To the centipede I tried to kick down my drain but refused to go. I see you there. Being better than eighty-two percent of the men I’ve dated.
You creepy-crawled out of the drain. I screamed like an old-fashioned actress. High-pitched and startling. Then, I toed you back down. Steam blossomed over the bathroom, a ghostly mushroom cloud. I could barely see you. But you returned covered in a nest of dark hair. Most wouldn’t come back. Most would get the hell out. Like Stan Prince circa ’98. That was a bad year.
You know, it was a shower beer kind of night. You probably watched as I poured myself into the tub, half-drunk, bad-breakup-battered. The water spray felt like bullets, and for a second, I wished they were. You saw that. Still, you came. You stayed.
I knelt down and picked you up in the palm of my hand. Your hundred little legs danced a tune in my palm. You were happy. I wasn’t. We could do great things together, you said.
If great included finishing my shower beer, then I was all ears.
With one arm, you beckoned that I come closer. That arm was bedecked in a glitzy bangle. The other arm, to your right and thirty arms back, laid inert. It sported a masculine wristwatch. Shower centipedes are not conformed to the laws of gender-specific fashion.
“Are you my little love bug?” I whispered. I giggled because it was nuts. There I was, naked, my hair like soupy udon noodle waves, talking to a bug. I’ve done worst things. Here’s looking at you, Dennis Booth and the ten-inch dildo we dubbed Ripper.
“I am,” you replied. “Now let’s go teach men to get this bad love off your chest.”
Fuck yeah.
I dressed, grabbed my shower beer, and we were gone into the night.
It’s fun to pretend we took a race car but really we were on my Huffy 10 speed. The bike was an extra-special birthday gift after I caught my mother swapping spit with Uncle Patrick. I never sold it. That memory meant I had some kind of power. I mean, if power back-in-the-day meant wielding braces and training bras and crippling secrets, then power it was.
I stepped up, to porches, to patios, to rickety trailer park screen doors. I knocked. I thought I was going to be sick. Then, all my exes answered, fear and doubt in their eyes, worried I came to rage. You perched on my shoulder. A one-hundred-armed angel in my ear. To propel me forward, to confess to men I gave blue balls, to men who gave me black eyes, to men I’ve pretended to love and men who’ve played with my heart like a teething necklace.
There, I raised the shower beer. All night long, I toasted truth to boys with green eyes and men with bikini girl bicep tattoos. My tongue went numb. The words tumbled like dice. I didn’t make sense; I made sense. I watched their bodies wilt, and felt my own lengthen.
Finally finished, done, kaput, wiped out like that song with the manic babbling voice, I
stumbled away to the curb. My chest as empty as a shower beer. I sat in the ditch and watched the spokes of the Huffy glitter in the moonlight. But what was moonlight without a beer? I hefted the can in my palm. It was still full, but I felt lighter for its weight. Like a train wreck with no crash. Under a gold-gilded streetlight, I closed my eyes, whispered, thank you. And then you were there. Beckoning me to follow. The comfort of your one hundred little legs further on up the road.
K Chiucarello: First, I want to say congratulations on your recent Paris Review publication. It is such an astounding essay. I was awestruck with the two lists you made, one in which you needed to make to stay alive and the other of what you wanted to accomplish in the future, these usually tangible things that very suddenly were taken away in the pandemic. Something I admire in this piece, and in any piece that manages to take the pandemic and turn it into a unique yet universal essay, is that while loss and grief are central to the narrative, sharing and writing to stay alive are just as central. I was wondering if you could speak to sharing your experience, particularly your experience as a Black woman, and having it resonate, consumed, and shared by so many folks that may be outside of your own identity. How do you protect yourself and your own story when others can now formulate it to their own?
Megan Giddings: While reading this question, I did have a visceral, would you ask a white writer this question? And not in a let’s start this interview with a fight, but what you described initially is what the white dominant culture in the United States asks people all over the world to do frequently. To see a white protagonist as a person to relate to, to care for, to think about the world.
I don’t think reading is the only solution to the inequities and segregation in the United States. But books, television, movies, music, they’re often the first step for many people toward building an empathetic imagination because the places we live, the places we learn, are still regularly pretty segregated.
