Writing : Flash Me! NOVEMBER - WAR QUOTES

Hey, which Pokémon is dat?^

Nah, found it a couple months ago on http://fuckyeahmetalcats.tumblr.com/

Congratulations Renfield. Excellent story.

Population explosion

It was the year 2814. The world's population had risen to 894 billion. People stood shoulder to shoulder unable to move. The entire planet looked like a subway platform at rush hour. Every available inch of Earth's crust had someone standing on it.

People still fucked, men and women, men and men, women and women, grinding against one another in the streets. Every twenty feet or so a baby was held aloft screaming at a pitiless sun or the mangled corpse of some poor unfortunate was passed shoulder high before being dumped in a huge chute. Urine, faeces, and hair flowed in a continual river at their feet.

The rich lived at the top of mountains and everyday, twice a day, aeroplanes would take off from secret locations and fly low over the masses, showering them with liquefied food and water. The squashed inhabitants of Planet Earth opened their mouths to swallow.

At the top of a mountain, the rich were having a conference. Something had to be done. President Wilmer rose to his feet. He scanned the various dignitaries present.

“Gentlemen, ladies,” he said. “We're running out of food.”

“What are we feeding them with currently?” asked a young senator.

The president moved to the window and with his hands clasped behind his back looked down onto the heaving crowd below. A corpse was being passed overhead. She looked young – maybe twenty – with flaxen hair hanging limply over her eyes. Her body came to a  chute which was fixed at the end of the street. The corpse disappeared. From there it ended up in a huge meat grinder. Then it was made into soup, drugs were added to pacify the crowds, and the mix crop-sprayed over the crushed masses.

The president lit a cigarette and shook the match from side to side.

“We feed them soup,” he said. “But we're running out. We need people to start dying at a faster rate.”

The president filled the plane with poisonous gas. He flew over the entire population of his home city and exterminated them. The bodies were so tightly packed that they had nowhere to fall. He flew over the mountain and killed the rich. He refilled and went to the next city. And from there to the next. Soon the whole country was cleared. He moved north to Canada, and south to Latin America. Once this was done he moved to Europe, Asia, Africa, Australia and everywhere else until the overcrowding problem was solved once and for all. After doing a celebratory figure-eight he crashed his plane into the mountain.
 

edit: removed

Roadside Graves

We’ve all seen them, floral mile markers along interstates or curvy back roads celebrating life. Often, a couple of two by fours are slapped together in haste as a crude cross and erected along a tragic route, decorated with pink roses...her favorite, a picture, her name and brief bio. You never see anyone setting these up, they appear magically, as quick as the life that is extinguished, a blink of the eye.  The flowers always fresh, alive.

Party party! I love how many completely different things people come up with in so few words, great idea.

Whoa. That was an ending I did not see coming. Personally I like the last couple lines, they give it closure but don't sound forced.

Oooh I think I like that better, just a touch more twisted ;)

Got to love flash.  It's like mixing poetry with literature.  Let me explain:

1 - literature:  The object of writing is to convey meaning with maximum clarity and precision

2 - poetry:  Clarity and Presion take a back seat to Brevity: ordinary declaritive syntax takes up too much space, so a poem compacts meaning with allusion, symbolism, metaphor, etc...

Flash is an attempt to marry the two, and in so doing, create something awesome.

Just thinking out loud.

@ Chester. No worries mate. I'm doing it for fun so just roll it over.

Hound

My dad reached out with his left hand, the one missing the last finger, and pushed open my bedroom window.  There was no screen in the window so he didn’t have to remove it.  We looked out onto the grass of the back yard and the shed at the back of it.  Beyond the shed was a mile of cotton fields.

We lay on our bellies on the top bunk of my bunk beds, the rifle between us.  Dad told me that this was how people hunted for thousands of years.

“On a bed?” I said.

He chuckled.  “No.  Waiting.  Sitting and waiting.”

"Is this what Vietnam was like?"

“Nope.  Vietnam was a lot more humid.  Now you have to be quiet or it won’t be like the real thing.”

We lay there and waited.  I think I dozed off.  I know I was a little bleary-eyed when Dad nudged me with his elbow.  He didn’t need to, though.  I could hear the dog baying and it pulled me awake.

