Posted by EPL Flash Fiction Contestants
This is a super-long post, but we wanted to get everyone in. Following are all of the entries for our First Annual Flash Fiction Contest. One of the prizes is a patron pick, so read through the entries, and select your favorite. Email your vote to edereference@edwardsvillelibrary.org, hop over to our Facebook page and post a comment there, give a call to the front desk (692-9556), or stop by the library and fill out a ballot. The deadline for votes is midnight Nov 30th (Friday). All winners will be announced on Saturday Dec 1. Thanks (and applause) to all participants.
PROMPT #1 - Express
checkout at the grocery store, 6th grade homework & Stephen King
Entry #5: Stephen King and a Gallon of Milk
My mother was loading the conveyor
belt with our monthly groceries while I stood by the shopping cart memorizing a
Longfellow poem for English class. I hated poetry. I hated acting like I
enjoyed reciting nineteenth-century literature in my downtime.
While standing there, I spotted a
man ahead of us in the other express checkout, his conveyor belt holding pencil
packets and a gallon of milk. He was running his items over the scanner when I
recognized who he was: Stephen King. My mother wasn’t paying me any attention,
so I crept behind her to get to him.
“I’m a huge fan of yours,” I said
loudly, and he jumped little at my unexpected presence. He must have been
surprised to see an eleven-year-old girl in braces standing there. I didn’t
know what to say, so I said, “You like milk, huh?”
“Yes, I like milk.”
Entry #10: Checking Out Hottie
“Holy
hunk of man, he’s back! Mary thought, bagging the generic cheerios and unwieldy
bottle of prune juice. Handing over the
change and receipt with the grocery bag, Mary mooned at the delicious man next
in line.
He
was the reason she worked the express checkout at the grocery store on
Tuesdays. Lately Mary had noticed that
Mr. Hottie invariably arrived on that day purchasing the same items: two dozen
mixed donuts and coffee.
She
manually entered the price of the donuts and scanned the hazelnut coffee
package. “No French Vanilla this week?”
“No. This week the group is discussing Stephen
King’s latest, and French Vanilla seems too sweet for his work.”
“Still
behind grading that 6th grade homework you assign?” Mary questioned,
grabbing his money.
“Offering
to help?”
Mary’s
heart sputtered at the flash of heat in Hottie’s eyes. Oh boy…
Entry
#14:
The Homework Dash
Racing against the clock, Stephen
King barely made it through the express checkout at the grocery store and to the
school with his son’s forgotten 6th grade homework. Sticking to his parsimonious budget had not
been easy, but he managed to skate through the aisles and glide into the
checkout with fifteen minutes to spare.
Facing the lady trying to make it seem as if she had few enough items to
qualify for the express lane had been no easy feat, yet he triumphed, barely
escaping with time to spare. In a final dash across the parking lot towards the
school, he stumbled. Quick to rebound,
our warrior righted himself and made it to the classroom just as the teacher
was collecting the assignment. This was
no easy task, but Stephen King kept sight of his motto –Fortitudine Vincimus-
(By endurance, we conquer) and stared danger in the face.
PROMPT #2 - Darth Vader, running a
marathon & a lost cell phone
Entry #3: Valentine’s at Gateway Regional
Somewhere between the laughing
gases, the narcoleptic fits, the happy tears, the loud exclamations of my
ex-wife’s beauty, I’m pretty sure my middle-aged nurse had a slightly
less-than-professional crush on me, whispered sweetly in my ear, and definitely
fought to keep wheeling me around. How much of it was a dream? When she made
Darth Vader noises and called me Palpatine? When she lied to the head nurse and
said I’d lost my cell phone? “No worries,” she hollered over her shoulder, as
we made another circuit through the hobbled and the wounded, “We’ll find it!” A
drowsy day coming back in pieces, but the evidence I keep rolling between my
fingers, a protective red bracelet that reads: Soy Milk, with a little black
heart topping the i.
Entry #13: Paternity
Sifting
through the rubbish after the marathon was an annual event, trolling through
the first mile as 10,000 runners shed their top layers.
Scouting
out a sweet looking pullover, I spotted a lonely cell phone – staring up at
me. I waited, anticipating a runner
would grab it with a smarmy “that’s mine.”
That
moment never came.
I
reached down. It rang – the theme to the
Titanic. Really?
I
thought, “this can’t be good.”
Now,
holding the phone, it buzzed.
You
have a new message. Push here to listen.
I
pushed.
In
a sad, cancer choked voice, background singer to the noisy respirator keeping
it alive, were five short words, “No, I am your father.”
Click.
Did
the intended recipient ever get this message?
Not from me. Not from this
phone. Plop. That answer lies at the bottom of the
Mississippi.
PROMPT #3 - A library card, amnesia
& sushi
Entry #6: Keys From My Past
His mind raced in a swirling maze of
memories. The amnesia was beginning to
break, but in jagged pieces, incomplete and leaving more questions than
answers. On more time, he intently looks
at the objects returned to him as he left the hospital. Turning them slowly, he hopes to find any
clues he may have missed or a memory he could hold on to. A well-used, time worn library card, a
receipt from a sushi restaurant in midtown and a set of keys.
The receipt is from two weeks ago,
dinner and Saki for two. Someone in this
city knows who he is. A set of keys,
four of them could be keys to anything; one was a key to a Toyota. The library card had an address and he would
go there later. First, he needed to go
to the restaurant. Something happened
that night, something horrible.
Entry #8: Remembering Me
Unfamiliar voices reach me. The
unfamiliar faces lean in close and smile expectantly. Eyes brim with glittering
tears, threatening to spill over. One person takes my hand; their thumb traces
my knuckles. The look they give begs me to remember them, but I can’t. Amnesia
has eaten away my memories. The one holding my hand asks for a moment alone,
and the others leave reluctantly. Wordlessly, the hand holder retrieves a
wallet from their coat. The style doesn’t seem to match that of the holder.