It’s impossible for me to protect myself now as a much more public writer. But whenever someone essentially asks me for permission to write outside their race or culture, I ask them these questions now (I’m focused on Black here because that’s usually what people want to do): How well do you know Black people? Why should you get to take up space in this conversation? What are you doing to make space and opportunities for Black writers who are still very much marginalized and will probably make far less money and get far less attention for telling their stories than you might get? The first question is one that I think most non-Black people think they can answer with a list. And that shows that already they’re not ready. It doesn’t matter if you knew a Black person, I’m asking you about intimacy, about trust, about reading and engaging and feeling with us. If you can say well, I dated a Black guy in college, well maybe that Black guy should be writing this and you should be writing about being a white woman who is trying to learn how to be a better person.
KC: Thank you for that answer. If I could clarify my question when I say ‘formulate’. When I write from my own identity, sometimes I feel I want to write a piece and give voice to my very specific identity, a queer, non-binary experience. When folks who are straight or cis- relate to and share or retweet my stories, especially if my identity is written all over that piece, I sometimes feel my experience was up for consumption (as you spoke to in your answer), and that that was not the intended audience even though perhaps those folks learned more about an identity outside of their own by reading it. It makes me feel protective of my voice, yet I simultaneously want others to consider my specific experience. Of course, as writers, we can never control fully who reads our work nor should we want limited exposure. But I suppose I was curious if you struggle seeing your specific experience shared universally.
MG: I don’t really struggle with people reading a piece of writing from I guess what I’ll call a shared empathetic experience. They read it, emotionally connect, and they think about me and themself and our shared emotions. I do struggle when someone reads something by me about me and is like well, I’ve never experienced that, so you’re wrong. Or they do some real C student work and pull a quote out of context to back up their viewpoint of the world while totally missing what I was saying. But until I’m on the final drafts of something, I write to please myself. I write to have fun or to think deeply or to escape. It’s only in heavy revisions where I start thinking about the outside world.
KC:The Offing and The Rumpus are such varied displays of voices and stories, largely because their editorial teams seem to be some of the most diverse around. As editors and readers, the onus should be on publications to create teams that understand how to focus and lift writers whose voices are vastly underrepresented. When you’re reviewing submissions or are in the process of editing others’ work, what are the angles you look out for? Even if the “craft” isn’t fully there, how do you create room and help others make names for themselves so that there is a more nuanced, representative pool of stories out there?
MG:The Offing and The Rumpus have much different systems for reviewing work. At The Offing, the fiction team has no one who is male. We are a team of women, some of us are gender non-conforming people. We have a lot of discussions about who is being centered in a work. We are especially interested lately in features BIPOC who are writing experimentally, who are writing narratives of alternate worlds.
At The Rumpus, one of the things that has been really interesting to me to see is how better and better the readers and some white editors are getting more comfortable saying, I think I’m missing a cultural or political point here. It’s not talking to me. ____, can you take a look at this? I think for a long time, issues of gender, race, and class have been conflated with “craft” issues. I think Matthew Salesses has a book coming out in 2021 about that idea that I’m really excited to read.
In general, if you’re a writer and kicking the door closed behind you, if the only people you’re pushing hard for are your established friends or people you think can boost your work in return, you’re part of the problem. I get that it’s hard to make the time to read for literary magazines. I increasingly am conflicted about giving so much of my time to places that can’t pay me. But I also believe that there are so few Black editors and that the work I can do is still important in helping other writers get opportunities that are still incredibly hard for them. I might be taking a different path if I had money or if I felt like I had more influence, because I am getting very burnt out. Right now, I feel like the most effective place I can be is editing.
KC: I often exhaust myself with trying to weave my own experiences into flash, particularly if it’s a “fictionalized” story around identity. It’s almost like shortening the word length creates an even larger urgency to place so much momentum into a tiny space. How do you balance feeling exhausted and energized when writing through a piece like The Alive Sister, a piece that revolves around generational trauma and identity?
MG: I would say my state of being is being exhausted but somehow persisting. “The Alive Sister” needed to be flash because if it was longer, it would’ve been a rant, not fiction. Keeping it as flash allowed me to still be creative, to think of the ways that I could express my grief, my frustrations, my abilities to even speak to a moment that feels like a wound–Tamir Rice was murdered and his murderer will not be held accountable, his murderer was rehired as a police officer, his police union in Cleveland spent significant time advocating for him to be rehired despite the fact that he shot a 12 year old child and did not allow care to be administered to him–and also because of the constraints of flash, have to think about how can I be at my most clear, my most creative, and still leave room for story.
