Flash Fiction

I have some questions for you. No, you, over there, behind the mannequin, holding the big gulp and KY jelly with the huge number 1 foam finger wearing the pith helmet and mork from ork suspenders and mc hammer pants. Yes you.

He was greasy. Even when it wasn’t hot out and he wasn’t changing an oil filter; somehow he always had some sort of sheen about him, like he could have been an 80’s stock broker or an immigrant farmer in the 10am heat. 

She was an artist who specialized in shades. Not shades of color, shades like window shades. She could manipulate them like a good clown could manipulate balloons. She was about to become famous but the shade cuts became too much.

Bigarlammey Hanselwaithe was his maiden name.

They were gathered around a campfire roasting easter peeps when they realized that night was fast approaching. They were all afraid of the dark, deathly afraid. They would be rendered catatonic with fear, sitting ducks for anything, anyone that wanted to maim them, yes maim them. In the time they spent looking at each other waiting for someone to lead, night fell. True to form the only movements from them were the shakes from fear. Life-size peeps garbled and oozed their way out of the cold ground and lumbered silently, because of what they are made of, when they hit the ground it doesn’t make a sound…anyway…toward them from the circle of hell that would surely be their doom. Encircling like silent killers, killers I say, circling closer and closer…within reach of them…silent soft mimes waiting to kill kill kill…they hollered in unison, “Ticonderoga” and flung themselves on the fire creating a gigantic sugar explosion of color and smells they would never see again in their lives. They looked at each other as sugar embers floated down from the night sky as Hugo, the smallest and youngest, cleared his throat nervously and said “Ticonderoga?”

You get lit last night?
You mean on fire?
No, lit light drunk?
No, I smoked last night.
You mean like because you were on fire?

“Some questions will force you to reconcile” he paused “your past with your present.” He was only talking to her though he was at the head of the class. “This reconciliation won’t come without cognitive dissonance. In fact dissonance is the lever of said reconciliation, a necessary, ah but not, sufficient condition.” She was awash in him, drenched in his love, satiated, could-now-die-happy because she had been able to know him. She was a fool…for him. And in general. Just a complete and utter fool the likes of which we haven’t seen since Richard from 7th grade when he thought the fire drill was going to be used in shop.

The poison ivy covered the both of them from head to toe but since they were identical twins…