When it’s offered, I take and open it. In a clear sleeve is an ID of myself.
So, it’s mine. I run my fingers over the pockets, stopping to pull out the only
other card. A plastic library card. Instantaneously, a hint of a memory flashes
through my mind. Books, sushi and a pair of blue eyes much like the ones I look
into now. (150)
PROMPT #4 - Piano lessons, a blind dog
& inner demons
Entry #1: Lullaby
“What was he dreaming?” she
wondered. “Did he see the car coming at him again? Did the last thing he ever
saw haunt him as he rested?” His feet and tail moved rapidly. “Avoiding the
headlights,” she imagined. At least the music seemed to quiet him. Quiet them
both really. As she waited for her piano teacher she played for the little dog.
A gift to say she was sorry.
Entry #4: When Dinosaurs Fall Out of Line
The results of the evaluation chased
loops through my mind, searching for acceptance. The finding made our reality
seem more official, but nothing had really changed.
Olivia practiced dutifully for her
piano lesson while Logan sat naked on the cold linoleum floor. Fingers plugged
each ear. Plastic dinosaurs stood in a straight line as Logan inspected them.
Our blind, geriatric husky hobbled into the toy dinosaurs as she searched among
the clutter for a place to lie down. Tyrannosaurs tumbled over destroying the
perfect dinosaur line. There was a death scream and one loud bang as Logan
slammed his tiny head on the hard floor.
As he began to sob, my solution
presented itself. I would take care of my children, my blind dog, and myself
every day, just as we were. My inner demons, my fear, and the judgment of
others would have to play quietly in the background.
Entry #9:
PRACTICING:PIANO LESSONS, a blind dog, and inner demons
C-C-E-F-G-F-E-D-C
Sigh…..Snuffle…..
D-E-F#-G-A-G-F#-E-D
…..Ooof…..
E-F…E-F#-G
!@#$%^&*!
ARF!!!
ARF!!! ARF!!
___
___
___
___
___
E…F#..G#..ABAG#..F#..E
…Woof
F-G-A-B…
F-G-A-Bb-C-Bb-A-G-F
…..Ooof…..
G-A-B-C-D-C-B-A-G
Sigh…..Snuffle…..
Entry #11: Untitled
Pace. Pace.
Pace. Tick tock, tick tock, tick
tock. Dong. Dong.
Dong. Three o’clock. The dog felt his way along the polished
hardwood floor to the door. He opened
the latch with his teeth. After he heard
the door close and latch lock, he found his sanctuary under the wing back chair. Soon the demons exploded from the piano and
whirled, screeching wailing and moaning, around the book lined room.. The dog wished he was deaf instead of blind. The child and teacher were oblivious to the
turmoil swirling around them, calmly discussing the composer and how to refine
to the musical piece. After a time, the
dreadful sound slowly subsided. The
teacher complimented the student on such a relaxing rendition of Brahms. The dog heard the student rise from the piano
bench. That was his cue to unlatch the
door. Pace. Pace.
Pace. Tick tock, tick tock… until
the next lesson.
Entry #12: The Demon Inside
As
Johnny walked into the house for his piano lesson, he felt a feeling of
foreboding. His teacher, Julia, always
acted a little strange and her blind dog always scared him. Once he was inside, Johnny went to the grand
piano and sat down. It was a little too
quiet. Then a crash reached his
ears. He turned around and thought he
saw Julia turn the corner. He followed
but immediately halted. Julia wasn’t
Julia at all! The new “Julia” was a
monstrous, disgusting, giant dog with glazed over eyes and a slobbering,
foaming mouth with fangs inside. She
loomed over Johnny threateningly, yet Johnny was unusually calm. He walked over to the piano and began to play
one song after another, humming along.
When he was finished, he looked over his shoulder to see Julia petting
her small dog, saying “there are demons inside us all.”
“Special” Cases: The first entry
uses all the prompts, the second uses none of them. These entries were not judged with the others, but have been included for the Patron Pick.
Entry #2: Margaret’s Marathon
Margaret looked forward to running
the Edwardsville marathon. It broke the monotony of working the express
checkout at the grocery store. However, it wasn’t boredom that drove her to
run, but rather the desire to purge her inner demons. Where was her lost cell
phone and library card? What was this strange amnesia? At mile eight, she saw a
man with a beard and glasses who looked remarkably like Stephen King stuffing
himself with sushi in the shadow of Wasabi. At mile seventeen, she began to
feel the fatigue of rising too early to help her son with his 6th
grade homework. There wasn’t anything Margaret wouldn’t do for her son: the
search for the perfect Darth Vader costume, weekly piano lessons, and endless
soccer practices. At mile twenty-one, Margaret hit her stride and was in the
zone until she stumbled over a blind dog and crashed to the pavement.
Entry #7: Reconciliation
The
phone awakened me at 3 a.m. No one calls with good news at 3 a.m. I was sure
that it was my brother, Sam, telling me that my terminally ill sister-in-law
had died. My brother and I would be able to reconcile at long last. We hadn’t
spoken to each other for three years. My brief affair with his wife, really
only a one-night stand, about which so far as I know, he was unaware, (it was
all her fault, she had initiated it and I was too drunk to refuse her) had
driven a wedge between us. At long last we could talk again, now I could face
him. We could rekindle long neglected bonds and take up where we had left off.
It would be such a relief. I picked up the phone. I was
shocked to hear a woman’s voice. “It’s Sam. He had a heart attack. I want you
to make the funeral arrangements.”
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