KC: There’s something about fiction that allows for more curiosity and exploration. I suppose a lot of folks tend to label really fantastical pieces as magical realism these days. Your stories often pit totally realistic emotionally-driven storylines against larger, weirder conceptualized narrative arcs. A Husband Should Be Eaten Not Heard is one of my favorite examples of this. You have Aileen so incredibly dissatisfied in love that she turns to luxurious delicacies for comfort. In the end, I was so entranced and lost in the descriptors that I was questioning if these desserts were even a metaphor at all. The weaving is such a sneaky way of focusing in on objectification versus partnership and individualism. What inspires you to build out a metaphor like that? Is there anything currently that has you obsessed or inspired in terms of drawing emotional links to concrete objects?
MG: I think I’m drawn to fiction, and to writing a mix of metaphor and reality because what I’ve learned from living, from teaching, is that about emotions a lot of people do not like being told what to think. There are some exceptions. But, I like writing for people who like to think sideways, who like to solve puzzles, who take pleasure in thinking and making realizations. I wrote a longer story once that I felt was literally about getting abducted by aliens. It’s about a girl in high school where it makes you socially cool and interesting to have aliens abduct you. A friend of mine taught it in his creative writing class and one student was adamant that it was all a metaphor for losing your virginity in high school. My initial thought was that kid is a sex maniac! But the more I thought about it, the more I considered what it meant for someone to find a completely different avenue into a story and still find something that might have spoken to them. It was moving in its own way to see someone’s point of view was so completely different than my own and they still could get so much out of something I’ve written.
Some of my relationship to objects is because I think there’s so much room to illustrate point of view, tone, and character through the way objects are described. One person’s cool pair of sweatpants is another person’s she’s dressing like she’s on her period vibe. I think descriptions of scenery or items are usually the parts of stories that I often skim because so little emphasis is put on how much they can be used to add not just realism to a story.
KC: I’ve read in past interviews that you threw yourself into flash because someone handed you an Amelia Gray piece. I can hear overlap in your tonalities, the way you’ve mastered this even-keeled yet spiraling, unspooling way of telling your fiction. How did you fine-tune that approach to formatting? Where do you begin sculpting pieces?
MG: Everything I write starts with me asking myself a question. I might hear or read something or consider something, and then I keep thinking about it. And from there, I ask myself well, why are you so curious about this? And the answer doesn’t matter. Usually, the best things I’ve written, I can’t explain why I was so curious until after the story is written. For flash, I edit a lot to take out any over explanations. I want things to be distilled. I don’t want to repeat myself unless it’s 1,000% necessary. I go through and look at the rhythm of lines, I try to find a balance between character and action. I don’t like in my own flash when things stay static. If I wanted to be still and paused, I would write a novel. I think of writing something very short as a kind of trust fall, it’s all lift, momentum, and hopefully, the reader is hovering, anxiously, to catch me.
KC: I’m so excited to see what floats to the top of our submission pile and to read pieces that you were drawn to for the flash fiction contest at Fractured Lit. As a reader, there’s just nothing more exciting than landing on a piece that is a gut-punch, after endlessly culling through submissions. I also find excitement when reading pieces from writers who are just emerging and may not have many credentials to their name. What do you look for when reviewing submissions for contests in terms of writers and content? What are the stories you’re looking for right at this moment from the flash world?
MG: Even before the pandemic, a story that is more of a monologue or a person sitting alone in a room thinking had to be very well-written for me to want to finish it. Now, I feel even more disinterested in stories like that. I would be very interested in a story that in a 1,000 words makes me feel like I’d traveled somewhere. I want to feel seaspray, I want to smell lavender under a warm sun, to be among people and not be like, oh fuck you, don’t you cough near me, you no-mask goon. I know a lot of this interview has been focused on big issues, but a good small story well-told that doesn’t bold or underline its big issues is still deeply valuable to me as a reader.
KC: What would your advice be to flash writers who are just starting out and trying to figure the best outlets to submit to?
