Flash Fiction by Victor Clevenger

Accepting Defeat:  For Small Pieces of My Dignity, I Do It

He met me at the front door and so did his small dog.  Such an ugly creature, the man, not the dog--white hair tangled and matted, hanging long over his eyes and a crooked jaw from being struck by an automobile in a crosswalk accidental a few years prior.  There was some form of arthritis that had set in throughout all the joints of Mr. Schlege, and he was now housebound.  His dog was a small black haired terrier and she was the only thing keeping him sucking air and living since the accident.

"Take her down by that big oak tree on 40th Street," he said, "She always loved walking down that way with me."

"Sure thing," I told him, "but you got to start paying forty-five dollars a week, because this thirty-dollar shit is not cutting it; it is getting harder for me to drink a good hard drink these days and besides, Angella is about to throw my ass out."

"Just walk the dog and we will discuss all that payment jazz later," he said.

I took his dog and headed down the street in search of this big oak tree, knowing that in all honesty, once I turned the corner and was out of Schlege's sight, I was going to stop.  We made the turn and were out of sight.  I leaned against an old Buick that was parked next to the curb.  I knew that the walk I had taken was much shorter than the walk that Schlege expected, so I lit a cigarette and started counting numbers in my head.

I made it to three-hundred before a swarm of tiny bugs began flying around my face, trying to land on my forehead.  They were quick and stealthy; like tiny jet planes flying suicide missions.  I swatted at them with my hands and connected with several; they fell to the ground and I knew that I still had not wasted enough time.  I finished the cigarette and lit another one, swatted some more bugs and watched a woman through her open front window.  She was brushing her long hair when the sky let loose with a loud roar of thunder.  The thunder startled me, the dog cowered and the woman walked over to the window and shut it.  The clouds were starting to darken and that was just the excuse I needed to take Schlege's dog back home to him.  Walking back around the corner, I saw Angella's car turn north, heading away from my house.

Once arriving to Schlege's front steps, his dog ran into the flower garden to piss once again on a rose bush that was half dead.

"Goddammit!" Schlege shouted, "Don't let her piss on that bush!"

"It looks like it is too late; she's already finished," I told him.

"Clearly," he said displeased, "By the way, your landlady was just over there beating the shit out of your front door with a hammer."  Old man Schlege opened his screen door which had no screen left on it anymore, it was just a door with a large square of cardboard pressed and taped to cover the opening; the cardboard was wrinkled and discolored, sun faded and dried from the weather.  He handed me ten-dollar bills, three of them, and his dog ran back inside as he said, "I will not pay you one cent more than what I pay you now!"

"Okay," I told him, "Thanks, Schlege."  I could have stood there and haggled with him, trying to push him for the other fifteen, but what good would it have done?  I would more than likely still be leaving none the richer.  Schlege is a troll, a long white haired troll.  Anyways, the ten-dollar bills that Schlege was tossing my way, were the only thing being tossed my way as of lately, besides Angella's mind games.

Rapidly on the verge of grim, it had quickly become amazingly dark for the afternoon.  You could smell the rain moving in as I walked down Schlege's front walk and headed back across the street.

Victor Clevenger spends his days in a Madhouse and his nights writing poetry and short stories from the kitchen table of his ex-wife's home in Missouri.  Selected pieces of Victor's work has appeared at, or is forthcoming from, Chiron Review; Blink Ink; Rat's Ass Review, and Least Bittern Books, among others.  His latest collection is titled, In All These Naked Pictures of Us.

Flash Fiction by Jackie Davis Martin

High Standards

We'd giggle at the slovenliness of the dance costumes, she and I.  We'd poke each other in the ribs and whisper:  "Look, she's wearing underpants underneath and they show!"  We'd nod our heads in united disapproval, even sadness, that the child's dancing teacher didn't have the standards the Miss Diedre did.

"Look," Shelley would say.  "There are no sequins in back.  They're just wearing the costumes the way they came out of the plastic bag!"

"Tsk tsk."  I'd make those little scold noises with my tongue.