Dad brought the rifle from between us, came up on his elbows with the butt against his shoulder and the muzzle pointed out the window.  My little sister’s dog came around the corner of the house into the back yard.

I don’t remember the dog’s name.  Well, it wasn’t a dog, it was a bitch, in every sense of the word.  Half red-bone hound, half blue-tick hound, with the red-bone showing more in the copper coat.  Her brother had been my dog, but he caught a mange we were too poor to get rid of, so we put him down in the field behind the house.

The bitch was an escape artist.  She spent nights tied up and in a chain-link pen, but when she decided it was time to leave, she left.  Often as not in the morning we would find her chain draped over the fence, collar empty.  Normally on those days the neighbors across the road would call my mom to tell her the bitch had crawled underneath their trailer at two o’clock that morning and begun to bay.

This was one of those mornings.

The bitch slowed to a trot in the back yard.  She was a sleek, muscular creature.  She stopped and stood a moment, head up.  Dad exhaled, half a breath, and squeezed the trigger.  The bitch leapt into the air as a gout of blood plumed from her throat.  She went straight up  and it seemed impossible she could jump so high dead.  She twisted in the air and landed on her back.  She didn’t make a sound, of course, with no throat.  All the baying was done.  She kicked a couple times, and then she stopped and all she did for a few moments was make a wide, red pool in the grass.

471 words

Well, she is dead already anyway. Not much left to fuck, but maybe you're into that sort of thing.

She won't say no.

Funeral crashers. 

Watching the colour seep from the bag and turn the water into a boiled black mess, I think about the days when I didn't need a pill to wake up. A pill to sleep. A pill to remember, or to forget. My hand shakes as I lift the cup to my lips, spilling hot tea down the front of my shirt. I let the pill for the shaking dissolve under my tongue, drop my shirt in the bathtub to deal with later, and wish I could remember where I kept the burn cream.

Pyro

Every time I sleep, I dream of fire.

I can't help it. There is just something about the way the flame moves that is simultaneously erotic and dangerous. I used to burn myself on the arms with a cigarette lighter until my mother threw me out of the house, now that I live alone, I can play with fire all I want. Sometimes I will dig a hole in the backyard and sit there for hours watching things burn. Bits of wood, papers, stuffed animals, plastic, books, kitchen utensils, garbage, a dead squirrel once, everything burns in a different way. It has a unique smell and the flame licks it in a different way.  Then there are the colors, the strange burns, the chemical components that make the flames turn blue and red and green. Inside those flames, you can see people if you look hard enough. Bits and pieces of tiny little people from other dimensions or who existed before. Maybe even visions of a past life.

I once dated this girl who had half of her body burned including her face. She wore a veil and walked around in shame, afraid to look anyone in the eye.  On our first date, I made her take off the veil and look me right in the eyes and I told her how beautiful she was. She couldn't see the artistic patterns in which the flames had licked her face. She didn't realize how she was a walking canvas now, an ode to the power of the elements. Her father had lit her on fire when she was seven, he was a raging alcoholic and didn't want to be a father anymore.  He had just shot her mother in the head and he lit his kids on fire. Her brother was engulfed in flames but she escaped with half her body covered in third degree burns. I listened to her tell me how she spent months in the hospital, going through the unbearable pain, the endless skin grafts. The way the doctors tried to cover up the art of the flame. I often had an erection when she spoke of these things.

I liked to touch her burn marks when we made love. It got me off more than anything. I could memorize each scar, every indent of skin and the way it deformed and grew back. Then I made a mistake, I told her how much I loved fire. My one true love. I told her about my past, burning the shack when I was a kid, torching the house of my foster parents when I was twelve and the animals that I burned while they were still alive. I told her about the cavemen and ancient societys and how the fire was the only thing that connected us to the past, the present and the future. It was the eternal driving force and the strongest of the elements. She said that I was using her as a fetish, some kind of cheap thrill. I tried to explain to her that she was only an embodiment of the flame's grace. She left me, calling me a sick freak and I never saw her again.

Several years have passed and I am still alone. Working at the junkyard but it gives me time alone with my one true love as I shovel garbage into the large ovens that burn waste. It is the perfect job for a firebug like me but lately it's not enough. That familiar urge is calling to me. It's all I can think about, I can feel it pounding in my blood.