MG: I would tell them to check the following books out of the library Know the Mother by Desiree Cooper, Black Jesus and Other Superheroes by Venita Blackburn, Forward: 21st Century Flash Fiction, Gutshot by Amelia Gray, read some of the Wigleaf Top 50 for free online, and mark all the stories they like, and then look up where those stories were published. I think getting a sense that flash fiction isn’t just one or two obvious magazines but is spread out (a lot of magazines that aren’t flash-only venues publish flash, a lot of flash-only venues don’t pay) and there are many things to consider could give someone who is doing this seriously a lot to consider before they start sending out. That’s me taking more of an educator approach. I would also say you could do what I did, a friend told me to read a magazine, I liked it (RIP >kill author), sent them a story, they liked it, and that’s how I got started. I still ended up doing what I described above–any time I read a flash I really liked, I would try to find out where else the author had published and make a list that way.
KC: Any routines you leaned on while creating discipline and structure around your own writing practice?
MG: The most regular routine I have is writing down dreams. I think this is the one that has stuck with me the most because it lets me write strange, nonlinear things without judgment. It’s much easier to get into the regular words or feel less self-conscious if every day you transcribe from a sentence to paragraphs the things rolling around your brain. In the past, I’ve done things where I’ll take three consecutive days (over holidays, time taken off work) and made myself write a first draft of a story each day. I don’t believe that someone has to write every day, but I do think that making regular space in your life for writing and reading will remind yourself that what you’re doing is important to you.
KC: As a queer, I am obligated by law to finish this interview on this specific question. What’s your sign? And do you put stock in it?
MG: I am a Capricorn (sun), Cancer (moon), and Leo (rising). I put more stock into these three elements together because I think they say so much about my professional life, my emotional life, and the way that people respond to me. I didn’t put a lot of stock in astrology when I thought about it as only a Capricorn (the I-love-my-briefcase! of signs), but thinking of it as a layered and fun way to consider myself made me feel much more engaged.
Megan Giddings has degrees from the University of Michigan, Miami University, and Indiana University. She is a fiction editor atThe Offingand afeatures editor atThe Rumpus.In 2018, she was a recipient of a Barbara Deming Memorial fund grant for feminist fiction. Her stories are forthcoming or that have been recently published inBlack Warrior Review, Arts & Letters, Gulf Coast, andThe Iowa Review.Her novel,Lakewood, was published byAmistadin April 2020. She’s represented by Dan Conaway ofWriters House. Megan lives in the Midwest.
You’re always embarrassed in photographs, holding up your hand, saying wait, wait, and it’s your hair or your makeup or there’s something in my eye, and I breathe slowly, fighting the urge to say butyou’re beautiful because you don’t want to know. Later, you swipe at the screen, saying delete, delete, delete.
Exposure
Andrea poses for me naked in hotel bedrooms, all the lights burning and the flash bleaching her to a ghost. Her eyes hollow, and each shot is more abstract than the last. Frame after frame, I sacrifice figure and line to a magnesium absence, finding truth in the emptiness she becomes. I’m in there somewhere, she says, behind all that white.
Composition
You buy yourself a camera, take control. I want to see why you love it so much. You stand me in front of mountains, only ever taking one shot each time. If it works, it works, you say. I try to explain the rule of thirds, the leading line, but you only laugh — you and your expertise — and you always place the subject of the image directly in the centre of the frame. It shouldn’t work, but it does: a man, a mountain, simply shown. At night,as you sleep, I go to the beach and fail to capture the ocean.
Verisimilitude
I phone because I need to see her, but her flatmate says she’s gone. You’re the camera-guy, right?There’s something on its way. Two days later I come home from work to find you on the floor, surrounded. Each print is a whiteness, an indecipherable blank, but on the reverse, my scrawled messages to her, my dirty words. Who is she? you say, holding an image in your hand. I want to say: can’t you see she’s nothing. She doesn’t even exist.
Camera Obscura
All the furniture’s gone, and so are you. Faint images play against these bare walls as I take a pencil, trace the outline: the two of us, as we were. But when the sun goes down these grey scratchings will be all that’s left.
Stories about endings and stories about beginnings cannot be mutually exclusive. Every ending is a new beginning and every beginning is the end of what came before. This means that the pieces below could be placed in the opposing category with nary an argument. But each placement was chosen for a reason, and I’m interested to see if you’ll agree.
