

  Frangible Choices, Kemari M. Howell

  Grief Observed, Laurita Miller

  Guardian Demon, Jeanne Tomlin

  Mirror, Mirror, Greta Igl

  Monday, Selena Kitt

  Night Becomes the City, M.P. Berry

  In the Nuthouse, d o'brien

  Parklife, AlanBaxter

  Pirated Twinkies, Shannon Esposito

  Pure White, Stephen Book

  Reflection, R.J. Keller

  Rough Trade, Stephen Nicholson

  Running on the Iron Rooster, Michael J. Solender

  Sales Call, Graham Storrs

  Savor the Moment, Greg Stoll

  Sign Language, Linda Courtland

  Sportsmen, John Towler

  Ten One-hundreds of a Second, Deborah Bundy

  The Distraction, Donald Conrad

  The Mercantile Exchange, Kim Beck

  The Nearest Thing, John Wiswell

  The Vial, Tom Bentley

  The Vigil of Clouds, Eros-Alegra Clarke

  Time for a Change, Carol Benedict

  'Tis the Season, John Marfink

  Unscrambling Love, Angel Zapata

  Wake up, Please, Jemma Everyhope

  What's in a Name, Mark Souza

  When Don Cristobal Eduardo Stabbed his Wife and her Lover, Christopher Sutcliffe

  Fairy Tales

  By Laurel Wilczek https://www.ravenlaw.wordpress.com/

  She knows it won't be long before they come. Once they've discovered the abandoned bed and the unraveled bandages on the floor. They'll figure she's running loose, having escaped the hum of round-the-clock monitors, the clatter of equipment pushed up and down the corridor and the sobbing breath of the battered woman who shares the room with her. They'll know she slipped out the emergency door and up the stairs to the roof, when a patient down the hallway, an old man unwilling to die no matter how tired his heart might be, pressed the call button and summoned the nurses away from their work areas.

  Moonlight crawls over the city, its brightness filtered by grey-bellied clouds. Her feet are numb, her arms and legs riddled with goose bumps under the hospital gown. She inhales. Cold air flows into her nose and mouth. It hurts. It hurts. One hand presses against her abdomen, the other floats in space. Her legs are spread like tent poles. Her toes dig into the concrete ledge.

  Down in the stairwell, a door opens.

  "She's up on the roof. I told the nurses to stop taping the latch. Goddamn nicotine addicts."

  "Shouldn't we wait for the doctor?"

  "Screw that, he'll write me up on a safety violation even though that's not part of my job description. I'm a janitor, not security. What's her name?"

  "Jane Doe."

  She hears their footsteps on the stairs and thinks about the night when the midnight fairies found her. Years after her father's curfews ended. A decade after her mother whispered tales about evil fairies who kidnapped little girls under a full moon. She remembers feeling astonished that-just after she walked two city blocks and arrived, without incident, on the doorstep of her apartment, just after she glanced up and down the street and saw nothing but a ginger cat hunched against the base of a trash can, just as she slipped her keys out of her purse-fingers tangled in her hair and yanked hard. She toppled off the steps into strange hands. Her keys clinked onto the sidewalk. One of her shoes popped off as they dragged her around the corner of the building and into an alley.

  "Be careful, Freddie, she's drugged to the gills."

  "I know what I'm doing. Hey there, Janie."

  That isn't her name. She would tell them if she could, but the fairies are snarling deep-throated notes and her voice is locked inside her chest. They surround her, submerging her in the odor of stale cigarettes and beer. She sees their faces. Eyes black as licorice. Slack mouths, huffing steam into the refrigerated darkness.

  "Stop Freddie! She's too close to the edge."

  "You stand still, Janie Girl, you hear?"

  The moon above the alley is a hollow eye gouged out of the face of night. The fairies take her wallet and toss the purse aside. They ride her down to the ground. Tear at her clothing until her breasts and thighs are iced by moonlight. Laughter falls like sleet upon her nakedness.

  "Oh man, I think she's crying."

  "Shut up, Bobby! Here, girlie, take my hand."

  She touches her mouth, her cheeks and her forehead. Probes the stitches zigzagging through her flesh. Tries to scream. But her jaws are wired shut and all her terror, all her fury, all her grief, pools beneath her tongue. She swallows, tastes blood and wonders who will ever love her now that she is broken?

  A spurt of wind slips under her gown. The thin fabric rustles like paper wings.

  "Don't you do this on my shift," Freddie whispers.

  Two stories below the ledge, a man stands on the sidewalk, the tip of his cigar a firefly caught in the sheath of wintry lamplight. He's wearing his best Sunday suit. The one he wore for her First Holy Communion. The one he was buried in after her sixteenth birthday.

  "Come along, Grace," her father calls in a wisp of smoke. "It's late. Your mother is waiting for us."