We were attending a dance recital where a friend of hers, another 4th grader, was performing.

"Their hair isn't pulled back," she whispered.  "And they're doing ballet.  It looks so messy."  It was the next dance, just after we'd looked at each other incredulously in the semi-darkness:  No tights.  The group of girls sported bare legs with tutus, their hair hanging down or in pigtails.

We left the theater in roars of giggles.

"Did you notice how half of them didn't even try to smile?"

"And their toes weren't pointed.  Look!"  And she pantomimed an arabesque right on the sidewalk, leg extended, foot comically flexed.

Oh, we laughed.  We were so superior.

"And they walked offstage, instead of running after their bow!" Shelly was having such a good time.  The kids looked lost, lame, just wandering off, not purposeful the way Miss Diedre's students looked.

I'd made a good choice with that dancing school, I told myself.  The training was good and the standards were high.

But there the story ends.  I don't mean to end it there, but one wonders what happens to all the life lessons, what they all amount to.  People say you build memories.  People say that the value is in the experience.  I suppose all that is true.  But, haughty as we were back then, the superiority didn't get us anywhere.  Shelley--and then I, with her--continued to take dancing lessons, in spite of the fact that she gained weight and I couldn't stop her and that was no standard at all.  She pretended by the time she got to be fifteen or sixteen that she wasn't overweight.  I referred to her as "chubby" or "a bit hefty" to myself or to my friends, unless I was really mad and then I'd scream at her:  "You're getting fat!  I'm not buying you costumes if you're going to parade around in that fat!"  And she'd scream back and cry.

I pretend those scenes didn't happen, the dissolution of patience, of kindness.  Shelley died--and she was overweight then--indeed she had only a few brief spurts in her life when she lost enough weight to measure up to standards I was insisting on and I swear, I swear, she had such power at those times.  Why didn't she maintain it?  Oh, who knows.  It's an old story and the chapter is surely closed.

The irony is that Shelley thought she held on to the rules of the game as we learned them.  Up until the time she graduated high school at seventeen--and was still dancing--we both were, together--she rigidly followed Miss Diedre's teachings, and later used her as a model of setting high expectations for her, Shelley's, own students.  She continued to dress exactly, buy good make-up that she applied exactly, polished her shoes, had everything professionally dry-cleaned.  She exacted standards I thought were expensive and unnecessary, but who was I to say?  She was paying for it all, compensating, as far as I could see, for something that we also laughed at when we sat in those rows in a strange auditorium watching "another" dancing school's performances.

"Mom!  Did you see that fat one at the end?  She doesn't seem to go with the others."

"Well, she's trying," I'd say.  "I think."

"I hope she doesn't do acrobat," Shelley would giggle.  "That'd be really funny.  Plop!"

She was in third or fourth grade.  What did we know of life?

Do they mean anything, those high standards?  I'm still aware of dancers; I study the professional ballet dancers through my binoculars, I wonder about what they wear or don't under their streamlined leotards, admire their lean muscular legs.  And of course think of my daughter.

Death takes away the worry and the standards.  She is not overweight; she is dead.  Isn't that a relief?  No, it is not.

But there were the good times.

Jackie Davis Martin has had stories and essays published in print and online journals including Flash, Flashquake, Fastforward, 34th Parallel, and Sleet.  Her most recent work is in Enhance, Counterexample Poetics, Fractured West, Dogzplot, Bluestem, and Gravel.  A flash won the Spruce Mountain Press Awards.  Two stories are anthologiezed in the current print Modern Shorts and the new Love on the Road.  A memoir, Surviving Susan, was published in 2013:  all three of those are available on amazon.com.  Two stories have been included in previous Kind of a Hurricane Press anthologies.  Jackie teaches at City College of San Francisco.

Flash Fiction by Ruth Z. Deming

The Third Time He Died

Every morning we drank our coffees together over the phone.  Neither of us had much money, so we each brewed our own.  I made my strong coffee in a yellow Stangl coffee maker.

"How was your day?" he always asked me.

