Posts Tagged ‘damn short stories’

I’ve entered one of my slightly longer Damn Short Stories into a contest at BookRix, a site for aspiring writers who are looking for some exposure. If you have a sec, head on over and check it out!

This is a very, very, short story I wrote as an exercise in writing a scene specifically intended to capture a mood. That scene was assigned in my Screenwriting class last week and I actually wrote it in about 15 minutes the hour before it was due in class. To my surprise, the teacher was very impressed with it, and said he really liked it because “It’s a complete story. Excellent work!” Suffice to say, I was shocked, and read it again. Sure enough…it is a complete story. Somehow. I’ll let you be the judge of whether it’s actually any good at capturing a mood or not!

                The faint buzz of TV static permeated the small, tobacco-stinking room, punctuated only by the slow swing of a wall clock’s rusty pendulum.  Two small children huddled under a blanket in one corner of the room, snuggled up for warmth, yet shivering as if their small bodies couldn’t generate quite enough heat. A paper Christmas tree, carefully colored by the hands of children, hung from the wall by a single piece of duct tape, and under its illustrated branches rested two candy bars, each with a half-flattened bow on top. The dim hum of a microwave oven, its timer counting down from 2:17, draped the room in an electric glow, its sole source of hope. An empty carton rested atop the microwave, the promise of shaped and formed turkey with mashed potatoes reflecting light at the dismal shape of a woman; her face carried far too many worry lines for her years, and her chest heaved in half-controlled sobs as silent tears dripped down her face.

                Outside, a man with a dirty Santa hat and ragged shoes knelt against the railing, his frame racked with unreleased sobs. His cheeks were dry, but his eyes glistened like pools on the verge of overflowing. Slowly he rocked, forward and back, his stomach growling and his fists clenched as he listened to the faint hum of the microwave through the slightly open door. He counted the seconds, each one a breath from his solid frame, and as he rocked forward for the last time, the faint ding of the microwave signalled his time was finally over.

Fuzzy Wuzzy was not, in spite of the rhymes to the contrary, a bear. In fact he was a breed of dog called a “Newfoundland”-though he had no idea what the hell that meant or what land of any kind, new found or not, had to do with being a dog or a bear. As the summer once again crept across the heat-capturing valleys of Southern California he began to feel a little miffed that his fur hadn’t been trimmed in years. Now, we’re not talking dog years, because then we’d be into double digits as far as Fuzzy Wuzzy knew, but by the reckoning of people he was in fact five years old and as near as he could tell, his unfortunate name was the sole reason he had never received so much as a trim.

Fuzzy sat at the end of a long leash looped around the leg of a small chair at a sidewalk cafe. His owner, a singularly annoying woman called Missy, sipped a maple-scented black beverage from a small cup, her pinky finger extended into the air aristocratically. Fuzzy loved his sweet master, for she always snuggled him and fed him and let him sleep at the foot of her bed, where he felt most of the time like he belonged. On occasion she would kick him straight off the bed in her sleep, but Fuzzy always knew that when he awoke sore and disoriented on the floor it was not a fact caused by any meaningful malice by his owner. No, Fuzzy Wuzzy was loved.

So as the sun crept over the buildings across the street and began to warm the front of the sidewalk cafe, Fuzzy began to feel hot. His owner continued to sip the black liquid and in fact asked the waiter to bring her another while she gabbed away to the little pink, glitter-covered rectangle in her hand. Fuzzy had never figured out what was so interesting about this little rectangle that Missy would want to talk to it so much, but talk she did, and Fuzzy just panted away as sweat began to make the fur on his head droop down into his eyes. Read the rest of this entry »

The Elephant Shoes story has been revised rather substantially. I think the new version has improved greatly in both the language (big reduction on “and” usage) and the development of each of the characters. A fair amount of “fluff” detail (pun totally intended!) has been removed and refined as well. The total word count has been reduced by about 27.

Kaitlin Thomas reached across the bed as the first rays of dawn began to light her bedroom. She slipped her hand under the sheet and softly stroked her husband’s abdomen. She smiled, thinking of how he had felt in her last night; how he would feel in her again within moments. With a tenderness that whispered of great love mingled with lust she softly caressed his chest and nipples. A smile grew on her lips as the sheet above his pelvis swelled and twitched with an unconscious rhythm. 

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