This will hopefully be the first in a series of other flash fiction blog posts. I did write one flash nonfiction about a month ago. Flash fiction is a story under 1,500 words. It’s very short and gives a brief flash of narrative. It’s not elaborated on and stands on its own.
In my case, this is very much fast fiction as well as flash fiction. This piece was generated from a prompt and written in under twenty minutes. My story is transcribed as written. (With some minor spelling changes.) Other then that, everything remains the same as when I first wrote it.
I wrote this short piece at my writing group. We had a one-word prompt on this particular week: frigid. It was apt a couple weeks ago when outside was swirling with snow. I’ve included some thoughts on the prompt at the end of the piece. Enjoy!
His emotions are frigid. I always do this to myself– fall in love with men who aren’t available. And now I see it unfolding in front of my eyes. I’m the one that’s distant now watching this scene from above.
“I can’t be in a relationship anymore,” he says, pretending to plead.
“Okay,” is all I say. I’m passive and I hate myself for it. But I knew deep down it wouldn’t work out; that’s why I don’t fight it.
I start to retreat further into myself, shutting off all that makes me human and not just purely animal. The emotion especially. If he’s emotionally unavailable, I will be too.
My friend calls me on the phone.
“Hey, let’s go out!” She’s bubbly, excited to get away from her dead-end job for a while.
“Sure,” I mumble. I tell her I’ll drive; I don’t want to drink that much on account of… him. She doesn’t push me but really I’m afraid if I’m not the one deemed responsible, I’ll drink myself to oblivion.
We get to the dive bar. Perfectly grungy and ill-lit. The ceilings are low and I can hear the base of the live band in the far corner of the bar.
“Whiskey sour,” I order at the bar. The bartender raises an eyebrow and I shrug. I don’t know where that came from but I go with it. It just flows out of my mouth. Tonight’s sweaty, smokey air makes me itch for a different experience.
The drink isn’t great but it’s strong and I crave the bitterness on my tongue. I sip and sip, relishing my cool new juice.
My friend and I dance, grinding and bumping against strangers. A beer gets spilled on my jeans but I wave it off and jump to the sound of the cover band singing The Killers. The band singer asks us, “Are we human? Or are we dancer?” And I rage against the night becoming less human and more dancer with every pump of my fist.
The night is over and I load my hammered friend into my car. I blink through a blistering snow and try to concentrate on the road. But my mind drifts with the wind gusts.
I drop off my friend and wave goodbye watching her unlock her door and stumble inside. I put the car in drive and press away, ready to get home and sleep all thoughts away.
My tires skid. I crash, plowing off the side of the road. My windshield breaks and freezing winter air rushes in. And all I can think is, who’s the frigid one now?
Sometimes a prompt about something relevant can be easy to write. I just had this vision of twisting the meaning of the word frigid and then ending the story with the word in it’s traditional sense aka very cold in temperature. One word writing prompts can be hard to write, I think, but concentrating on the word itself and what it could mean helped me write this little piece.
So what did you think? Are you interested to see more of my fast flash fiction? I wanted to share it before winter is officially over. Thanks for reading!
Happy Writing-
Lovely vivid story! Great job 🙂
That is so kind! Thank you 🙂