Daniel Von Holten

Walker

Jim drank the last of his breakfast Guinness as he walked over the ice. There were only two hours of daylight this time of year and he planned to watch the sunrise from his favorite bluff. Those pussies in Anchorage don’t know how good they’ve got it. The money was good though; was good. He saved enough to say he won, but he wasn’t ready to head back to the lower forty-eight. Spent most of his last pay on booze and women and the next morning was left with a bottle of Johnnie Walker Blue and a tumbler from the bar. That was when he came up with his plan to hike to his bluff and drink it neat from sunup to sundown. Tumbler in his pocket and Johnny between his coats, he hiked four miles of tundra.

The cold couldn’t touch him; he was wrapped in arctic layers and alcohol. The Aurora glittered off the ice and snow. The world was one big disco ball and Jim stopped for a minute to do the robot.

On his bluff, Jim pulled back the flap that covered the watch face strapped to his coat. He had half an hour; Dawn fondled Aurora and Jim thought the light show was the sexiest damn thing he’d ever seen.

He brushed some snow off a boulder and gently set Johnny down in the surviving powder. He pulled off his outer gloves and mask and brushed the ice from his hood. Hell, it was going to warm up in a few minutes anyway. He pulled the tumbler from his coat pocket, shook out a paperclip and blew away lint. For good measure, he washed it with snow. The girls in the sky were really gettin’ into it.

Fine whiskey under a sky like this, he might never get to do this sort of thing again. Since the girls had already started, Jim opened Johnny and poured a drink that steamed in the still air. He lifted the glass in a cross between a toast and a prayer before tasting the best damn whiskey in the world. He noticed the wolf between his third and fourth sip.

It was alone, injured and just a sorry lookin’ excuse for a noble animal. There were no trees on the bluff or anywhere for over a mile; this one was on its own. People say wolves wander away on their own do die; he always wondered if that was why the Eskimos shoved off their old folks. It sat in the snow a stride away, looking for the sunrise over the ocean. They sat in silence for a moment and Jim finished his glass. He poured a second.

“Rekon you and I got something in common. See if you like this.” Jim sat in the snow and set the glass as close as he could to the wolf.

Curiosity made the wolf pull itself to the glass and it tasted the whiskey. Then it began to lap at it gently. Jim took a pull from the bottle. “Damn fine place to die, but may as well have a drink or two while you wait. I won’t bug ya.”

Jim drank from the bottle and refilled the glass once before the sun came up. They both let out a sigh and Jim raised the bottle to the sun as Dawn and Aurora ran off to play on the other side of the world. Jim and the wolf gradually moved closer as the sun pulled itself from the ocean. Jim was already getting warmer, so he took off his outer coat and set it over the scrawny wolf.

“No reason you should be cold either.”

Jim felt the sun wrap arms around him. He took the last swig of Johnny and he stretched out to bath in the light. Aurora and Dawn danced behind his eyelids.

Matt Gamertfelder

Roasted Peanuts

I liked to help people. Like when I was in seventh grade, and my social studies teacher, Mr. Heeney, couldn’t say the word peanuts; it came out as ‘penis.’ The other kids would really get a laugh out of that. They’d ask, ‘Mr. Heeney, what’s your favorite snack food?’ and he’d play right into their hands, replying, ‘I love salted penis.’ Or, ‘Mr. Heeney, do you like roasted almonds or roasted peanuts better?’ and he would say, ‘Well, I’m just crazy about roasted penis.’ Or, ‘Mr. Heeney, do you think the cafeteria should sell chocolate covered pretzels or chocolate covered peanuts?’, to which his response would invariably be, ‘Well, I don’t know about you kids, but fill me up with chocolate covered penis and I’m as happy as can be.’ About halfway through the year, I got sick of hearing the stupid joke everyday, so one day I stayed after class and told Mr. Heeney what was going on. He thanked me, and said that as far as the class was concerned, he would never touch ‘penis’ again. It only took about two days before the other kids realized they couldn’t get Mr. Heeney to talk about ‘penis’ butter sandwiches anymore, and they let it go. Even though I though Ohio history and government was about as interesting as watching mold grow on stale bread, I got an A in social studies that year.