Blackburn performs an autopsy on a living, breathing moment and the reader is lucky enough to have front row seats. Small touches of exacting imagery—smoothie and sneaker superiority—nestle among wisdom and perspectives that can only be afforded by the passing of time. Repetition provides the reader a tether within the tale. For without that tether a bounty of quotable morsels and poetic multitudes would surely sweep you away.
In the tradition of “For sale: baby shoes, never worn” brevity is used in this 107-word piece to focus on a pin-prick of time at the start of a father and daughter’s new normal. Descriptions that in other stories are unnecessary or cumbersome, like the colors of a little girl’s hair and dress, bring just enough light to transform a room filled with shadows into a precise and moving portrait.
A tale of childhood adventure in suburbia is an unexpected place for sincere dialogue on the relationship of man and nature. Loeb uses the contrasting imagery of the organized and overgrown to create a space in between. There’s danger but also safety. There are lessons not quite learned. This is an expedition into adolescence devoid of nostalgia. An exquisite reanimation of a singular exploit, never to be lived again.
Pivotal points in life are defined by what came after; in this story Thomas marinates the reader in what came before. All the imagery is used to conjure an afternoon that at once seems inescapable yet completely preventable. Slow, natural dialogue allows a calm submersion. Resisting this moment’s magnetic pull is futile. Let the frivolity of the title mislead you, forget about what comes after, live in the now.
The broken soldier narrative is a house many have built, but when Comstock moves in, it’s rendered unrecognizable. An unusual epistolary interruption allows an exploration of hope held captive, especially as a result of starting over. The experimental format adds an element of interactivity as the reader chooses to swipe, participating in forward momentum. And in the end, hope is replaced with something much more practical—compassion.
To say this piece is ambitious is an understatement. It examines (among other things) existence, innocence, finality, systemic failures, and how one woman at a crossroads fits into a larger world. Williams uses motifs as touchstones in this story which, while short, is deep and vast. Deftly inserted imagery ensures that the reader is following every step of this layered journey. Following all the way to that last powerful line.
Langloss utilizes three parts to slice three deep wounds. But the reader is too immersed in beauty to be mad at her for it. What a joy to experience that pain surrounded by sublime descriptions, the characters and setting so alive, so tangible. As each numbered part travels in the luxury of language, it pulls in the corners of life and shapes it into something simultaneously old and new.
An abundance of short paragraphs leaves no time to get comfortable, there’s no settling in. This structure is aided by the story’s young voice, which leads the reader toward a sensory tapestry that acts as climax. A detailed experience emerges. The particulars of which may not be relatable, but the sensation is familiar and entirely accessible. With feet still planted in childhood, Anthes’ characters stare down the precipice of adulthood.
It’s amazing to realize this is Ryan’s first published story. And within it, the author weaves surprise, humor, amusement, sorrow, and tenderness. These emotions swirl together effortlessly, like they do in real life, seamlessly bumping and deflecting off one another. The voice is human and true. The dialogue is quick and witty. Here a sweet, loving touch is applied to a difficult subject matter, and makes it all alright.
Some titles hint at what’s inside, some create a mood, some seize attention and some do all three—smoothly. In this piece a disorienting epistolary style melts into dark, sometimes comedic composition that forces you to duck as you read (lest it jab you in the jaw). The author forms sentences which subvert expectation and redefine words like “wish” and “someday.” Multiple readings are encouraged to fully appreciate Matsumoto’s artistry.
Around the dining room, the guests make small talk. The talk of some is so small, it is quark-sized. Some talk easily. Two or three flirt. A few examine gesture’s blueprint in the kitchen. Snippets mimic augmented fourths. Pitch echoes reinforcement, denial, and abatement. There are declamations in bedrooms, consults on the back patio. A handful venture into dark spaces. Many embrace. Talk furrows in breast bones. A tête-à-tête evokes recurring dreams. A latecomer swallows “account” and “split” and “reduce.” Another gets an earful from a stranger’s imaginary friend. The ones listening make escape plans. The rest filch stories with impunity, cheeks hot with fury/lust. All hold signs between parted fingers and lips, hearts and minds aflame. The mischief-makers overstay their welcome, and a game of chicken erupts. Nouns topple, followed by adverbs, adjectives, and –
Verbs, bloodied and gloating, kill as usual, and cartwheel out the door. The baffled revelers pause for their words to come back to them, to tell them what to do.
