Friday, October 20, 2017

Flash Fiction Friday: The Sliced Bagel

I stayed within the thresholds of flash fiction this week with 460 words. This week's format is a little different, however. My story is made up entirely of dialogue. I set the scene, conveyed tone, and established conflict without narrative description. In fact, you will notice there aren't even any attributes (he said, Jane asked, etc.). Happy reading.

Photo by Jennifer E. Miller

The Sliced Bagel
By,
Jennifer E. Miller

“Ugh!”
“What is it, Katherine?”
“I’m putting the groceries away, and realized I purchased unsliced bagels.”
“What’s wrong with that?”
“It’s one of life’s great mysteries, I tell you.”
“Why? Is the hole in the bagel a portal to another dimension?”
“No, Richard. It’s a mystery to sell bagels without slicing them first. It’s silly. Who eats them that way?”
“Well, I don’t know, somebody must.”
“I don’t believe so.”
“How are you so sure, Katherine? Maybe they dip the whole thing into their coffee.”
“You’re confusing bagels with doughnuts.”
“Toast it with jam on the top, perhaps?”
“It needs to be sliced to fit in the toaster slot.”
“A toaster oven, then.”
“Really, Richard. No one uses those anymore.”
“I beg to differ; my mother still has one.”
“She doesn’t use it.”
“Fine. But I do say you are making too much fuss over this issue. And please stop slamming the refrigerator door when you put the groceries away.”
“Well, I expect the bagels I purchased to be sliced.”
“Katherine, how much time could it take to slice them yourself?”
“Too long.”
“You’re being a grouch. A few minutes is all it takes.”
“Would you care to do it, then?”
“Come now, that’s not necessary. You are capable of the task.”
“You just don't want to! You want your bagels sliced, just like I do. See? Selling unsliced bagels makes no sense. They must be sliced for practical convenience.”
“Perhaps the bakery didn’t have time.”
“They have machines to do it, Richard.”
“Missed a few?”
“I suppose that’s possible.”
“Ah, see! It’s just a mistake.”
“Then, you just proved my theory. A mistake indicates that the bagels were intended to be sold sliced. If they were, in fact, intentionally sold unsliced, it brings us back to my original thought: selling unsliced bagels are a mystery.”
“Alright, well, I guess the solution to your problem is to take the bagels back to the bakery and to have them sliced.”
“No, I won’t do that. It’s not worth my time.”
“But you’ve spent the last five minutes irritated, and convincing me that bagels should be sold sliced. How is this whole subject suddenly not worth your time?”
“I’ve vented my frustrations and now it’s over and done. I can move on to other things.”
“That’s reassuring. Shall we move on to lunch, then?”
“That sounds fine. What should we have?”
“Sandwiches sound dandy. I’ll gather and prepare everything since you just sat down.”
“Thank you.”
“Fantastic. Say, Katherine, I’ve got things lined up here on the counter, but it seems you forgot bread at the store.”
“Did I? Oh. Well, use the bagels instead.”
“There is a problem, though.”
“What’s that?”
“I need them sliced.”

Copyright 2017 Jennifer E. Miller

Friday, October 13, 2017

Flash Fiction Friday: Swing It Away

I'm at 1531 words with this story. Five hundred and thirty-one more than I prefer for Flash Fiction Friday. Maybe I should just call it Fiction Friday. Anyway, this story is written in the first person, but, please note, doesn't represent me personally. 