I don’t know why I kept thinking about seventh grade social studies that Sunday, but it gave me one massive craving for some peanuts. We were having a windstorm, growing in intensity all through the afternoon and into the evening, probably shattering records for wind miles per hour left and right. That’s as close as you can get to a hurricane in Northeast Ohio, which is like comparing a paper cut to a stab wound, but for people used to having the wind do nothing worse than making it kind of hard to hear on a cell phone outside, it was bad enough. Branches were being ripped out of trees like grapes pulled off the vine by a horde of illegal Mexican immigrants, but without those catchy snatches of folksongs in Spanish, and in splotches across our corner of the state Mother Nature pounded the power grid into submission. At my house the electricity flickered on again, off again, a few minutes each way for an hour or two, then just a little after six the lights went out and stayed out. Due to the weather, it may not have been the best night to go out and about town, but I didn’t have anything better to do at home than watch candles burn down to pumpkin spice and French vanilla scented little nubs. And I wanted some damn peanuts.

My journey to Wal-Mart actually went off without a hitch. Since the sun had not yet set all the way, irregular illumination from streetlights proved no obstacle, and I was genuinely proud of my fellow drivers for maintaining harmony on the roads even though every other traffic light hung dark and useless above its intersection. Power still shone brightly inside the megalithic temple of capitalism, but the Massillon Wal-Mart Super center’s parking lot was as devoid of artificial light as the primeval night.

I found the peanuts easily enough, in the snack foods aisle with the chocolate chip cookies and Ritz crackers and Wheat Thins and saltines. Call it whatever you like, serendipity or my attunement with the cosmic forces of Good or what have you, but on the way to the front of the store to check out, I walked past the hunting and sporting goods section, and I saw a man there. Pretty nondescript really, dark hair, black leather jacket, blue jeans, Nike tennis shoes. His gloves probably drew my attention more than anything else, knit gloves, blazing neon orange like the cones you drive through for the BMV maneuverability test, with tiny black rubber nodules on the palm sides for added gripping capability, hunter’s gloves. This man was a hunter, a predator, and from the way he eyed those knives, I knew he was up to no good. He made his selection, a bowie knife, eight inches long and an inch and a half wide. An associate opened the case for him and the predator walked toward the front of the store. I followed him. He bought the knife and a pack of Marlboro Lights, and after I paid for my peanuts I followed him outside, ten steps or so behind.

Well away from the storefront, he pulled a black ski mask out of his jacket pocket and removed the knife from its plastic blister card, which he threw on the ground. The wind, still howling, covered up the sound of my footfalls. No power meant no security cameras as well as no lights, and slipping the mask over his head, this predator clearly meant to find prey there in the parking lot. Then I saw his intended target: a pretty girl, early twenties, shoulder length blond hair pulled into a loose tail, wearing a gray cardigan over a red and yellow sundress, fiddling with grocery bags in the trunk of an inky blue late nineties Chevy Cavalier. The hunter readied his knife as he crept behind her, his tennis shoes seemingly replaced with cat’s paws for all the noise he made. He held the knife point at the small of her back.

“No screaming, missy, or I’ll stick you,” he said.

“Please don’t hurt me. I’ll give you anything you want,” she said, trembling with fear. The predator chuckled at that, and placed his other hand on the woman’s ass.

“You’re damn right you will, bitch. And if you do a real good job, I just might not hurt you.” His voice dripped menace like a cobra’s fangs drip venom, before it delivers the death strike.

Channeling the second string pitcher I had once been, I threw the jar of peanuts at the back of the hunter’s skull with all the force I could muster. It shattered, sending showers of honey roasted peanuts all over the asphalt, and he dropped like a stone down a well. The woman screamed, and I ran to her.

“Miss, are you alright?” I asked, putting a hand on each shoulder. That’s when she blasted me in the face with pepper spray. If the devil himself poked you in the eyes with his pitchfork, it wouldn’t hurt that much. I tripped on the peanuts and fell, joining the predator on the ground writhing in agony.

“You asshole!” she said. “He’s my boyfriend; we’re acting out my abduction and rape fantasy.” She landed a kick in my groin that made my own nuts feel pretty roasted. “You should mind your own fucking business. Come on, baby,” the woman said, helping her boyfriend off the ground, “Let’s get you home.” I’m not so big on helping people any more.

Christopher Bair

Over the Airwaves in Anchorage

I was a person before.

I was as normal as anyone else could tell. I was a newlywed, myhusband my best friend since high school. We loved the open road.Started our own company just to haul goods from Washington to Alaska.Such beauty out on these roads.

The tales you hear about the Yukon Butcher are true. Horrifying.Anyone who tells you they’re wrong just don’t want to believe that suchan animal could be human.

They’re right. They just don’t broaden their horizons.

I’m alone, if anyone’s listening. This route wears on you when you’realone. It’s unbearable, you know? Like a missing arm that tingles andwants you to itch it, but it’s just not there anymore.