  At Last

  By Nina Perez-Bauschka

  He sat at his usual table-second row, far left. It afforded him a clear view of the stage. It was Thursday night, and he arrived at 7:30 sharp as he had every Thursday night for the past three months. She didn't go on until 8:30, but he liked to get his table and order two drinks before she did. He would have another two while she sang, but never more than that.

  He wasn't the only regular there.

  Two tables to his right was Kris Kringle. It wasn't his real name, of course. Just a nickname given because of his perpetually rosy cheeks and wet eyes as if he had just entered from the cold. It was 7:45 and Kris had been there at least an hour. He would look like that way the whole night-red-faced, and watering eyes, shaky hands tossing back drink after drink. He remained sober through perhaps half of the set and sat through the rest in a whiskey-induced fog. Shortly before closing, Silus the bartender would close out his check and put Kris Kringle in a cab.

  He found this most undignified.

  At 8:15 he felt her before he saw her. Her presence was as palpable as a heartbeat. She entered the room from the blue door behind him marked, "Employees Only."

  He heard her before he saw her. She was greeted by
Rachel, the waitress with the buck teeth and crooked nose. They exchanged the usual pleasantries and then she laughed at something Rachel said. It was a laugh that washed over his arms and caused heat to rise up his neck. He tightened his grip on his cocktail glass, hoping the ice cubes would reverse the effect up his arm, across his shoulder, through his neck, and over his face which was as red as Kris Kringle's.

  The owner, a short repulsive man built like a fire hydrant, slid from his bar stool and put an arm around her waist. He could see this from the corner of his eye and it caused him to grip his glass tighter.

  "Are you ready, doll?"

  Doll. What an insult. She was an angel. She was perfection. She was too good for this place with its chipped tables, smoky interior, and menu that consisted of Buffalo wings, potato skins, and a curious dish called an Onion Bloom.

  She walked by him in a wave of lilac. He inhaled deeply hoping the scent would last until she passed again. Some nights she'd walk the tables as she sang, occasionally pausing to pay special attention to a fortunate male patron. In three months, she had never stopped at his table. He did not mind. Unlike the others, who fawned over her with unabashed adoration, he did not need special attention. In fact, he preferred it this way. Anonymous. Special in its own way.

  She began to sing promptly at 8:30. She sang the blues with the experience of someone twenty years her senior. She sang the blues as if her heart had been broken a thousand times. He wanted to protect her. Mend her heart. Right the wrongs. From the look on the faces of the other men in attendance he was not the only one. She cast her spell with each note. A spell that lasted long after the final song.

  Tonight she was covered in a sea of jade that complemented the red flames that cradled her face and fell to her shoulders in a cascade of curls. She was curvaceous and full as a woman should be. Soft and vulnerable; yet, filled with passion and fire. With the lights dimmed low, and a soft light behind her, her silhouette was outlined in a halo. She was indeed an angel.

  He signaled for Rachel to bring another drink. Though he wanted one more after, this would be the last. Routine and order were important. It made life predictable, and he liked that. Morgan's on Thursdays to hear her sing. Fridays he visited Mother at the home. On Tuesdays he ate pork chops. And should he ever sway from this order, and try something new, he corrected himself by making it a part of his routine. Like the first night he had followed her home. It was so unlike him. So spontaneous, yet she had asked him to. Not directly, but the night she changed her final song to "At Last," by Etta James he knew.

  "At last, my love will come along ?," she sang, and he knew.

  She may have piercing green eyes, and a confident demeanor, but he knew underneath she was like him. Shy and polite. She would never be so undignified as to ask him to her home. Instead, she sang to him in code. She sang to him in secret. And though to the others it may seem as if she were singing to them, he knew otherwise.

  "My lonely days are over and life is like a song ?"

  The first time he followed her he watched the windows of the first floor garden apartment from his car. He watched until the last light went out. The next time, he stayed a little longer, and the time after that a little longer still. Before long, he was watching till the sun rose and she left to run her errands. He would visit mother soon after with eyes red from lack of sleep and smelling of cigarette smoke and regret.

  This night, as her set came to a close, and Kris Kringle clapped loudly before stumbling to the bar, he decided that tonight he would approach her window. Just to get a better look. He would not intrude. He would not be so undignified. Not this night. Tonight he would silently watch, and next Thursday, well maybe next Thursday he'd enter.

  Being a Cop

  By Langley McKelvy https://www.langleymckelvy.blogspot.com

  David paused near the stoop of an aging brownstone long enough to ruffle the hair of a small boy playing jacks on the sidewalk. He returned the child's broad smile with one of his own and continued down the street. He had not been a policeman long, and was new to this beat; consequently he was in the process of learning his way around the neighborhood.

  "I like being a cop," David said aloud to no one.

  The child was one of many people he encountered this morning and all of them had treated him with courtesy, if not outright kindness. He recalled policemen from his youth; their dark blue uniforms sprinkled with glittering buttons, the shiny badge and, of course, the hidden power of the gun safely in its holster.

  Perhaps, he mused, it really is the uniform that makes the cop.

