Today's short story comes from a writer's group out of Red Deer, Alberta who, exactly four years ago, got together to socialize and spend ten minutes on writing a flash fiction story with the opening prompt, "The noise from above was quite irritating" and the closing line, "I should've known."
I'm quite impressed that they were able to bang these out so quickly. Just because it's flash fiction, doesn't mean the writing doesn't have to take a long time. I'm deciding to share James Folk's untitled piece, as it's one of the few that used Christmas as a theme and was a story I could definitely related to. However, the others are all available at the link.
In this story, the narrator reluctantly finds himself in the middle of a Christmas mass. He's tried to convince himself that no matter how bad it gets, it's just one night. Feeling trapped, complete with bad music, the time seems to tick by at a snail's pace. Man, do I know how this guy feels. I usually find church services so painful that I actually feel less religious afterward than I had going in!
Still, it's less sacrilegious than it could have been. Perhaps it was owing to the rapid pace at which it was written or the decreased word count requirement of the flash challenge, but Folk didn't get into a laundry list of church gripes (as I would have been in danger of writing). Instead, it's more lighthearted and amusing look at a man who would simply rather be somewhere, anywhere else.
1 comment:
A little flash fiction is exactly what is needed during this season of bloat. I shall be reading. Quickly.
Post a Comment