Kodiak Blue to Ragdoll Express, I read you coming up. There’s apulloff in two miles. I need to hit the head, but I’m game. Meet mebehind the building and we’ll see where things go. Out.

The full moon never hides around me anymore. Even with clouds, sleet,snow, whatever nature tries to throw at me on my time to shine, Lunamakes sure I know she’s watching.

The truckers got wise and avoided night stops at the rest areas wherethe Yukon Butcher’s hit in the past. I wish I had known when I lost myhusband years ago. But I grew wise as well.

This rest area is new to me. Well lit parking lot, it appears. Butplenty of cover of darkness in the back.

The beast should appreciate the work I put into making it happy. Afterall, it helps me cope with these long journeys.

What Makes Short Short Fiction Tick?

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Mike Geiger:
…What short short stories have in common is that they all have something absent, causing us to read the subtext. Since the story is so short, it forces open interpretation over the backstory. Yet a proper short short never makes us feel like we are missing something. At the end of [Pamela Painter’s] “The New Year,” the narrator takes one last picture of the ham as it floats out to the Pacific and says, “In this picture, you can’t tell which of us is missing.” We are simply left to assume what is missing.
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Faith Wally:
From one Micro Short entitled “Last Supper in the Cabinet Mountains," a three paragraph long story, I found these [verbs]: read, broke, passed, poured, rummaged, dragging, smudged, leaned, starting, watched, eat, drink, ate, drank, raised, glanced, tangle, dripped, screeched, broke, understood, bleed, trickle, looked, gave, scratched, carried, wadded, buried, say, knocked, sprawled, clutching, flew. And hell, I probably missed a few...
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Matt Gammertsfelder:
Functionally, I believe a short-short story is similar to a joke; both are told by one person to another for their mutual enjoyment. The ultimate success or failure of a joke depends on its punch line, the end, the culmination of the telling. Similarly, a short-short story’s effectiveness and enjoyableness depends on its final sentence. Each spends the entirety of itself building toward this conclusion, thus the conclusion is the reason for its existence.
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Sharon Cebula:
These laser-cut moments are like memories, slices of time preserved in a synapse. Like borrowing a pen and suddenly remembering a childhood crush, not realizing the smell of the ink has triggered it. Linda Brewer drops us into the moment of “20/20” by leading with an assumption of lapsed time: “By the time they reached Indiana, Bill realized that Ruthie, his driving companion, was incapable of theoretical debate.” From this one sentence, we already know a great deal about the setting and the two main characters.
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Rosie Heindel:
When I write short pieces, I write as though I am recording a dream. I don’t think about elements of the craft because it is all new to me. I just put down what comes out and hope that it is good. I don’t know what’s going to happen when I begin. Many times, I get sucked into my created world and get really irritated when I have to come back to reality. When I edit, I look mostly at trying to make the language sound good. I tend to have a wild pace, but I don’t do it on purpose. That’s just how they come out. I enjoy writing these pieces so much. They’re like drinking a hot cup of cocoa by the fire on a cold snowy day. They make me feel warm and gratified.
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Beth Mandl:
Short short fiction has come to remind me of the core of a cabbage. When I was a kid my dad would make a Yugoslavian dish called valushkas. One of its main ingredients was cabbage and us kids would flock around his legs when he was cleaning the cabbage so we could get dibs on the core. In our years of culinary experience we had decided that the core of the cabbage was the piece de resistance and many a fight was waged over it. So why do I think short short fiction is like that core? Ok, here it goes: think of the head of cabbage as a short short fiction. It has a beginning and an end, character development and loads of backstory. Now, with each piece of cabbage that you tear away you arte making the story shorter and shorter until all you have left is the core. The best part...
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Brittany Muffet:
…[Some] microfictions feature an event as the most crucial element; if characters inform scenes presented, the characters serve as dimensions of the landscape, atmosphere, or state of the on goings. In Judith Ortiz Cofer’s “Kennedy in the Barrio,” the narrator describes the implications Kennedy’s presidency had on a Puerto Rican community. The narrator recalls, “Two years and ten months later I would run to Puerto Habana on a cold Friday afternoon to find a crowd of people around a television set. Many of them, men and women both, were sobbing like children. ‘Dios mio, Dios mio,’ they kept wailing.” Not the narrator’s, but the community’s response to the president’s assassination impacts the reader. The narrator serves as a lens through which the reader views the event, much as the television is the object through which the crowd confronts a life-changing reality. In essence, the news on the television screen consumes the crowd, the narrator, and the reader alike as the images on it depict a tragedy that resists additional dialog.
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Katherine Schweitzer-Carney:
Sound creates flow like water passing through a river bed. Sometimes it flows smooth between the banks. Other times it must pass over a boulder in its path, or maybe even around a downed tree. The point is water has to flow just the same and to the same place. The same end.
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As writers, we must reach that same end, as well, and it is up to us individually to decide how we are getting there while keeping the flow steady.
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So what’s the moral of this short-short on words? It’s simple: Each and every word must matter. If this isn’t happening, hit delete and try again.
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Chris Bair:
In Heinrich Boll’s “The Laugher,” the economy in the story is that the character himself becomes both the story and the plot. How much is known about him besides the work he does and how people see him? Yet these are vital parts of the story to explain the dreadfully unfunny life of a professional laugher. There’s no reason to show examples of his laughing abilities—the story does well with its device of glancing over the types of jobs he has held as a professional laugher. There’s little reason to explore more of how the character came to be a laugher, or someone getting him to laugh on his own.
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The economical nature of the story combines plot and story into the character and designs the tale around an interesting man’s profession. This would be impossible to hold in any longer work without padding the yarn with examples of his job, more of his early life and perhaps interaction with someone with a normal job on how much he really envies it, rather than simply telling the reader he does.
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Jimmy Bigley:
No author is ever like any other author. We just write! Some are better at describing a certain event and yet others are better at character development, while still others are good doing both. The size of the story doesn’t really have a bearing on the depth of the tale as long as the author can restrict his language in a way that strengthens the flow of the story.
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Matthew Meduri:
…There is an immediacy we are faced with given the confines of this [snapshot] approach that grounds us in the story. The plot is so small or even nonexistent that we do not necessarily read to find out what will happen next. We read to know more of the character’s thoughts and feelings. Hopefully, each one of these types of stories will give us something to consider when we are through. This calls for a theme, an idea, or an image that will linger in our minds. This is salient in the mind of the narrator as well. It allows us to possibly contemplate something of greater meaning and even call for repeated reading.

