A collection of 34 flash fictions -- stories, vignettes, and apocryphal tales. Each was first published in an online market, and the appropriate attribution appears at the end of the each story.
Flash! Fiction 2
Flash! Fiction 3
Flash! Fiction 4
From the book:
The Bookshelf
Cathedral bell door chimes send my heart into a sympathetic panic. My wife and I have been invited for dinner at her partner’s mansion. I’ve never met him or his wife before and don’t usually care for nouveau-riche business-types, so I don’t expect much. Not much, that is, except for validation. And that just met me at the door.
Our hosts greet us at the door, invite us in, and then escort us through the great hall to the study where we have drinks and the customary ‘get-to-know-you’ small talk for the benefit of the strangers—the hostess and me.
After 15 or 20 minutes of this, I sense restlessness, and I assure everyone that I’ll be fine—that I’ll just have a look around the library.
The partners move towards the terrace with their drinks to go over their pitch for their presentation in Vancouver on Monday. The hostess excuses herself to the kitchen to finish preparing the meal.
The library had caught my eye as we were led through the hall. Two arched, stained-glass doors open to the right off the foyer, and since one was ajar, I glimpsed an intriguing floor-to-ceiling bookshelf. Now I could lose myself among books, lose track of time, until dinner and then time to go home. Perfect.
What's on the bookshelf? Are they bestsellers, mysteries, history, religious, scholarly, cloth-bound, paperback, or just decorative spines? Is the bookshelf used often, or have layers of dust collected on the books and underneath the books? Are there secret hiding places in the bookshelf for money, jewellery, love letters, wills, a handgun?
Maybe there are patterns to be discovered, which will tell me something about our hosts. I wonder whether he reads literature, and whether it’s ancient or modern, poetry or prose, European or American. Perhaps she reads English history or East German literature or parapsychology.
Maybe hidden in the books is a history of their travels. Books stamped with book dealers’ addresses in Buenos Ares, Hong Kong, London, Sydney, New York, and New Delhi.
Maybe the bookshelf wraps around the room. I’ve never seen one of those in person. How many volumes would it hold? Maybe there’s a second floor or even a third floor, with sliding ladders on each floor and a spiral staircase connecting all of the levels, each with a hidden door for secret entry and exit.
I had no idea they were so interested in books. Maybe I misjudged them. Maybe we should get to know them better. Maybe we could have them over for dinner sometime, invite them to the cottage, to the theatre, or even sailing.
Suddenly, my thoughts are interrupted by my wife who is standing over me in the study, two steps from where I started on my journey to the library.
“Honey! Honey, what’s wrong? How long have you been lying there? You forgot your medicine again, didn’t you? We’ll have to cancel dinner and get you to the hospital right away.”
First published in Daily Flash 2011: 365 Days of Flash Fiction.
The Garbage Audit
Standing in the middle of a pile of garbage, he lays the clipboard on the floor and begins sorting.
Metal filings mixed with dirt and dust, twisted duct tape, rolled up sections of yesterday’s paper, shims broken and splintered, disposable blue latex gloves, oily red rags, safety glasses with a lens missing, candy wrappers and empty chip bags, some rusted-out metal screws, an incisor chipped on the corner, dozens of yellow earplugs on blue strings—
At the temp agency, they said he’d be sorting recyclable material in a plant and to show up at 8:00 the next morning. “Just ask someone if you don’t know. And don’t forget to get your timesheet in if you want your cheque next week.”
—a tangle of black electrical tape, a shrivelled blackened banana peel, a blood-stained tube sock, water bottles, clumps of reddish hair, dust masks torn and smudged, a couple of Coke cans, a foot from an aluminum ladder, a melon-sized mass of mucous-clotted tissue, some apple cores—
The blue shirts had ribbed him in the lunchroom just before the shift started, teasing him with names like garbage collector, litterbug, CSI wannabe, and maggot mate.
—a few soiled Band-Aids, coffee cups with the rims rolled up, some orange rinds, a used condom, a work boot with a nail clean through the heel, and a half-used roll of safety tape.
One of the old guys—wrinkled and leathery-faced but queerly futuristic with his safety yellow ear protectors pushed up and looking like they might be permanent—had come over to join him.
“Don’t mind them,” he said nodding in their direction. “They’re just blowing off steam what with shutdown coming next week. Every year around this time—at least for the last five anyway—the company does what they call an eco-assessment. It's a one-day garbage audit—what you’ll be doing. Ain’t nothing to do with the environment. Pure PR. See those plaques over there next to the Coke machine. That’s one of the stops they make when a tour—“
A loud buzzer interrupted everything and everyone on cue, and a swarm of blue funnelled through the double doors. The supervisor came up to him as the buzzer was silenced and walked him into the plant and over to a large roll-up door in receiving.
“It’s pretty straightforward,” said the supervisor, looking past him. “All you have to do is sort through and count up the paper, the plastics, the glass, and any non-recyclable materials. All yesterday’s garbage, including night shift’s—what you’re standing in right now—has been numbered and put on plastic sheeting here. But don’t worry. There won’t be any trucks today.”
“Oh,” said the supervisor who was turning to walk away, “you get two breaks and a half-an-hour lunch. Just follow the guys. Any questions, make sure you ask, OK?”
He watched the supervisor walk away, and then turned back to the garbage pile. With his boot he moves the clipboard a few feet further away. Sifting through the waste, creating smaller piles, he pokes at a rolled up piece of clothing at the bottom of the pile and lifts it with his garbage wand. Holding up a blood-soaked white t-shirt, he looks around to see if anyone else saw the ring drop onto the plastic.
First published in The Fringe Magazine, August 2011.