Yesterday, I lit my neighbor's house on fire.  You should have heard the screams, they were beautiful. Today I burned my arm and watched the scabs form but I keep peeling them off so I can admire the burns then put antiseptic cream on them to protect them. I keep thinking about the smell when I burned the neighbor's house down. The way human flesh smells like pig fat on a griddle. There is a hunger growing in me. New neighbors have moved in across the street, they have such a beautiful little daughter.  I wonder how she would smell on fire.

It's my first day on litreactor...I might as well jump in with both feet.

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“Today is the first day of the best of your life.”

Sandra would repeat this new mantra out loud every time she met her own eyes in one of the many mirrors in her thimble-sized apartment. These were the eyes of a risk-taker, the eyes of a free spirit. These were the eyes of the woman Sandra truly wanted to be. Today, she would quit her sorry excuse for a job and all the phony security she felt it brought. She would fall in love on the way home, move to Northern France next week and live the rest of her life as high as a kite, eating fiddlehead ferns and caviar and all that. At least this is how she pictured it. 36 years old and she would find a silver lining.

After packing up her paisley pull-out couch, which served as her bed, her kitchen table, and her office, she began crafting the “New Sandra” breakfast special. Egg whites that weren’t from a carton and toast slathered with butter, real, rich, salty butter. As she was enjoying her breakfast, she gazed into the eyes reflected in her chrome yard-sale toaster and repeated her new mantra again: “Today is the first day of the best of your life.”

The sequence of events that led her to this epiphany of sorts is neither sad, nor alarming. It was merely a shipping error made by some large online bookseller. Sandra came home one day and saw that a package was left in what would normally be a hollow mailbox. It wasn’t her name on the mailing label, but it was her address and so she decided to open it. The book was called Today is the First Day of the Best of Your Life. While the author looked like a homely nun, with pasty white skin suffering from an excess of psoriasis that even airbrushing couldn’t mask, there was a giant sticker with an endorsement from one of those talking personalities on TV. Sandra didn’t follow this particular sloped-foreheaded icon with enough pins in her hairdo to survive a typhoon, but she seemed happy. As happy as Sandra hoped to be. She read the book in one sitting.

After her first real breakfast feast, Sandra threw on her coat and with resignation letter in hand, forged out into the world. Not a block from her apartment she spied a beige butterfly. She was so entranced by the unpredictable movements and the freedom this creature had, rising and spiraling through the air. She paused and for a moment, she let out her first very real tear of joy.

It’s not so much a shame that this new symbol of hope and promise was nothing but a common hawk moth, it’s that Sandra didn’t even hear the siren of the speeding fire truck when she took that next big smiling skip off the curb.

Okay, this is totally over the word limit but I had to share. I have wanted to write a story about pica for so long.