Swing It Away
By,
Jennifer E. Miller
The sun begins setting over the grassy fields of the sports park. I don’t know why I was out here in the first place. I prefer the walking trails on the opposite side of the park that weave through trees, leading down to the river. The bunnies emerge in the evening to munch on the grass and other wild plants. Sometimes I surprise them when I walk around the corner, and they retreat back to safety under the shrubbery. Other times, at a comfortable distance from me, they hop out and let me watch them. It’s intriguing the way their noses twitch all the time. Their dark eyes stare me down in their peripheral vision.
I guess, simply, I want to see the other side of the park. The side I didn’t know but knew was there. It didn’t look unordinary. A bunch of soccer fields, I quit counting at dozen, and several baseball diamonds.
Various paved pathways zig-zag through the park. I step onto one and follow it through the soccer fields. Games or practices, how was I to know, were finishing up. The sounds of cooler lids clang shut, zippers zip, and final bounces of balls on grass-stained knees echo. The kids high-five each other, then climb into their vans, sliding the doors shut.
It reminds me of what I wished of my childhood. I longed for their laughter, the carefree way they went about their day. Heck, not even having to find a way home; their moms were waiting for them.
My mom never showed up for me after practice. I waited, hoping I’d hear the familiar sound of the tires. After twenty minutes or so, the coach offered to give me a ride home, where I’d find both my folks buzzed, in glassy-eyed stupor in front of a flickering television screen. They forgot again, they said. I didn’t bother telling them about the reminder note I left on the kitchen table.
I wrap my jacket tighter, continuing my walk, which brings me to empty baseball fields. The wind blows a thin cloud of dust over the bases. Glancing at an outfield, I see a silhouette of a man. He swings and twists his body. I wonder why he is batting in the outfield rather than at home plate.
The soccer moms drive past, taking the laughter and good times away. It was silent except for the occasional crunch of my shoes over the first few fallen leaves of autumn.
A noise caught my attention.
Whoosh!
Curious, I look around.
Whoosh!
I hear it again as the silhouette rotates. This time I realize he didn’t swing out in front, like a batter, he starts from the back, scooping up toward the sky. He was golfing.
But I hear no contact with a ball. No click as it met the metal club, no thud when it met the turf.
Curiosity gets the best of me and I make my way over. I pause at the bleachers behind first base and watch. Squinting against the setting sun, I walk along the baseline to see better, stopping when I am in line with this stranger, perhaps fifty feet away. Even though I know it’s rude, I intrusively stare.
The man repositions himself after his last swing, hips square, thumbs properly aligned on the club handle. Shifting his feet into place, he focuses on the grass at his feet, where a pitted ball would normally sit on a smooth wooden tee. He swings the club back, and thrusts his rotating torso, arcing the club toward the sky again.
“Ah!” the man says, satisfied.
I follow his gaze towards the sky, as though tracking his shot on the course, anticipating its landing spot.
This time, the man stands back, leaning against his club like a cane. He briefly looks in my direction, silently acknowledging my presence, and sets up for another empty swing.
“Why are you hitting nothing?” I blurt out.
“Ran outta balls,” he answers, shrugging.
I don’t see any in the distance I can retrieve for him.
“Got more?”
“Nah, they just bring back the problems.”
He swings again.
“What problems?”
“You nosy, ain’t ya?”
He sets himself up again.
I snort. “Not everyday one see a man swinging a golf club on a baseball diamond.”
“I ain’t in the diamond, I’m in the outfield.”
He swings.
“Oooh! That one wasn’t good. You’re distracting my game.”
“Sorry,” I mumble. But I stay put.
“You leaving?” he asks.
“I want to know why you don’t get more golf balls.”
