Flashy Fiction – Under a Thousand
George Angus
Smashwords Edition
Copyright 2010 George Angus
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This fine collection of flash fiction is the cumulative effort of a number of authors who submitted their stories to the Tumblemoose.com website.
Flash fiction is a story that takes place in 1,000 words or less. This format forces a writer to write a crisp, clean story with any unneeded parts removed.
The stories here are inventive works of the authors and should provide for some entertaining reading. Please do all of them a favor and write a review at Smashwords about this e-book.
Contributors:
Gina Robinson – A Touchable Object, Love is Nothing
Rohi Shetty – Mayday! Mayday! Mayday!, Roadside Justice
Pradnya Parihar – Radioactivity
George Angus – Sickhouse
Robert Hruzek - One Fine Day
Paisley Thoughts – Great-Aunt
Genevieve Sawchyn – Longing, School Bus Musings
Rhea – Bats
Donna Castlegrant – Lunar Spirit, Jack The Hamster, and Transfer, Please!
A Touchable Object by Gina Robinson
The ringing of my cell phone woke me; it was 2:00 am. From the ringtone I could tell who was calling before I saw his name and face on the phone's display.
Why is he calling me?
Answering it seemed like the best way to find out.
I was aware of my heart thumping around, tripping over the furniture in my chest. "Hello?""I'm sorry to wake you," he said.
There was something about his voice. It sounded tense. Tightly packed. Spring-loaded.
"What's wrong?"
"I needed to talk to you.""Why?"
No answer for three heartbeats.
"I needed you."
"Come here, talk to me then. Where are you? Want me to come to you?"
"Outside your apartment. Down here."
I peeked through the blinds, as he knew I would, and in fact he was sitting on the curb of the street two stories down, beneath my bedroom window. He held his cell phone to his head with one hand and gave a clumsy wave with the other.
"Well come on up, silly."
I peed and brushed my teeth. Splashed some water on my face and tried to remember if he'd ever seen me without make-up. I wore pale boxer shorts and a beater tee-shirt, which glowed in the light of the fat full moon that shone through the window. As I opened the door, my mind was possessed with a strange formality, wondering what I should offer him to drink. I had beer in the fridge. I wondered if perhaps he'd already had too many.
Good manners became moot when our eyes met. Like his voice, there was something tense and urgent about his face, a tightening in his jaw, determination in his eyes that barely concealed the soupy desperation floating beneath it.
His lips twitched an ironic smile before he crossed the threshold and reduced the distance between our faces to zero. Just before his lips took mine, his hand found my hair; it seemed he would stroke it but then he gripped it firmly at the back of my head and tilted my head to the side so that our mouths fit most perfectly together.
This was no "first kiss" kind of first kiss. This was not tender and sweet. This was an all-consuming explosion that burned and blazed as we lost our minds in the intrigue of the other's mystery. I had no time to wonder why this was happening. I had no time to think at all, I could only react, I could barely breathe.
I'm not a fool; I know. Intense the pleasure may be, but the consequences of lying in the arms of a desperate man come drifting in like a heavy fog on the rays of the morning sun. And yet I could no more stop myself than I could stop the beating of my heart.
In spite of that night—probably because of that night, he would never be mine.
But that night, he was a touchable object and he was mine.
Love is Nothing by Gina Robinson
Dewayne rolled the PlayMate out of the shed and onto the new tennis court behind his house. His wife, Pam, had gone already to join her boyfriend for an early dinner. She wouldn't be home tonight.
He plugged it in, then adjusted the knobs on the big green machine before flipping a switch to turn it on. It made a faint hum and, after a few moments, began shooting bright yellow tennis balls out across the sun-drenched court.
He jogged around to the other side of the net. He was in great shape for 40, he thought. The PlayMate made a "Thoop!" sound as it spit tennis balls at him, and Whack! he hit the balls with a satisfying rubbery "pap!" sound against his racket. He hit them hard. Aggressively.