My two young children had gone to school and I took the phone, with its ultra-long curly-haired cord, into the dining room and sat down, arms on the table.  On the wall I'd hung a huge branch from a tree, which I looped with white lace.

He had been to my place many a time and got along well with Sarah and Dan, doing some magic tricks for them.

I could not believe he loved me.  He was a sculptor famous in our town, Chris Ray.  On an unforgettable day in April, when the magnolia petals littered lawns and streets, Chris picked me up at my apartment and drove me in his blue Mazda truck to his Wissahickon Gate in downtown Philadelphia.

I still have a photo of the gate pinned to my bulletin board in my upstairs office.  You can practically feel the cold metal as you view swirling designs he forged back home in his carriage house on Chew Avenue.  Huge rocks stood in place forever, along with dainty leaves on stalks of iron and a creature he called "The Mansect," a combination man and insect.  Chris was an optimist, believing ever one of God's creatures has a living soul.  Who was I to doubt him?

He walked me along the downtown streets, a bearded man with sky-blue eyes, who word his trademark jeans and plaid flannel shirt as he showed me the iron gates of banks on Chestnut Street.

"These are some of the places my inspiration comes from," he said in reverential tones.

I grabbed his hand and held it to my heart.

Chris was a loner.  Liked nothing more than staying home in his carriage house and forging his works of metal in the open garage.  On the grass in his back yard were creations he hadn't yet sold.  A huge red sculpture arched toward the heavens.  I lay my head against the metal and wished he'd give me something.  He never did.

My sister Amy was getting married at my mom's house.  I persuaded Chris to attend the wedding.  Amy and Rich were married inside the house by a rabbi clad all in white.  Chris put on the black kippah or head covering.

I wore a twirly purple silk dress.  It's still in my closet since I hope to fit in it again some day.

Quite simply, I was an attractive woman, with shoulder-length brown hair, threaded with gray, huge brown eyes and long eyelashes everyone commented on.

I never looked in the mirror.  Couldn't stand viewing myself and still don't look in the mirror.

After the ceremony, Chris came up to me.  He had loosened his tie.

"I'm not feeling well," he said.

"Oh no!" I replied and suggested he go upstairs and lie down.  I walked him up the stairs to a bedroom on the third floor.

"Lie down here," I suggested, patting the bed.

He lay down in the lime-green bedroom, where we could hear the merry sounds of the party below.

My heart was pounding.  I knew I was losing him.

The room began to swim.  I had gotten drunk on champagne to quell the awful feelings that Chris was breaking up with me.  It was our morning talks that hinted he might be seeing another woman.

Deirdre was her name.

The day after the party, the phone rang.

It was Chris.  He didn't mince words.

"I'm breaking up with you," he said.

All I remember is falling to my knees on the kitchen floor, staring at the blue star patterns on the floor and sobbing.

My coffee spilled all over the floor.

For years thereafter, whenever I passed Chew Avenue, where he lived, my heart sobbed inside.

One day my friend Marcy sent me an email.

It was an obituary notice from the Philadelphia Inquirer.  Chris Ray was dead from stomach cancer at age 63.

Now I had to mourn him all over again.

If I wish, I can open up a drawer in Sarah's old bedroom and look at his Polaroid photo.  A bearded man in a plaid shirt, smiling at me.

Forever.

All I could do was write a poem about him, which I titled "The Third Time He Died."

Ruth Z. Deming has had her prose and poetry published in lit mags including River Poets, East Jasmine Review and Hektoen International.  A psychotherapist and mental health advocate, she runs New Directions Support Group for people with depression, bipolar disorder and their loved ones.  She lives in Willow Grove, a suburb of Philadelphia.  www.newdirectionssupport.org

Flash Fiction by Gary Hewitt

Giving Everything

Just one more he says.  I rub my eyes and launch myself again.  The waves lap against my side and my muscles ache in Spartan surrender.  My personal best is so close.

I hear him scream and through red water I drill forward.  My breath rattles in my lungs like a rock in a colander.  Don't stop though, don't ever stop until I reach the target.  So close now, so close to something special.