The man sighs. “The same reason you’re out here loitering in a place designed for sports activities.”
“What?”
He rests a fist on his hip. “When a man finds himself somewhere he don’t belong, it means one of two things: he is looking for trouble or trying to clear his mind. You don’t strike me as trouble-type.”
I study the man. Is he mad?
This time it’s he who snorts. “I see you don’t comprehend. Most don’t at first.”
He takes another swing. I welcome the now soothing stroke slicing the air. I can’t bring myself to break away from this mysterious stranger and our acute conversation, which I have no idea where it will lead. But I have to know.
“Explain,” I said. It was neither a demand or a request.
He strolls over to me. I thought him to be a small man, but he seems to grow taller as he approaches.
“You see,” he starts, “most people have a crutch; something to take their mind away from their troubles. Some drive along desolate highways with music blaring, other lose themselves in dense wilderness, many simply throw stones in the river.”
“Of course,” I say. “Otherwise they will go mad.”
The man smiles, showing a neat row of teeth. He raises his thick eyebrows as if in a eureka moment.
“Wrong. I, myself, hit golf balls as an emotional release. Standing on the range, I imagined each one representing a pesky thought, and I whacked it away far from me. Felt good to get physical. Give it a piece of my mind, if you will.”
I smiled at the pun.
“Therapeutic,” I said.
“Sure, sure.” He exhales, looking into the sky’s and its changing colors. “But they came back—and I figured out why.”
I straighten, standing more alert.
“Thinking I had knocked out my frustrations, I packed up and went home.”
Turning back, he sees my confused expression.
“It didn’t make sense at first to me either. Felt gratification doing something I enjoyed, to expunge whatever troubles consumed me. But why were they coming back into my mind?...” his thoughts trail a moment of ponder. “Then it hit me. I used golf as a way out. No, not golf. Swinging the damn club, that’s what.
“So the next time I went out to the range I didn’t bring balls with me. Wasn’t gonna let those little bastards torment me another second. I blasted imaginary golf balls off somewhere. The others thought I turned looney, swinging at nothing. Eventually, I was asked not to return on account I was making folks feel uncomfortable.”
“Now you come here?”
“Where ever. Sometimes I stand on a boulder overlooking the river. Another time, I climbed on the roof of my shed. Neighbor called somebody—adult protective services—on me. I explained I was just swinging away my troubles. They asked why I didn’t golf normally, so I described all the things I just told you.”
I shift uncomfortably. He notices.
“You think I’m mad, too, dontcha?”
“I think you found a creative way to interpret the world around you.” I was impressed at my quick thinking.
The man stands proudly, putting both hands on his hips this time.
“Ah! Finally, someone who understands,” he exclaims, gleefully satisfied. “You have a good night now.”
“Thanks.”
I reach the parking lot where my dented Ford waited for me. It hard starts, as always. I sit there thinking about what the man said. About swinging away troubles. I think about what I do to swing away my own troubles. I take walks, I guess. I go home and the next day I paint pictures with a clear mind. But the ugliness of my past returns and I go walking again.
The man’s way had never occurred to me before. How routine locks us into a thought prison.
I shift my Ford into gear and go home with the man’s revelation confusing and exhilarating me at the same time.
The next day I return for a nature walk, but I pause at the corner where I usually find the bunnies. Quietly, I sit down and dig out my sketch book and a pencil from my knapsack. I ignore the wet grass soaking into my rump, and the autumn leaves raining upon me.
When the bunnies appear I quickly sketch them, trying to capture their wiggling noses on my artist’s paper. I draw the baseball diamonds in the background, although they are disguised as hills to keep the naturalistic theme of my drawing. I finish with an outline of a man in the distance, swinging away.

