I am usually long-winded and verbose, a fact any of you who’ve been following this blog for even a brief amount of time know very well, but I have dabbled in flash fiction.  Years ago I read a collection called The World’s Shortest Stories of Love and Death, and at the time they had a way to send submissions.  Nothing came of it of course, but it was fun to force myself to write a story in 55 words of less.  Attempting to convey an idea in a limited number of words was both intriguing and challenging, and I was shocked to find how a compelling tale could be rendered with such minimalism.

Having been introduced to the twitter account @MicroSFF, which is very short original sci-fi stories as written by British author O. Westin, by Patrick Sponaugle who was inspired by that to start tweeting such himself, which in turn inspired me to try my hand at it (the link leads to his latest Microstory post.  They’re very good and I’ve retweeted quite a few of them), and I hope it will inspire some of you.  Since #microstory is used, the tale itself can only be 129 characters (so long as Twitter maintains its 140 character limit).

I’m not planning to do a monthly post about them like Pat does, just as they come up I suppose.  I wrote about a dozen, tweeted and tumbled them (my made up word for throwing something on tumblr).  A few were favorably received, and I figure I’d post them here for the interested.

I was never the type to visit graves, but when mother calls you, you have to go. #microstory

The bride blushed. It went well with the blood smeared over her cheeks. #microstory

Corruption’s lived in my blood before birth. The cure will make me a beautiful corpse. #microstory

The cat’s eyes floated shelf level to disturb the darkness. I always forget to turn them off. #microstory

The shooting star made me smile. God knows enough of them have fallen on this scorched earth. #microstory

I slathered on sunscreen at the bright rise and layered on more at each following dawn. #microstory

Everyone thanks God for small favors but no one ever thanks THE god of small favors. #microstory

“You know Christmas takes place in the season of Advent.”
“Yeah, but I didn’t think this year would be the REAL one.” #microstory

“Who thought replacing Valentine’s Day with Second Halloween would be so disastrous?”
“Certainly not all these shambling corpse.” #microstory

The footprints on the beach were always a lure, and the latest prey always left footprints. #microstory

We never heard the trees scream when we stripped off their bark, and they were deaf to ours in the same situation. #microstory

I’d finally earned my halo, tinted red as innocent blood. #microstory

Have  you ever dabbled in flash fiction or microstories?  Let me know in the comments!