Flash Fiction
three very short original stories
New
They stood in a half-circle on the floor, with Michael the manager opposite them in front of the counter. Tom looked from the nametags to the expectant faces.
“I want everybody to know,” Michael said, “that this wasn’t your fault. Please don’t think that we’d still be open if you were better at your job. Truth is, we’re going out of business because of people way higher up on the food chain than you or me, and because of things we can’t control. You’ll be getting a severance package from corporate in the mail, as I mentioned the other day, and I want you all to know that I’m more than happy to serve as a reference for you as you apply for your next job.”
As Tom drove home, past the high school football field and the library, he realized that he would probably never drive back to that particular strip mall again. That realization sparked another, as he thought about his breakup with Lauren who was the reason he had moved out here in the first place. He drove into the apartment’s parking garage. His lease would be up at the end of the month and, after that, he had no real reason to stay.
Tom sat down on his bed and looked around the room at all his possessions, the books in piles on the floor, the record player, the laptop on the table, the posters on the wall. He imagined putting it all in the back of his car. He imagined driving, his car loaded like a Conestoga wagon in an old western, down the highway to somewhere he had never been before.
Night
She looked in her rearview mirror and saw truck headlights looming through the fogged windshield like the eyes of a deep-sea fish. The whole night felt watery, the trees dripping, the rainfall changing the streets into shallow rivers. The light turned green.
As she drove down the road a car in the next lane pulled into her lane and she saw glaring red headlights and pushed the break and felt the momentum of two tons of metal and fiberglass and saw visions of blood and shattered glass, stopping inches short of a collision. She turned, water sloshing under the wheels. Her heart was a drumroll and the electricity that seemed to flow through her veins brought back a sensory memory of touching a Van de Graaff generator in high school physics class. She sucked in air, thinking you’re safe, you’re safe, you’re safe.
The car’s headlights shone on her own street, illuminating mailboxes and a dead tree lying on the sidewalk. She parked and walked up the eleven steps to her own front door, glancing downward at snaked coiled roots. Once inside she turned on the lights.
Sitting, warm, she looked out the window at the cars in the rain. She saw lighted windows on every house across the street and wondered if anyone else was at that moment watching the night.
Donuts
I knew I’d have the mother of all hangovers if I didn’t get some food in my stomach so I walked two blocks to the only eating establishment open at 2 in the morning, Star Donuts.
The night air felt cool on my face and neck. The donut shop’s white interior shown like a beacon in the hazy night, like the light inside a refrigerator. I walked up to the counter, my eyes panning across crullers, maple bars, old-fashioned, cronuts, danishes. The old lady behind the counter said hello in her Vietnamese accent.
Ordinarily I would not have paid much attention to her but tonight was not an ordinary night, and my mind filled with television documentary images. Urban warfare under palms, crying multitudes left behind after the last helicopters left Saigon. I looked at her wrinkled face and thought that she had probably been there, she and her family and friends, around that time, and she’s here working days and nights with a smile on her face, and taking that into account what possible excuse do I have in my own life?