Copyright 2017 Jennifer E. Miller

Friday, October 6, 2017

Flash Fiction Friday: Target Cox Junction Part III

Welcome to the final installment of Target: Cox Junction which I reluctantly ended. I enjoyed this story line so perhaps I will change a few things and eventually make this a longer short story. If you haven't already, be sure to read Part I, and Part II.

Target: Cox Junction 
Part III

By,
Jennifer E. Miller

Sockeye’s smartphone screen blinked, asking if he wanted to connect to the new network. He wasn’t sure what to do. There was no protocol on how to handle outside wifi; because an outside router wasn’t expected.
Where is the damn thing? he wondered.
It wasn’t easy to sneak into a dam. They were quite secure, even smaller ones like Cox Junction. Stashing a router, while placing rocks and dead birds at various places, couldn’t go unnoticed when monitors watched and recorded every inch of this place. Even an inside job was nearly impossible. Sockeye’s thoughts settled on that one little word: nearly.
The siren nearly made Sockeye nearly jump of out his skin. It was the emergency evacuation siren; part of Bordman’s duties. He let out a deep exhale, but his pulse didn’t slow. Gathering his wits, and his keycard he opened the exterior door with a beep and dashed inside.
The siren blared inside the corridor. Red and yellow lights flashed, spewing eerie reflective shadows on the walls. Alone, Sockeye ran down the hall which led to an open floor with the generators. He scanned the floor. The area was deserted, which meant personnel evacuated like they were supposed to.
At the far end of the generator floor was a door leading into the engineers’ offices. Sockeye burst through it. One of the engineers was on the telephone.
A rap on the window interrupted the telephone conversation and Sockeye burst into the room.
“Move it!”
He covered the phone’s mouthpiece. “I’ve done drills before. I know what to do.”
“Obviously, not. This isn’t a drill.”
The engineer dropped the receiver to the base. He tried reaching for his coat but Sockeye pushed him out the door, ordering him to run down the hall.
The two men ran down the hallway to the other end of the dam. He ordered the engineer outside and stay with the group. Then Sockeye ran to the security control room where he met Jay.
“Hey, sir,” Bordman said. “I’ve checked all the monitors and no other movement or keycards were detected.”
Sockeye set the rock down on the desk and realized he was sweating. Sweating with fear rather than exhaustion.
“What’s this?” Bordman asked as he picked up the rock and examined it. “Jesus! Is this for real?”
“It might be.”
“What does it mean?”
“It means we need to grab the computer back-up and get the hell out.”
Sockeye grabbed his keycard and waved it in front of a small door behind the monitor. Pushing a button, he swung open a door, and yanked out small metal box. Its wires dangled limp as he shoved it into Bordman’s arms. Next, he scooped up the painted rock and a grasped a laptop. Sockeye intended to hook it up to the backup and examine the monitor history himself. Together the two men raced for the nearest exit and up the interior stairwell.
As they climbed the flights, Sockeye’s phone dinged again, but he didn’t notice it over the sirens. If he had, he’d realize the icon had accidentally been touched, therefore, connecting his phone to the RavensDam1 wifi network.
The last two employees of Cox Junction Dam joined the others in the parking lot. They were huddled together, relieved when they saw the security personnel.
Bordman set down the computer back up to catch his breath.
“What the hell is going on?” someone demanded. It was Quinn, head engineer.
Sockeye answered through gasps, “Don’t know…for sure.”
He showed the Cox Junction employees the rock.
“You evacuated us because of that?” he asked, flabbergasted.
“No,” Sockeye said. He quickly ran through the rest of the details; the emails regarding the activists, the raven, the fence post, the wifi network. He was certain they were all connected somehow.
Hearing some of this information for the first time, Jay Bordman said, “Wifi network?”
Sockeye pulled out his phone to show him. His heart dropped. The screen indicated “connected to RavensDam1.”
Noticing Sockeye’s pallor, Bordman said, “Sir?”
There was no need to respond. A muffled explosion, like dynamite buried deep within a hard surface was heard, and the ground shook. The employees shrieked, demanding to know what it was. Sockeye waved his hand at them as he and Bordman ran to the edge of the parking lot. The water over the far gates wasn’t flowing; it was spewing sideways from a gaping hole.
There was a second blast from the next gate, and a third, and so forth. The Cox Junction team watched helplessly as the entire dam collapsed, sliding into the river. The rapids tumbled and foamed about the debris, shoving it to its final resting place. Over the empty hollowed-out space behind, the river reworked itself to its ancient flow route.
Speechless, the crowd could do nothing but stare on in horror. Quinn tried calling the dam downstream to warn them, but there was no cell service. Sockeye hoped the issuance of code 999 alerted headquarters in time to give ample warning to other locations. He took one last look at his phone. There was no trace of RavensDam1 wifi network.
The activists were serious, and now a threat to national security.
Bordman walked up to Sockeye. “What should we do now, sir?”
“I’m not sure. I guess we wait.”

 The End
Copyright 2017 Jennifer E. Miller