  He glanced down at the badge on his chest with pleasure and noticed how it caught and reflected the sunlight. An equally reflective name tag balanced out the traditional accouterments, but one small detail marred the otherwise iconic fabric landscape. A neat round bullet hole was visible about a half inch in from the badge, over his heart.

  David touched the torn fabric gently, remembering the incident. He survived the encounter, but decided not to repair the hole. It reminded him of the fragility of life, and served as something of a cautionary tale about keeping one's eyes on the hands of people who solicit directions from cops.

  He walked into Hargrave Park, admiring the natural beauty of the place. His plan was to make a full circuit of the many greenbelt trails, which turned lazily through the trees, occasionally fetching up to one of four large ponds. He selected a path at random and as he approached the first pond, David heard voices coming off the trail to his left. One was raised in anger, the other fear.

  After a moment's consideration, he stepped off the trail and made his way into the underbrush toward the source of the disturbance. He reached a small clearing and observed two men. One man was on his knees, clutching a briefcase to his chest and begging for his life. The other was a rather large, ugly man who held an equally large and ugly pistol. David immediately realized he had stumbled upon a robbery that was deteriorating rapidly into a murder. He drew his pistol and advanced carefully.

  The victim caught sight of his uniform and stopped pleading; his eyes flew open wide with a mixture of surprise and relief. The robber immediately spun around, but far too slowly. David's Glock 23 expelled two rounds of fiery copper, striking him first in the chest and then in the center of his forehead. He went down without making a sound.

  The other man dropped his briefcase and began to weep, thanking him between sobs. David walked over to him, stopped and picked up the crook's weapon and tucked it into his waistband.

  "What's your name?" David asked, trying to put that man at ease.

  "R ? Roger ? ," the man choked out "Roger Coleman."

  "Are you okay, Roger?"

  "I? I think so. Thank you? God! He was going to kill me!" His breathing was starting to slow down now, but he kept glancing down at his assailant.

  "Don't worry, he's dead. What were you doing out here anyway?"

  "I was cutting though the park, running late. I was going to try and catch the number 36 bus to work." His voice was nearly back to normal now.

  "Really? What kind of work do you do?"

  "Real estate ? I'm a real estate agent."

  David then raised his pistol and shot Roger Coleman, once in the chest and once in the forehead. The man slumped to the ground with a look of astonishment frozen on his face.

  "I like being a cop," he said aloud to the two bodies. He holstered his pistol and picked up the briefcase. Then he knelt beside Coleman's body and began unbuttoning the man's jacket. He smiled and gently touched the bullet hole next to the pocket.

  Yes, he thought, I like being a cop. Tomorrow I think I'll be a real estate agent.

  Blind Justice

  By Jessica A. Weiss

  You look like a beaten dog, shaking and nervous. Don't be scared, this is what you've been wanting from me for years. Sit down and relax, let me give you what you came here for. See the clock? Time's running out and we've got business to finish.

  You're here because you believe I shouldn'
t be treated this way, that I don't deserve this. By the law of man I am where I belong and must be punished. You think I'm innocent but I'm telling you that I'm guilty of murder. I turned myself in because I have blood on my hands.

  Best to start at the beginning. I can't give you all their names, there were too many and it was years ago. With some research you can fill in the gaps. That is what you do, isn't it? Dig up juicy stories for the public.

  Anyways, you know the carnival down by the mouth of the river, along the marshes? The one that is actually built there and never closes? That's where I grew up and that's where all of this madness started. All those young kids acting like fools, having a good time, not a care in the world. Their laughter was like a drug; their sweet faces candy for the taking.

  The haunted house was the children's favorite. Outside the faded building, the barker, who'd worked there for decades, would draw them in with promises of real ghosts and spooks. Local legends of murders and suicides thrilled the kids. The boys would act tough to impress the girls and the girls would act scared so the boys would protect them. In the end, they all screamed. Some louder than others, those were the unlucky ones.

  When the first girl went missing, there was mild panic. She'd been on a trip with the local orphanage. With no parents the search died down quickly. Officers wrote it off as a runaway. As if a twelve year old would run away.

  The second girl caused a bigger stir. She'd been visiting with her parents from out of town. Lots of questions that time, the search for her lasted a few months. Thought the cops would find her for sure. But again, not one clue found, no trace left behind.

  Over the next three years, ten beautiful little girls disappeared. Some were locals, others tourists, some were runaways who'd run the wrong way. Besides their age and gender, the only connection they shared was the last place they'd been seen alive, the haunted house.

  If only the police had looked harder, they would've seen the truth.

  See that place was really scary, looked like the Mad Hatter had a bloody tea party in there. Blood on the walls, body parts scattered about. Furniture made of bones, even a few heads popping out of cabinets. Only not all of it was fake.

  Are you alright? You look a bit pale. Do you need a drink of water? Maybe a cigarette? You sure you want to hear the rest?