Snapshot Fiction

There’s something really exceptional about flash fiction, specifically those pieces ranging from 100 to 500 words. To be able to setup characters, plot, setting, and make a reader care about what happens is a remarkable talent that I envy. I’ve never dabbled much in flash fiction as I usually end up coming up with an idea that spans much more than a few hundred words. More often than not the idea turns into something novella or novel length.

Many of these ideas also end up coming to mind when I’m in the middle of a longer project. I believe they call those plot bunnies; those shiny ideas that beg you to step away from your current project and take off on a new adventure with exciting new characters and places and conflicts. However, if we succumbed to those plot bunnies all the time we’d never get any work done. So, something I find that helps me out when the plot bunnies come call is to write down what I call snapshot fiction, or a snapshot in time taking place in this new idea. Sometimes it’s a bit of dialogue and sometimes it’s an ending. But this sort of helps to get the idea out of my system so I can focus on my current project.

And now, (hopefully) for your entertainment, I’d like to share a few of my snapshot fiction pieces with you.

The stone tower looked fondly over its handiwork as the bodies of those brave men, void of souls or what once rest within them, lay scattered on the ground. Corruption had been a mere toy with which the tower played, and the sweet taste of blood sustained it until more arrived.

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He looked at me with hopeful eyes and a faint smile, weary with fatigue after so many years of adventure and strangeness. A man, once a merchant barely scraping by, had become a man of fortune. A man accustomed to a certain way of life gained only by spilling blood and taking whatever he pleased.

“I’ll always cherish what you did for me,” he said. “Above all else. Gold, alcohol, leisure. The courage and drive you’ve inspired in me these past months are something I’ll treasure. Thank you.”

I dared not share in his smile, though his words reached a deeper part of me that had not been unleashed in some time.

I nodded to him with a grim expression and grasped the wooden handle beside me. The man before me, my friend, swallowed hard, and I pulled the lever, dropping the floor beneath him. He fell hard, reaching a jerking stop as the rope around his neck snapped the bones with a sharp crack. And my friend was dead.

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I hope you enjoyed these brief snapshots in time. I plan to post some more of these as they come to me, and perhaps they’ll help you to come up with a story of your own.

As always, let me know what you think in the comments!

Hand In Bloody Hand With His Son.

A little dark flash fiction for your Thursday morning. As always, feedback is appreciated.

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A man by the name of Alexander watched his son from the window. The boy played in the front yard of the small home. He told himself they’d be safe there. Him and his son. They’d already taken his wife. They wouldn’t take his boy.

Alexander didn’t have the money. He didn’t have anything. He adjusted his blood-red tie and grabbed the revolver from the wooden stand by the couch. He opened the chamber, making sure it was fully loaded, and flipped it shut.

The soft squeal of brakes sounded outside. The sound lingered in his ears for a long moment, as if the world had slowed. He thought his heart might stop. Give out completely. How could they have possibly found him?

Alexander walked back to the window. A black Roadmaster had pulled up in front of the house, and two men in black suits stood by the back door as a man in a white suit by the name of Isaiah strolled across the lawn and walked up to the boy. A boy no older than four. The man in the white suit knelt down and rubbed the boy’s yellow hair, and then looked up at Alexander. A smile spread across his face, revealing a missing tooth at the left side of his mouth. Alexander recalled knocking that tooth out with the handle of the very revolver he was holding. The same revolver that killed his wife.

Alexander gripped the revolver tightly, his knuckles white, and stared at the man in the white suit as he stood and walked to the front door.

Isaiah knocked on the door and waited, hands together in front of his waist. Alexander stared at him, rage bubbling inside as he took slow steps toward the front door. He took a deep breath and swung it open, revealing Isaiah, still smiling.

“Hello, Alexander,” Isaiah said.

Alexander raised the revolver and pressed it to the man’s forehead. Isaiah continued to smile. “Put that down,” he said.

“Fuck you.” Alexander felt the trigger beneath his finger, watched as the hammer began to pull back, but Isaiah grabbed Alexander’s wrist and wrenched the pistol free. He grabbed Alexander by the hair and yanked him outside, sending him tumbling into the grass next to his son.

“Daddy?” the boy said, looking at his father.

Tears welled in Alexander’s eyes. “I’m so sorry,” he said, his voice soft.

The boy smiled. “It’s okay, Daddy.”

“Do you have the money?” Isaiah asked.

Alexander rolled onto his back and looked up at the man in the white suit. He pointed the revolver at the boy, who was playing with a toy dinosaur, making soft roaring noises as the beast stomped through the grass jungle.

“Please,” Alexander begged. Tears streamed down his cheeks. “Please. If it has to happen, let me do it.”

Isaiah dropped the revolver on Alexander’s chest. “Point that fuckin’ thing at me and you’re both dead.”

Alexander grabbed the revolver and got on his knees. He faced his son and extended his arm, the barrel of the pistol an inch away from the boy’s head. His body trembled, and he took a long, slow breath. It had to be done. Right now.

Alexander turned and fired two quick rounds, dropping the two men by the car. A third crack of gunfire sounded, and Alexander stared as his son toppled over, blood spraying into the air. Alexander stared, his mouth open as he watched his son lay in the red grass, toy dinosaur clutched in his small, innocent hand.

A short crack and a brief flash.

And Alexander toppled to the ground.

Hand in bloody hand with his son.