13 April 2011

Little Love Stories

In my Fiction Writing class we've been talking about short-short stories, otherwise known as flash-fiction or whatever.  Basically, it's a really short story.  No big deal, right?  Well, actually, for story-tellers, it can be a challenge to tell an entire story in less than a thousand words!!!  So, here's a couple of little love stories.  The first one was inspired by words from Parke Cottrell and a game called Buzz Words.  

Little Love Story #1:
On the oncology floor of the hospital, the sterile surfaces were disguised with plastic grapes and fake flowers.  The kids would pull off the leaves and write love notes to each other. 
On more than one occasion, these secret communiqués had fallen into the wrong hands, causing nurses to loose entire nights of sleep to bouts of weeping.
There was a file box behind the desk at the nurse’s station jammed with memorabilia; things the children had left behind when they moved on.  Photographs, colored-in pictures, tiny caps for bald heads.  The nurses tried not to open it too often.
On Thursday, poor emaciated Johnny succumbed.  They removed a green scrap from his clutching, lifeless hand.  "I love you," was all it said.  Sister Lilac burst into tears.  Only a week ago, she had retrieved a similar artifact from the cold grip of little Estelle.  "I love you too," was the simple message inscribed in Johnny’s enfeebled script on the artificial foliage.
Little Love Story #2:
“You know I would give my life for you,” Jimmy told her on a regular basis.  “Clearly not,” said Maggie, as the screen door slammed behind him yet again.  “Dying for someone and living for them are two very different things,” she always told the cuckoo clock in the hall.  When Maggie heard that old Jimmy’s been run down by a drunken driver outside a bar in Reno, she sighed and shrugged.  “At least I know he finally did something for me.”
Little Love Story #3:
She had cried all night; she was gone in the morning. She’d left only her handkerchief. He hadn’t known what to say to her, though now many options came to him. He held the hankie to his heart and cursed himself for driving her away with his silence. She needed words the way a flower needs water. But he’d never had a green thumb. It was just his way, to let things die. They’d had weeks and weeks of beautiful springtime but summer heat always follows, drying up the lush growth and scorching the ground. This kind of movement was confusing. Just when he’d gotten used to a season, it moved on. The world was always moving on and he was always struggling to catch up.
Write her a letter, said a tiny voice.
It’s too late, he said in response. But the paper was there and a pen on the desk in the kitchen. He opened toe drawer and found a single stamp among the litter of bills and papers.
“She’ll never get it,” he said aloud. He wanted her there, with him. Tangible. To trust his words to go out into the wide world and, somehow, to find their way to her seemed a leap of faith impossible for him to make. But it was the only way for him to tell her what she desperately needed to hear and what, he now realized, he desperately needed to say.
There you go!!!  All that story goodness in less than 500 words!


Peace,
Laura Cottrell