My arms are so heavy.  The last stroke never arrives.  Instead, I descend to the deep where I hide from coach's complaints about being a loser.  I'm breathing somehow and about me, angel fish flicker left and right in a shiny shoal of iridescent light.  I'm guessing this is death.  I hear trumpets, divine music and below a golden light calls out to me.

Down I go, ever down.  I know my lungs have long since lost their power.  I float onto a cobbled path and stand despite being so far from the surface.  Everything about me is so clear, a stingray flies past my left ear and lets me stroke his left flank and he rumbles in happiness at my touch.

I exhale a flotilla of bubbles and ahead a great castle awaits me with a drawbridge slowly descending.  My fatigue has been usurped and I am drawn to this wizard's palace.  Step by step I advance to this blessed bastion and a girl bathed in flowing white robes beckons to me.

"He is waiting for you, quick, up the stairs," she says.

I take a grey mantle and the warmth envelops me in a cocoon of care.  I am inside and the lady orders for the bridge to be raised.  I ascend in moments, I am in a throne room with a man dressed in golden armor waiting for me.  Great wings spray out from his back, he stands and embraces me when I am close.

"Stephen, I am so glad you have come.  You have had a most wonderful life and now my friend, you can take a well earned rest.  You have worked so hard."

I stare at him in confusion.

"I'm sorry, you're mistaken.  My name's Nathan."

My host draws back, scratches his chin.

"That can't be right.  You are Stephen Hope.  I have no record of a Nathan."

"Stephen?  Oh no, he couldn't come today, he felt a bit under the weather.  Is there a problem?"

The armored figure claps his hands together.  Immediately five winged young Amazons arrive at his side.

"This man needs to go back.  He shouldn't be here."

I protest.  I want to stay but the girls soothe me with their touch.  I rise away from this perfect paradise.  I feel my lungs burn and my arms reach out to find the touch of a pair of heavy arms lifting me up.

"You did it, you got your personal best.  I'm so proud of you Nathan," roars my coach.

I can't speak.  I'm so exhausted.  He throws a towel over my shattered body.

"That's better, don't want you to catch your death of cold.  It's just a shame Stephen wasn't here.  Your training partner would be so pleased."

I nod, look out to the sea and witness a golden ocean shimmer beneath me.  I hope Stephen doesn't swim tomorrow.  In fact, I hope he never takes to the water ever again.

Gary Hewitt is a raconteur who lives in a quaint little village in Kent.  He has had over 80 short stories and poems published and has performed to several live audiences.  He enjoys writing prose and poetry.  His style of writing tends to feature edgy characters.  Some of his influences are James Herbert, Stephen King, Bulgakov, and Tolkein to name a few.  He is also a proud member of the Hazlitt Arts Centre Writers Group in Maidstone which features an eclectic group of very talented writers.  He has a website featuring his published works here:  http://kingsraconteurswork.blogspot.co.uk/

Flash Fiction by Dr. Jim Brosnan

A Love Affair With Verse

Turning it over, she smiled.  It actually took her by surprise, but the black and white silhouette was unmistakably his.  In recent years, she had made a habit of attending library book sales on Saturday mornings searching for collections of poetry.

She hardly ever wrote poetry except for a short spell in college.  However, her literature professor, old Professor Parker, had ignited a strong interest in poetry which she had nurtured through the years.  She laughed aloud when she thought about her faded memories of Professor Parker--his tweed jacket, his curved pipe spewing a cherry scent, his strange habit of dictating the syllabus, but mostly his love of his subject.

At 58, she found solace in poetry and had become a devout reader of any contemporary poet to discover new voices in this lyrical world.  She had also thoroughly digested the works of Collins, Matthews, and O'Hara.  And then there was Yeats, his obsession with Maude permeating his work.  Yes, that is how she met Gary Snyder, Philip Levine, and Ted Kooser.  It was interesting that she seemed to be attracted exclusively to male poets.  Maybe they spoke to her intimately in their heartfelt images, or maybe she just thought they did.

