Once upon a time…well, it was actually just a week ago, a beloved Sepia personality asked:
yay! I love Fast Fiction Fridays at the Mutiny. Can we do it again next week?
Of course we can, darling. “55 Fiction Friday” is a meme I’ve been faithful to for a while; I’m happy to infect the Mutiny with it.
For those of you who missed last week’s brilliance and have no idea what I’m going on about, the idea behind “Fast Fiction” is simple:
Flash fiction, also called sudden fiction, micro fiction, postcard fiction or short-short fiction, is a class of short story of limited word length. Definitions differ but is generally accepted that flash fiction stories are at most 200 to 1000 words in length. Ernest Hemingway wrote a six-word flash: “For sale. Baby shoes. Never worn.” Traditional short stories are 2,000 to 10,000 words in length…One type of flash fiction is the short story with an exact word count. An example is 55 Fiction or Nanofiction. These are complete stories, with at least one character and a discernible plot, exactly 55 words long.[wiki]
More than a few bloggers have been writing a piece of nanofiction every Friday, for weeks.
I was elated at the response that my post on this meme inspired– comment after comment containing perfect little gems of story– we’d be crazy NOT to create a tradition out of such goodness.
What goodness it was. By the time I closed comments at the end of the weekend (a practice I think I’ll continue), we were in the triple digits.
Umair made me lightheaded when he channeled the book I love most:
Transported back to 1951, the thought of making money by betting on cricket matches yet to happen was for some strange reason furthest from my mind, which should give you a sense of just how at home I felt with the whole affair. But then: “I wish she’d married either Kabir or Amit. . .”
Brand spanked anew Guest blogger Ads also penned a 55 I adored:
“OK, almost done. Better?”
F T O M Z became a smudge.
“Or worse?”
“Worse.”
“Ok. Well, your right eye is 20/125, but your left eye is actually 15/20.”
For a moment he wondered if he could be the guy that singlehandedly brought back the monocle, but ultimately, he went with the wire-rimmed Kenneth Coles.
Finally, there was one piece of nanofiction which moved into my home and loitered around corners like a ghost playing tricks on my peripheral vision. It was the story I loved most, out of the almost hundred that were contributed (and that’s saying something, because dozens of them were excellent). Paranoid Android, take a bow:
All that stood between Simone and her honeymoon was a report submission.
“He is never on time!” she fumed, as the office clock ticked 8:45 AM. She could almost see the single-engine plane they were flying to Hawaii. She gazed at infinity in clear NY sky, to divert her mind.
“Isn’t that plane flying too low?”
I can’t believe an entire week has passed since I read that for the first time. I’m sure I’ll be expressing a similarly incredulous sentiment next week, when I meander through what you are about to write, looking for my next set of favorites. No pressure.
Now…on your marks, get set…create. 🙂
:+:
An enormous amount of gratitude to MD-didi for leaving a comment last week which provided me with a title when I could not conjure an apposite name for this post today. 🙂
If you are among the very young at heart…..
Yeah, my ma, she’s a tough broad, a jazzy, rag-time gal, we kids grew up vaudeville, we learned our letters covered in greasepaint and the stories she told, about our fathers. We were the beginning and the end of it, man. We were born theater.
(Ahh, we’re supposed to have a desi theme……)
He asked me, that whiskery old man, if my name was Irish, and I said, no! It’s Indian. It’s Mira, not Moira. He asked for a packet of cigarettes, and I got it for him and rang it up at the register. After he paid and left, Sanjay and I laughed. Irish! Stupid old man.
Oh, the desi in the shop being asked a stupid question was based on personal experience, yes, a doddery old dear actually asked me if my name was Irish….my name is Madhu.
We are all brown irish, actually, don’t you know? 😉
A brooding introspective masturbates intensely under a tree.
Virgins, gold, lotuses, and elephants. All of his wishes come true.
Pleasure builds. Desires grow. He is the king of kings, a god amongst men…
He climaxes. “A dream?!”, he shrieks, as he is ripped from his protective womb.
Naked, crying, and covered in goo. Buddha awakens.
Rupa — Thank you very much for your response 😉
Timepass (and everyone else) — If you haven’t yet figured out what’s really going on in my James Bond story, let me know and I’ll explain it to you.
Umair — Nice ’55’ (assuming that the “Jai” you mentioned was referring to me). I’m going to do some research on Hyderabad and the Char Minar in order to find out more 😉
The rarified air bore memories. Those wonderful summers spent in the cabin. How she would race him into the pond, and stick her tongue out when he was slow. He could see her wet smile in the distance, waiting naughtily. Cheeks dimpled, knowing he would soon smother her with kisses, he jumped off the window.
Jai, Could you explain the James Bond one? It took me half an hour to get the apprentice one 🙂 but it was worth it. I’m so gonna be here every friday.
Mailman Rushdie: holy sh*&. Someone’s been spending too much time in lab!
I too am brown Irish! Well, my handle is at any rate (although I am not truly of Irish descent)
Khush,
Sure, it’s fairly straightforward.
There is only one 7-Star hotel in the world: the famous Burj Al-Arab hotel in Dubai.
‘The Sheikh’ is what many Islamist extremists sympathetic to OBL refer to him as.
So James Bond is obviously on one of his missions, with the target being OBL.
Some high-roller at the hotel (billionaire/Middle Eastern royalty/politician), who Bond has already visually identified, is in a position to be able to lead Bond to OBL. Whether the ‘lucky’ individual is necessarily going to do this voluntarily is, of course, possibly an entirely different matter 😉
The name “Nafisa” verifies that the location is in the Middle East; she’s the Bond Girl of the moment, and could well be working for the ‘other side’ (at present, anyway. Alternatively she could be a neutral party who has unfortunately ended up being caught in the middle of things due to her connections with the various villains of the story).
The Ambassador could either be from Pakistan, one of the Gulf States, or Saudi Arabia etc. In any case, he’s a link to OBL or to one of his contacts, and is either already onto Bond, or Bond has deliberately been doing something to get his attention.
Admit it, you can hear the James Bond theme music inside your head already…;)