Pica
Whenever I am nervous, I swallow things, it has always been a habit of mine.
Ever since I was a little girl when my parents fought, I would get anxious and feel the urge to stick something down my throat and I would just grab whatever was in plain sight. If it was a stray cheerio on the floor, a screw, a thumbtack, a dead bug, anything. Down the gullet it would go. I thought this was normal until I turned thirteen and I was at my first slumber party and I saw a piece of old food under the couch. It could have been a chunk of cake or a cookie or hell, even an old piece of meatloaf for all I knew. I just popped it into my mouth. The other girls squealed and stared at me. The girl who was hosting the party called my mother and I was taken home in a hurry. No one wanted to be around the weird girl who eats things off the floor.
At school they called me “Garbage Girl” because they said I was a human garbage disposal that would eat anything and they were right. The meaner they were to me, the more I ate random things. In class, I ate pieces of eraser. I started carrying pieces of chalk in my pocket and nibbling on them between classes. In the corner of my bedroom, a piece of the wall was falling out and I stored the drywall in a sandwich baggie and carried it around with me like a secret snack. I love the sound the crunch makes on my teeth when I chew it. I also love the smell of gasoline, I could sniff it for hours. Glue, white out or permanent markers of any kind, the whip cream cans or the bottled air you spray your computer with to get rid of the dust. But mostly I just liked to eat things that weren’t meant to be eaten.
When I was sixteen and my parents announced their divorce, I ate a piece of plywood. The first time I lost my virginity and then the guy broke up with me the next day, I broke a bottle and ate pieces of glass. That was the first time I actually had to get surgery for my habit. It came out into the open then and they sent me to therapy.
“You have a condition,” the doctor said, “It’s called pica. It’s when people eat things that aren’t meant to be edible. Usually it’s for an underlining psychological reason. Natalie, what feelings are you holding back?  How do you feel?”
I smiled and told him I was fine. I told him I just liked the way things felt on my tongue and under my teeth as I crunched them. I had no idea it was that bad. He said that I could cut up my intestines or cause a blockage where I wouldn’t be able to go to the bathroom, I would have an impacted bowel and could die.
I nodded and said I understood.
They put me on medication and years passed without incident.
I went to college, met a guy, got pregnant and became a stay at home Mom. When I was six months pregnant, I felt fat and gross. I overate compulsively but I didn’t eat anything that was non-edible.
By the time my daughter arrived I had gained an excess sixty pounds and my husband could barely look at me naked. He would turn away whenever I undressed in front of him. He liked my bigger breasts but when he looked down at my belly and thighs, he would make a disgusted face. Often I would cry myself to sleep and go into the garage where I noticed a piece of plaster falling out of the wall. Pieces of white powder crumbled and fire ants crawled around them. I started stuffing the pieces of white plaster into my mouth, even the pieces covered with ants. Before I knew it, I was back to eating chalk again, then bits of eraser, plastic zip-ties and matches. I had a box of toothpicks in the car which I chewed like bubblegum. I could go through a box a day. It was right around this time I suspected that my husband was cheating on me. I started eating soap, toilet paper, those bath beads with the Epsom salts inside. The bitterness floods my taste buds. It would change almost every week.
When I found the hotel receipts of their encounters, I ate a whole box of dryer sheets and then bandages.
My bowel movements became erratic and I was constantly constipated. I had laxatives always on hand.
Finally one day I confronted my husband and told him I knew about the cheating.
“Yeah, and?” he said, staring at me as if I was the stupidest bitch in the world.
“I said I know,” I repeated, expecting guilt.
Instead I got a smug smile in return, “Babe, I told you when I met you, I don’t like fat chicks. You gained a lot of weight and unless you do something about it, I’m not going to touch you. I don’t want to have to lift up your belly to fuck you. If you make the effort I will end the relationship, until then…”
He trailed off.
I stared at him, tears welling up in my eyes.
He laughed at me and went out to meet his mystery woman at the motel.
Suddenly I went to the bathroom and began to vomit, it was as if everything I had eaten for weeks came up, pieces of dryer sheet, toothpicks, the toilet paper bundles like hairballs, wet chalk bile, eraser bits half digested in stomach acids and even a rubberband.
I sobbed and vomited and then sobbed again.
Once I regained my composure, a strange sort of calm fell over me.
I went to the kitchen and smashed a bottle on the countertop. I gathered the glass in a small sandwich baggie and then smashed the pieces even smaller into tiny little shards that could be easily swallowed. Then I went into the nursery and checked on the baby, she was still sleeping. Ted loved that little girl. I stood over the crib staring at her for at least a full half hour before I woke her.  I lifted her up in my arms and asked her if she was hungry, then I opened up the sandwich baggie.

Here's my shot at a bit of flash. First draft was ~850 words, had to battle to cut it down to right on 500, and I am still revising. Plus it features a grandmother, so it should nestle in nicely under Sarah's story.

Overheard

Grandpa's funeral was black and smelled like perfume and dirt. Mum's wedding ring dug into my fingers whenever she squeezed my hand.

"Grandma is all alone now, John", she whispered.

Perhaps she thought I was too young to understand, that I didn't look suitably upset. Grandma wasn't crying, even when they lowered the coffin down, so I didn't see why I should.

I overhear a lot of things, like how Grandpa died. Attacked by teenagers with a knife while pruning his rosebushes in the front garden. Bled to death in Grandma's arms. Earlier in the car, Mum and Aunty Susan had been talking about Grandma, how she'd been a wild child before meeting Grandpa. A smoker and a feminist, but he'd been her rock and had settled her down. They whispered about some ladies Grandma must have known, Mary Juana and Miss De Mina, and I was looking at a faded old photo of Grandma and Grandpa from when they first met - his army greens and her yellow dress and flowers in her brown hair. Her eyes were so blue then, the colour of a summer sky.