Well, she mused as she read the back cover of this chapbook--

Phillip Connoly, recipient of the Gary Soto Award for poetry, earned his MFA in poetry at Vermont College and an undergraduate degree in English from the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater.  He is a professor of English at Boston College in Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts.

Phil hadn't changed much if the photo on the back cover was recent.  Patricia smiled thinking it probably was an old photo.  As her dirty blonde hair was now weathered with streaks of white, what were the chances that his hair wasn't thinning.  Phil was two years older than her and surely at sixty, he had aged more than this photograph revealed.

Well, what difference did it make?  Patty, as he used to call her, asked herself.  They had dated in her sophomore year at Whitewater before his graduation.  He left that May to take a position as a graduate assistant on the West Coast.  She couldn't even remember the college.  It was a letdown.  She wanted commitment.  She suggested that he find a job in the Milwaukee area.  He indicated he really wasn't definite about his future.  He might even enlist in the Air Force.  He had a high number in the draft lottery, but his grandfather and uncle had served in the military.  He felt an almost compulsion to continue this family tradition and go to Vietnam.

After graduation they exchanged a few letters, but the relationship faded like a field of summer flowers.  She graduated two years later and took a job as a public relations specialist with a large insurance firm in Chicago.  She loved the "Windy City," walking under the EL, and spending many evenings at the Art Institute on Michigan Avenue listening to readings by local poets.  Carl Sandburg would be proud.

Because of a recent job transfer, Patty found herself examining the used book table at the Cambridge Public Library this morning.  She wondered how far she was from the Boston College campus.  What were the chances she would pass Phil on a street corner, sit across from him at Starbucks, ride the same subway and not even recognize him?  It had been thirty-eight years.  Her chances, she thought, approximated the odds of winning the lottery jackpot.

She put the book back down.  "How foolish to even think of pursuing this thought," she admitted to herself.  She picked up a collection of Yeats, reflected on the circumstances of his play, Countess Cathleen, wondered why Maud, for whom he wrote the dramatic stage production, haunted him until his death.  Well, that certainly wasn't Phil's problem.  He had drifted away like vapor trails in a summer sky.

She held the Yeats collection, and leaned across the folding table.  Patty retrieved the Connolly poems, and approached the white-haired librarian with the change box.  "I'll take these two," Patty offered.  The librarian smiled as she checked the price tags.  "Connolly's a great poet in the Irish tradition you know; he frequently reads in a coffee house in Harvard Square.  You might take a listen some Saturday night."

Patty nodded.  "I'll consider it!  It's always wonderful to hear a poet speak his own words.  It would probably help me understand his images, metaphors, and allusions."

Dr. Jim Brosnan teaches English at Johnson & Wales University in Providence, Rhode Island where he holds the rank of full professor.  He has conducted workshops in Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Maine, Rhode Island, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey.  He is a member of the Nomad Writers in Rehoboth, MA, the Maine Poets Society, and the Tidepool Poets in Plymouth, MA.  Jim serves as the president of the Rhode Island Council of Teachers of English.  He was named a finalist four years in NEATE's Poet of the Year competition, placing second in 2010.  Jim's four books of poetry include Hints of Swallowtalk.  His poems have appeared in the Naugatuck River Review, the Aurorean, The Teacher as Writer, Mad Poet's Review, Minnesota English Journal, The Leaflet, Poems of the Poppies (UK), and The Bridge.  Jim's poems have recently been awarded First Honorable Mention by the Maine Poets Society and an Honorable Mention by the New York Poetry Forum and a Second Place by the Utah Poetry Society both of which were sponsored by the National Federation of State Poetry Societies.  His fiction piece, "Sunday Sabbath" was displayed at the Providence Public Library as part of "The Wonder Show" exhibit.  Some of Jim's other stories have appeared in The Teacher As Writer.

Flash Fiction by A.J. Huffman

Gilda, Guardian of the Green

Gilda, a 13-foot alligator, practically filled the stagnant pond just past the children’s park.  No one knew where she came from, or even how she got her name, but they all knew her toothy smile.