Fractured Lit believes that Black Lives Matter, that Black Voices Matter, that Black Art Matters. We believe that the power of stories and art serves as a medium to help us empathize and learn from others. This is a worthwhile pursuit as we strive to build an inclusive literary magazine that desires to represent the voices of all people in the form of fresh and exciting flash fiction. We have a unique platform to provide a space for marginalized or underrepresented voices, and we take this responsibility seriously and sincerely. As the Editor-in-Chief Of Fractured Lit. I know how much I still have to learn in order to be a better person, a more supportive person of diversity here at Fractured Lit, and in my involvement with the literary community at large. We’re still learning, still growing, trying to listen more, and listen on a deeper level. To provide an exciting, but safe place for Black writers of any background and experience. The world needs your stories.
In order to support anti-racism and to support Black lives and marginalized voices, we have donated $500 to The NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund and $500 to The Trevor Project. We will continue to work together as an editorial team to develop ways to continue to support Black Lives in the future.
What we love about flash fiction is the form’s ability to create an empathic and emotional connection between the character and the reader. Its ability to question the status quo, to create a defamiliarization of the typical—to create meaning between writer and reader, to show the power that stories have to do some of the work of eliminating hate, racism, bigotry, misogyny, or the condoning or glorifying of violence.
We want to support Black writers, so we’re looking to highlight/promote upcoming flash fiction collections, chapbooks, or adjacent books by Black and underrepresented voices! We have space for essays, interviews, or something creative!
We know that creating safe places for readers and writers goes beyond words in a newsletter, that trust is built through time and actions. We hope that in time you’ll consider using our platform to share your voice, your vision, your love for art and literature. Also, we need your help to showcase the stories that explore the fractures of humanity. Stories that make us feel something, make us want to connect, make us reach for the deeper empathy between people.
Mother is desperate. Baby will not stop crying. Her toothless maw quivers, her eyes slit, her cheeks squinch red.
Mother is desperate. She tries everything Doctor recommends—bicycling Baby’s plump legs, massaging her rotund tummy. She pushes Baby in the stroller. Drives her round and round the block. Parks Baby on top of the dryer so the humming will soothe her.
Baby still shrieks.
Mother is desperate. She orders a set of butt whistles touted as single use, safe, and sanitary (although multiple consumers have posted on-line questions: is this product ok to reuse? can I put it in the dishwasher?).
I’m so sorry, Mother tells Baby, as she inserts the whistle up Baby’s colicky rear end. Air rushes out. Baby sighs. The silence that follows is so profound that Mother brings her hands to her ears to make sure she hasn’t gone deaf.
Mother no longer is desperate—until she realizes she probably will remember this moment many times in the years to come, when she no longer will have the magic to salve her daughter’s tears.
Mouth
At home her father’s word was law. At school the boys spoke over the girls. At work men interrupted her in meetings. The Wife grew so angry she feared she would commit a heinous crime that would land her in solitary confinement.
She once had laryngitis so badly she couldn’t even eke out a whisper. She considered joining a religious order and taking a vow of silence. She wrote poetry so she could cross things out. She shuddered—and remembered her angry mother sticking green soap between her tiny screaming teeth—as she stuck a pacifier in her own daughter’s wailing mouth.
The Wife was born chatty as a parrot, raucous as a seagull. Now she has turned into an old woman who presses her wrinkled lips together, silent as an owl huddled in a tree, waiting to soar one last time into the night.
He hands me a place card, high rag-content, from our glittering table with someone else’s name in calligraphy so elegant I can’t read it without my glasses, and he says, “Pretend this is a hotel room-key for two nights.” He curls my hand around it. We are in a too-red, too-green banquet room for the club’s annual Christmas party, surrounded by too many blistering poinsettias, which I recall are poisonous for cats. A string quartet, thoughtfully in black, is sweltering near a fake open fire, playing soporifically muted Christmas chestnuts. He is a neighbor from two streets over, our children have known each other since their same mean, pre-kindergarten play group, and his law firm is my husband’s fierce competitor. I am wearing my too-red dress with the low-cut back. He is wearing Drakkar Noir—everywhere. I step in very close to him to whisper, “Well, I would have to know time and place, place being a suite in a four-star hotel, time being when we are both going to the same conference, or board meeting, and who brings the wine, or should it be champagne, and thankfully condoms and pills are no longer a question, but does he mind that I always travel with a reading light, and I do wear teeth guards, and does he snore, because I do, I do snore, and…” He unfurls my hand from around the place card. He takes it back.