I threw one of Grandpa's roses into the grave and gave Grandma a hug. White and grey hair, black dress, her eyes misty and pale. Nothing like the photo. She smelled like cigarettes.

Everyone was squeezed in at Grandma's little house for the wake, hands cupped under scones. I overheard people say how 'drained' and 'frail' she looked. Grandma just sipped tea at the table and only spoke to accept their condolences, and once to tell Aunty Susan to clear away the old photos and 'all that wedding clutter' which had been set out. I asked Grandma if she had a photo of Miss De Mina, but Mum growled at me. Grandma didn't seem to hear.

When they'd all left it was just me and my baby sister Lisa and Grandma in the sitting room with the ticking clock. Mum had ducked into the kitchen for some afternoon tea. Grandma was holding Lisa on her lap, smiling and talking freely for the first time all day, which Mum liked.

"Don't you worry darling," Grandma whispered. They were nuzzling noses and Grandma was saying something in such a quiet voice that I barely caught it, but my face started tingling. I realised what she'd said was, "I don't need to stab any more men."

I felt hot and cold at the same time and I realised my mouth was open, but I couldn't do anything about it except blink a few times. I counted two ticks of the clock. I am not sure if she even realised I was there. Mum returned with a cutting board and some cake, and Grandma glanced over for a second.

"Not that knife dear. Get my sharp knife from the top drawer." Mum nodded and hurried back out of the room.

"Much easier with a sharp knife," she said, smiling.

She was looking right at me when she said it. Her eyes were the colour of a summer sky.

Babe, There's Arsenic In My Coffee      (497 Words)

Today is our second anniversary. We've gone through our rough patches, but through determination and communication we have overcome.
  I watch her changing clothes, she looks stunning.

Downstairs Jenny brews coffee, while I make crepes. We sit at the breakfast nook and she hands me a mug. She smiles and tells me to hurry and drink. Before I drink I notice a floating pellet. Had I not looked closely I would have drank it. I say:

“Babe, I think one of the rat pills got in my coffee. It's a good thing I spotted it.”

I reach into the mug and flick it near. She drops her own mug and shrieks. The mug falls and shatters.

“I didn't mean to scare you. Here let me-” I say.
“No! I'll do it!” She says.
“Darling, don't be like that.”
“I didn't expect it to work anyway.”
“For what to work?”
“Nothing, I didn't mean anything. I'm just nervous.”
“Oh, don't be! We'll have a great day.”

I hear her cell phone go off. She picks it up.

“Yes, this is she. He's wearing a white shirt with blue stripes on it. “

She hangs up.

“Who was that?” I say.
“Barbara asking what we're doing.”
“That's nice.”

I kiss her good-bye. She tells me where we're supposed to meet. I tell her I love her and head out  As I walk I start thinking of all the classes she's been taking. She's taken a knife throwing class, a chemistry class, and then an engineering class.

Yesterday she accidentally dropped our radio in the tub. Luckily I had exited right before she dropped it in.
On my way I noticed that I didn't like what I was wearing. Further up is a small suit outlet. While inside trying on clothes I hear something going on.

“Have you seen a guy wearing a white shirt with blue stripes!”
“No, I'm sorry sir I haven't.” says an employee.”
“Don't lie!”
“Sir, if you don't leave I''ll call security.”

After I'm done I go up to the cashier. The employee says:

“You should choose your friends wisely.”

Not knowing what he meant I smile. He frowns and rings me up.
As I draw near the address of the building I find the opening. The walk upstairs is tiring. Outside I hear some commotion. A huge explosion erupts. The shock forces me to fall. I orient myself  and run downstairs.

On the street I spot Jenny in a crowd of people.  I go up from behind her and hear her say:

“Oh, Zach, how long I've tried!”

I place my hand on her.

“What have you tried?”

Her skin becomes prickly. She falls to the floor crying. Her shrieks catch the attention of the people and I say:

“She's just happy I went to the wrong address.”