Gilda liked children.  She had little desire to eat them as her pond was well-stocked with frogs and other random reptiles.  She just liked to watch them.  She would sit on a log or some rocks after her morning patrol of the waters.  As the algae baked into her scales, she would watch the children play on the swings and slide, made mud pies, dug in the sand.  She never left the confines of the tall grass that acted as a fence between the two worlds, until last summer. 

The drought had been rough.  Almost two full months without rain, and the heat had turned almost everything that was green a straw-like tan.  The kids actually crunched across what no longer could be called a lawn to play.  Dehydrated brush had been sparking into fires for about a week, dislocating the local wildlife.

It was almost noon when the bobcat crept from the wooded perimeter of the park.  Parents, unused to such dangerous felines, never bothered to look up from their cell phones and paperbacks.  The bobcat was just a few yards from the playground when Gilda erupted from grass.  Jaws slammed, claws slashed, a horrible screeching echoed through stunned silence.  As Gilda dragged the carcass of the dead bobcat back to her log, mothers and fathers gathered their children, headed to the safety of air-conditioned rec rooms for the rest of the afternoon.  

There was never an official acknowledgement of Gilda’s heroism, but from that day on, an anonymous chicken or two arrived monthly on top of her log.

A.J. Huffman has published twelve full-length poetry collections, thirteen solo poetry chapbooks and one joint poetry chapbook through various small presses.  Her most recent releases, Degeneration (Pink Girl Ink), A Bizarre Burning of Bees (Transcendent Zero Press), and Familiar Illusions (Flutter Press) are now available from their respective publishers.  She is a five-time Pushcart Prize nominee, a two-time Best of Net nominee, and has published over 2500 poems in various national and international journals, including Labletter, The James Dickey Review, The Bookends Review, Bone Orchard, Corvus Review, EgoPHobia, and Kritya.  She is also the founding editor of Kind of a Hurricane Press.  www.kindofahurricanepress.com.

Flash Fiction by Denny E. Marshall

River of Time

Sean is lost somewhere in the wilderness.  He always wanted to visit a national park but getting lost wasn't on the agenda.  It is his sixth day lost in the woods.  Sean was smart enough to pack extra water and food and had some of both left.

Out in a clearing he can see a river.  Upon closer inspection the river is shiny, the water crystal clear and clean.  No wildlife is present in the river in Sean's location.

Sean looks up and sees a man walking up the bank towards him.  The man is old, tall, and has on a long green robe.  He is wearing brown shirt, pants and shoes.

Once the man reaches him Sean said, "Boy, am I glad to see you.  I am lost and need your help."  The old man looks at Sean and said, "My name is Yaq, and I am the sentry of the River of Time.  I can't help you.  The only thing I can do for you is present the River of Time.  If you go upstream you will be in the future, downstream you go into the past.  Remember time travel is not what you think.  The river will show you.  Yaq walks on the water, turns into water droplets and is gone.

Sean walks in to the shallow waters of the river and heads upstream.  The river current is fast, so the going is tough.  Sean stumbles and falls, the swift current sweeps him downstream quickly.  Sean can tell his body is that of a teenage boy now, he is getting younger.  Soon he is a young boy.  Sean fights the current and is finally able to stand back up and travel upstream.  Sean is afraid if he goes to far downstream he will not be born.  Is that what Yaq meant in his message.

Once Sean reaches the spot where he started, he stops and ponders his next move.  Well, getting older did not appeal to Sean so he did not go upstream, although seeing the future would have been nice.  Going too far upstream, he might die since he did not know the date of his death.

Maybe Yaq was trying to tell him you couldn't go past your own time, at least in this river anyway.  Or maybe something as simple as the River of Time was built to help the lost hiker.

Sean walks downstream very slowly until he reaches the time right before he got lost.

Denny E. Marshall has had art, poetry, and fiction published.  Some recently.  See more at www.dennymarshall.com