Top 5 Stories that Will Break You & Top 5 Stories that Will Repair You
The magic of flash can be summed up in one word—feeling. Good flash will inevitably and unequivocally make you feel. Whether the emotion generated is despair or delight is not the point; it’s the resonance achieved in such a small space that is true enchantment. The lists below are not exhaustive or objective (or in any particular order) though I do hope they spur discussion and addition.
Lee carefully illustrates how distance can be measured not only in miles and years but also in sips of soup. Though the story only encompasses a few hours (at most), we are rewarded with the fine points of not one life, but two. Lee immerses the reader in significant details which forge a scene so vivid, so charged with subtext, that even morsels of dialogue feel like a feast.
It’s rare to see scarcity translated into a lush tone. Park spends no time in the past, giving the reader no footholds for what came before this sliver. Yet, the narrator’s feelings are not obscured. They are highlighted against a backdrop of decaying nature. The singular imagery thread pulls sentences and paragraphs together—focused and tight. This creates a narrow labyrinth that leads the reader toward an inescapable end.
Choosing to hang a story’s conceit on a cultural reference is a risky endeavor. And one that pays off in this literary equivalent of a Seinfeld episode—about nothing. Tanaka weaves Murakami themes throughout to underline Susan’s loss. How does one mourn the life they thought they’d have? How do they mourn it in someone else’s home? The answers’ banality is what gives this piece its tragic, relatable core.
This piece mines the mundane moments for heartbreak. This isn’t the big fight where someone asks for a divorce. This is stretched unraveling, illustrated in anaphora, which raises tension and keeps an energetic pace. Momentum is achieved by placing the bulk of the narrative in a single paragraph. With each sentence, the reader discovers a new transgression and additional action-centered characterization. We know these people. We are these people.
A single-sentence stream unites scattered instructions into a powerful narrative. Forsaking the period in favor of semi-colons and question marks is symbolic of a relentless, unpredictable existence. The voice shifts between cold to berating and back again, with a dissonant repeating phrase. Kincaid communicates a passage of time in the changes that phrase undergoes. Two interjections (in italics) reveal a complete character that the reader can’t help but love.
It’s a treat to get lost in poetic language and gossamer imagery. It’s a magnificent treat when those two elements carry the reader—buoyant and excited—through an actual plot. Kohl molds her words with beauty, but not merely for beauty’s sake. She designs a fantastical world where the flora is more akin to fauna, and a gruesome end doesn’t feel like violence. It feels like justice. Poetic justice.
Though ‘LOL’ is as ubiquitous in typed conversation as ‘like’ is in verbal communication, how often does a story sincerely make you laugh out loud? An honest voice and informal language aid the humor of this piece. As the narrator’s thoughts spiral, so does the sense of urgency. It’s clear that each word is chosen deliberately to achieve that goal. There’s an indulgence here, a life within hyperbole.
It’s an incredible feat of storytelling to create a stunning ending, especially when the entire plot is laid out in the first sentence. Three-dimensional characters are realized here through the skillful placement of hints instead of backstory. Fuentes employs the sharp and alluring edges of nature to frame a simple narrative. She elevates a straightforward conversation, as well as the resulting action, to a monument of epic exploration.
Dotted with detail, this piece examines love with a gentle, comforting touch. The repetition of “If I were…” gives the reader an easy way out, maybe none of it is real, maybe it’s all hypothetical. The tension and conflict are generated through expectation instead of drama. And rather than moving forward in the plot, Ulrich creates a sense that we’re sinking into it, ensconced in smiling.
Valentine spotlights a tender mother-daughter interaction. The two women come alive through specific and sensory prose. In a stream of consciousness paragraph, the reader is granted access to an intimate, bordering on religious moment. The communion is so intense you almost feel as if you shouldn’t be allowed to experience these thoughts; they’re too personal, too real. But of course, that’s exactly what makes them captivating and sublime.
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