flash fiction

The Wrong One

/ roughwighting / 88 Comments

suitcase, lost baggage, flash fictionI was exhausted, angry at Bob for not picking me up at the airport, and regretful of the argument I’d had with my parents as I left their Florida condo to return to Boston.

It was 10 p.m. when the taxi stopped in front of my brownstone on Commonwealth Ave. The driver pulled out my suitcase and waited for his fare. He’d not spoken a word the short trip from Logan to my place, and now he just held out his hand for the $20 I placed there. With no thanks for the $5 tip, he got back in his yellow cab and sped off. Continue reading →

ONE with the Truth

/ roughwighting / 91 Comments

flash fiction, rocking chairIt’s taken me 89 years, two months, and 26 days to figure it out.

But Lord help me, I have figured out what no one told me all these living days.

I don’t blame the people in my early life. My grandmother’s folk (she had 14 siblings) spent their lives just surviving. The earlier generations didn’t have time to figure out what was real, because life was just too damned hard.

But we technocratic, soft-skinned, thin-skinned spoiled people of the 21st century – we have no excuse. We have toilets and warm showers and grocery stores packed with food. We have vehicles of all sizes and shapes to transport us anywhere; free education from 5 to 18 years; easy chairs to sit in and stare into our gas fireplaces just to ponder. No need to chop our wood and cook our meat on that fire. We just use it to warm our souls and ponder. Yes, to just think.

Not that thinking helped me figure it out. The opposite, really. Continue reading →

Haywire in the Bookstore

/ roughwighting / 79 Comments

bookstore, blog, flash fictionHis gasp brought Charlotte back to her past, decades ago in their sophomore year in college, when a skinny tall boy with too-large ears approached her after their English lit class. They’d been assigned as a team by Professor Rife to write a 10-page thesis paper. (Continuing from last week’s The Bookstore Intruder.)

“Each team must agree upon a book most admired, and then defend it. The goal is to read your paper in class next week and convince the other teams to vote for your book.”

Charlotte shivered in annoyance when the young man found her an hour later in the library. Continue reading →