I’m wordy.
I can wax poetic for way too long.
And that gets boring for people who want to just get to the point already!
When my CPs started talking about flash fiction contests, I didn’t have a clue what they were talking about. A few of my partners explained that it’s a type of fiction that’s extremely brief – a hundred to a thousand words, usually, that tells a complete story with a beginning, a rising conflict and an end that ties things together. I was fairly uninterested in trying it out until I came across a Friday contest called Microcosms. Microcosms is a community-run weekly contest in which a prompt is posted every Friday. Contestants have all day Friday to enter their story on the website, and a winner is chosen and posted by Monday. Contests never really draw me, but certain prompts spin my wheels, and the first prompt engaged my creative juices.
Usually but not always, writers are provided with a main character, a genre, and a setting as a start. From there, we write a story that is 300 words or less. Sounds easy, right?
For someone like me, it is so hard! I always have to whittle down my piece, sometimes from as many as 500 words. It’s not a simple task to keep a story complete while taking out 2/5 of it! But it’s a great exercise in getting rid of the fluff, in being able to cut, which we always have to do when pruning our novels. Participating in the weekly microcosms contest has made me a better writer, and I encourage every writer to try their hand at flash! It really hones your editing skills and teaches you to get to the point.
Here’s one of my award winning-pieces. In case you do a word count, this one is 331. The cool thing about a flash contest is, you can prune for the contest then add back in things you really didn’t want to cut in the first place. I did that before I submitted The Seamstress’s Revenge to other lit mags. I never would have written the piece had it not been for a Microcosms prompt, and it’s since been featured in a few publications. So, thank you Geoff Holmes, the dedicated moderator of Microcosms.
The Seamstress’s Revenge
The soldier’s eyes are hidden beneath the rim of his cap.
He clicks his heels and salutes, a husky “Heil!” escaping his throat like the growl of a savage dog.
I know why he has burst into my shop this January morning.
I know he has work for me, and, even as my belly roils at the thought of completing his request, I know I cannot refuse.
Carelessly, he drops a bulging sack onto the counter, between brass baubles and miscellany, knocking over a chipped teacup and saucer
.
In pieces, it scatters across the worn wooden floor.
He doesn’t apologize.
I thank him for the sack and watch him leave.
Inside the scratchy burlap there are bloodstains. Shit stains.
Stains that symbolize the most heinous crimes committed against human beings.
Ever.
I finger the sleeve of a child’s pajama shirt. I don’t want to imagine the little one who wore it.
Instead I conjure the image of my tiny Oskar with his blue eyes and blond hair, features that will keep him safe in a world that’s lost its mind.
But none of us is safe.
Not really.
And it is for this reason that I must empty the sack and scrub out every stain on each piece of clothing.
I am an eraser, deleting all evidence of suffering from the narrative, negating lives.
This is what they want from me.
And I do it.
For my Oskar.
But, after the stains are gone,
After I’ve cut and pieced material for The Reich’s reuse, I do something else.
Something the Fuhrer did not ask me to do.
As I close up hems, needles slips from my fingers, into collars.
Unnoticeable until they scratch at the necks of unsuspecting soldiers.
The bump of a few metal buttons hidden inside a waistband may seem like nothing but an irritation.
But they are my only opportunity for resistance.
And, in a world that’s lost its mind,
We do what we can.