New Story Challenge: Reverse and Back

Start to tell a story. Get into it with a paragraph or two, depending on your paragraphs, and interrupt it with a necessary background story. Tell that story. Return and finish the original incident. You do not have to announce you are telling a second story inside the first. You may blend it naturally. The limit is 500 words.

Bob

The Tailor’s Wife

An aged tailor who lived in three small rooms above his shop had what passed for most visitors as a simple life. Everyday he went downstairs to his work and a grown son at the table waiting for him. One afternoon, he saw a shadow fall across floor.

The tailor had once married and had fathered his son, for several years knowing a little of what passes here for happiness. But his wife began to lose her senses. She screamed all through the night, and eventually, into the day. Even when she slept an hour or two they heard her whimpering and whining. He and the boy had moved into another room.

One morning, working in the shop, his son tethered by an ankle to his chair, all screaming ceased. He paused. Hope kindled in his breast as silence flowed downstairs and pooled around the man and the boy, who watched his father with keen interest. But when his son had moved his mouth, he heard no sound. That evening as he led the boy upstairs to give him soup, he looked into her room to see that nothing there had changed.

The blessing of his deafness gave him peace for years, and when he saw her shadow fall across the floor, he looked up to see how she had aged. The boy looked up as well, for he now shared his father’s work. They watched in silence as she shuffled past them, out the door, without a backward glance.

A little bell gave off a ding. The door swung shut behind her.

Marcia Stamer

Still

Someone oughta come soon. I can’t stop pacing while I wait. Back to the dining room window to look down the street, then into the front hall to listen again. I haven’t heard anything, either. No sound at all. No sounds of Mom moving around in her bedroom. Nothing. My stomach suddenly rises up like when I start the steep descent of a roller coaster while at the same time I feel a poke of pressure in my head that makes me dizzy for a moment.

I wonder how normal people live. What do normal people do after the porch light goes out on Halloween Night? Do they sigh in their fatigue after serving candy to the little kids who are too much in awe to say “Trick-or-Treat”? Are they mildly disgruntled at the bigger kids who are in such a hurry that they shove their bags and pillowcases forward for their treats, then run on without a thank you? How would I ever know about anything like that?

I did what the counselor told me to do. I called 911 when she threatened. No matter it was herself she threatened with violence, not me. The counselor told me that her threats were the way she manipulated and controlled me. When he said that, I thought about how I could never have figured that out myself.

I can’t believe that I am thinking of all this stuff when I don’t know what she’s doing in that bedroom. But it’s still quiet. I’m afraid to call to her or try to open her door. I’m afraid of what I might see. Still, there’s been no noise.