Exploring brevity

Tonight I cancelled my membership to Medium, the home for much of my very short fiction, short stories, and essays. Most are still posted there, but I don’t write there often enough now to justify the cost of membership. Many of the short stories I wrote over the years I compiled in my first book of short stories and I will need to comb through the rest to see if I want to put them in a second book.

For now I’ll share a selection of my micro-fiction. I love the challenge of micro-fiction, taking a story and condensing it down to just enough words to carry the scene. They’re satisfying to write and I hope you like them also.

Escape Velocity

She left behind what held her down

Freed from the tyranny of Earth’s gravity, she floated past the cryo-pods where crewmates rested in dreamless slumber. Machinery hummed like human breath. How far they’ll travel, pioneers.

She remembered another traveler, sent from a dying planet. A child, falling from the sky. Saved, he grew into secret powers. How odd the only things that hurt him were fragments from his lost home.

She wiped frost from the viewport and bid goodbye to Earth before her own cold rest. A beginning, without prejudices and limitations. She wonders — when they reach that distant place, will she be able to fly?

Frog Looks Back

He had lived there so long, in his forest of grass, that he only remembered flashes of his former life. Like the pop of the paparazzi’s cameras — quick frames of hangover mornings, thin false smiles, fake friends who would run at the drop of a dollar.

What had he done to earn the reward of solitude? Jilted a witch? Spurned a wizard? His royal world brought down to a muddy pond littered with flies.

Even so, when she stooped to offer a kiss, he turned from the lipstick smear of her lips. Regretting nothing, he’d choose to stay a frog.

Remote Recollections

The eve of her sixty-ninth birthday Vera Holloway clicked the remote control and turned on her television to a scene from her sixth birthday.

“That’s odd,” she said. Vera the child huffed at blazing candles.

Tapping through channels she discovered every program starred her, Vera from Uncertain, Texas. Channel eight featured a high school football game, marching band all brass and drums while she kissed David Keller goodbye to Vietnam.

Memories hazy and half-forgotten-crunch of autumn leaves, sweet bite of strawberry snow-cone, skip and scratch of vinyl records. Last click. Who was that old woman, staring from the blank screen?

The Lighthouse

Byrne Macleod lived alone at the lighthouse for forty years. Every night he lit the torch and watched the dark ocean for ships that never passed the rocky shore.

“Why stay, Grand Da?” His great-grandson, fisherman’s heir to seas stripped bare, asked each time he rowed over to the island.

“Someone must wait for them.”

Great waters rose and receded, wars raged and cities burned with plague while Byrne kept vigil. Through eyes dimmed by salt spray he searched the waves.

At last they came, the voyagers. The celestial ships hovered overhead, their journey not by sea but by stars.

The Secrets the Moon Holds

She ran along the path, a shortcut through the park near her home. The blue-white glow from the full moon the only illumination as she dodged through trees as familiar to her as the furniture in her living room.

She emerged from the woods onto the concrete sidewalk, a thirty-three year old woman still able, she felt, to pass as one much younger. Still happy for the inconvenience of being carded when she ordered wine, her mock indignation hiding her false pleasure.

The moon her only observer, she fussed with the zipper on her jacket and reached up to pull loose a strand from her ponytail. Messy enough to give the patina of truth to her exercise, the flushed cheeks and high color on her chest.

Home at last, she paused before she turned the knob and pushed open the door. If he greets her with a kiss, she wonders, will he taste him on her lips?

En Passant

She sets the board as they always have. The black is hers, to match the color of her hair — once dark as coal, now grey as ash.

Brew the tea, light the candles, draw the curtains, pull out the chair on his side of the table.

Fifteen years she’s waited for the match, her opponent forfeited much too soon. The hard pain in her chest, sharper than fear, tells her this may be the night she joins the game.

She would sacrifice her pawn but she plays by the rules. As any good player knows, white always goes first.

The Serving Girl’s Legacy

A drabble in 50 words

The barista, the rumor, the hundred-dollar tip. Co-workers congratulated her, her manager promoted her, her boyfriend doubted her.

“How did you earn that?” He frowns, cold as cream on a Frappuccino.

“It was really just a ten,” she says, but he’s gone.

Two lies and one truth — She’ll miss him.

The Children’s Garden

“Go ahead. I’ll rest.” Rose Watson’s grandmother sank onto the park bench. “They’ll keep me company.” The grandmother waved at a circle of sculptures — children, bronze figures cavorting in the grass.

“Okay. You sure you don’t need…”

“I’m old, not incontinent.” The grandmother laughed. “Better scoot, the garden’s closing.”

Rose hurried to the restroom, casting a glance at her grandmother. Had she ever played like those statues? She’d worked years in a factory, supporting her family.

Rose returned to an empty bench. “Grandmother?” Childish laugher answered her. In the dusk she searched, never noticing the extra figure in the circle.

A Closed Path has no End

She followed the ghost girl past the warning sign, along the sun dappled path into the dark woods. The trees parted, branches bowing to lead her through the forest until at last the girl turned.

“Here.” She pointed, her spectral arm sweeping across a mulch of sweet pine needles.

The hiker knelt — her knees pressed into soft soil. With trembling fingers, she brushed the dirt from the white, rounded dome, so like a bulb planted in shallow earth.

“Your grave?” she asked. How sad to spend eternal rest not blessed in consecrated ground.

“Oh no,” the girl replied. “It’s yours.”