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FLASH FICTION

Prompt:

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  • 3 participants wrote a list of their 5 dislikes and 5 likes. Possibly single words. For advanced writers phrases work too.

  • Off the lists of the other two people 3 dislikes and 3 likes had to be chosen. Creating a list of 6 dislikes and 6 likes.

  • With this list of words or phrases a flash fiction had to be written

  • The words or phrases had to be used unchanged in the order as chosen

 

List of words used in this flash fiction

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6 likes

  1. Making lists and checking them off

  2. Fresh flowers in a vase on my table

  3. Sweet desert, cookies

  1. Eggplant parm

  2. Tall trees

  3. Good looking shoes

 

6 dislikes

  1. Dust

  2. Traffic

  3. Waltzes

  1. Violence and meanness

  2. Drivers who cut me off

  3. Worrying about the future

 

Time given for writing the flash fiction with the chosen words: 20 min

GRANDMA´S HOME - EAST VILLAGE

My father’s childhood home in the East Village appeared as if a spring sun spotlight had settled on it alone.  The five-story building hadn’t changed much since I last visited after his mother had died 60 years earlier.

          At that point in time, I climbed the steps to her 4th floor apartment to see what I might find and cherish as an heirloom. The place looked as if someone had recently done the dusting and vacuuming.  It looked just like I remembered it with its large windows of streaming light and lovely furnishings.  I sat on the green velvet couch and looked around at the tchokes on the coffee and side tables.  Should I take all of them or just a chosen few I thought?

          My grandmother’s shoes from 1950 something were still in her bedroom closet.  I had traipsed around in them as a kid, clip clopping on the oak wood floors.  I put the brown sued shoes with a strap across and a one inch heel on my feet and walked around the apartment.  My toes hurt, but I insisted on wearing them as I walked to the kitchen.

          I found a metal tin with the words “Morning Coffee” but knew that whatever was in there wouldn’t be drinkable.  At that moment, I craved the sweet cookies my grandmother made from scratch.  Oatmeal with raisins.  I could smell the fragrant butter as I sat at her formica kitchen table.  The tin would be a keeper and the shoes would be too.  There was a suitcase in my grandmother’s bedroom that I used to carry the stuff I wanted. 

          When I had opened the suitcase at home, I looked at the old and pretty stuff, but the shoes are what I cherished the most. 

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Leslie Ava Shaw

SHOES IN NY

Her feet were killing her already. Damn it, she thought to herself as she flopped across the hotel bed. 

 

What a dummy I was to wear those new shoes today, my first day in New York. Blisters had formed on her heels, and Ellen was feeling numb in her toes.

 

Now I’ve got to get into my cocktail dress and those gorgeous Gucci heels for dinner and the gallery event, she sighed.

 

Ellen had a big night ahead. Her new boyfriend Israel was picking her up soon for dinner and an art gallery event that night. Ellen had never been to a New York gallery, and if truth be told, she hadn’t been to New York since she was a young woman. And Ellen was not a young woman anymore.

 

Ellen, a choir director from a small town in Indiana, had met Israel on a river cruise on the Danube. She was recently divorced and thought she would treat herself to a cruise at Christmastime. Better than being alone, she had decided. And it certainly was.

 

Israel, it turned out, was also alone at the holidays. He had been divorced, too, a few years before and took a cruise every year at that time. Ellen remembered the first time she heard his voice, at the dinner table on the small ship. Wow was it resonant - and he was so interesting! Ellen and Israel developed a camaraderie on the trip. She told him all about her love of music, and he shared his love of art. They took the daily excursions together to local museums and galleries, and they listened to music in the evenings. Since returning stateside they had begun a long-distance courtship. 

 

Israel had been to visit her twice. And now, on her first trip to see him in New York, she had overdone her day of exploring with him and her feet were killing her.

 

Nonetheless, she dressed and squeezed into those shoes that typically felt so good. But she did feel great about the dress she’d chosen - and hobbled down to the lobby where he was waiting. After a short walk in the freezing late spring evening, they arrived at Israel’s favorite Italian restaurant near the gallery. They had plenty of time over their dinner - shared antipasti and eggplant parmesan - for Israel to explain the art he was interested in seeing at the art gallery. He, thank goodness, hailed a cab and even with the miserable Manhattan traffic, they arrived right on time at the gallery show, featuring Joan Mitchell, famous for her triptychs.

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Mary Lee Gosz

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