Flash fiction stories, created for the furious fiction competition
Booster rockets that Jen had made from cardboard tubes littered the living room floor. Just like the real ones her mom worked on, their tissue paper parachutes ferried them safely back to earth 118 seconds after lift-off. And just like the real ones, Jen insisted they stay where they’d landed until the mission was complete.
“Who does he think he is?” Reggie grumbled into his mead. “Swannin’ around bestowin’ blessin’s, as if he’s some sort of big shot–”
Carmine rolled his eyes, looking just like his mother. “Do we have to?”
I spun my lazy son’s beanbag around and pointed it towards the back door. “I’ll drag it all the way outside if I have to.”
“Uggh, fine.” He didn’t even look up from his phone.
I give the beanbag a playful nudge. “Come on, it’ll be fun.”
“You know it won’t.”
“The day he kicked it so hard it burst?”
“That’s the one.”
“And you were there? You saw it?”
“I heard it mate.” Dad stuck his finger in his cheek and popped it. Then he whistled, tracing an arc through the air with his eyes. “Went through, too. Post high.”
9:00 – I hovered before the door of my new home office, my husband’s cheery “Good luck, not that you need it!” still ringing in my ears. Beyond the threshold lurked an unassuming desk. A pen. A blank sheet of paper.
9:16 – So very, very blank.
I was minding my own business at one of those anonymous airport bars, you know the type. Slick, inviting, uncomfortable chairs and overpriced whiskey. I was onto my second bourbon when I got a tap on the shoulder.
“Frank? Is that you? Goddam, you’re a sight for sore eyes.”
No. Frank was not me.
Whatever happened, it must have gone down while I was out at antenna 34. She’s four clicks from base and had a control glitch that should have been easy to trace but wasn’t. Every time I started her back up, this knocking sound would ring out from her gearbox as she tried to rotate in all three axes at once and I’d have to shut her down again.
“Do you mind?” I shrugged Henry’s insistent hand from my shoulder.
Honestly, I clucked gently to myself. Couldn’t he tell I had my binoculars trained on a very specific tuft of dry grass, through which I’d just spotted a nervous, yellow-rimmed eye atop a spectacular, black and white plumed neck?
“Not guilty, your Honour.”
It’s what my lawyer told me to say, so I said it. Not because it was true. I wasn’t ashamed of what I did.
“And nor should you be,” my lawyer said. “You and I both know it was criminal. Very. But by no means was it wrong. That’s what I think.” she said, pointing at the empty juror’s gallery. “When I’m done, that’s what they’ll think too.”
“Yo. What up, fam! It’s your boy Darius here, and tonight, I’m sittin’ pretty at Euphoria, right in the heart of NYC. Now you know my man @Cyclone99 say this the best restaurant in the whole damn country, so hit that like button, and let’s find out if it live up to the hype! Come on in.”