My 100-Day Flash Challenge Part 3

Days 51 – 75

On March 18, 2021, I began a crazy adventure. That was the day I started my 100-day flash fiction challenge. My goal was to write, edit, publish one story per day for one hundred days.

Below, I summarize the third 25 days of my challenge.

The Third 25 Stories

51. Clive AND In the End
52. Allowance
53. The Color of Her Blood
54. WASP
55. The Elders; A Creation Myth of String & Feathers ***
56. O’Malley’s Books
57. Ray-Ray
58. Two Bridges
59. Treatment Room 11 ***
60. A Watercolor in the Rain
61. The Anagram Man
62. Frank
63. Mike
64. Two Words
65. Monster
66. Reynaldo the Rat ***
67. Bad Doggy
68. Magic Meadow
69. Midlife Mambo ***
70. Rewind ***
71. Salmon Nigiri
72. The Man on the Stair
73. The Man Who Wasn’t There
74. Da Wig in Da Woad
75. Heating Pad

INTRO

I started posting stories to WordPress, MEDIUM, and VOCAL.media in February. The flash fiction challenge started on March 18.

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My Faves

I’ve denoted my favorite stories from this bunch with links and asterisks in the table above.

I have tried to not include too many spoilers in my thoughts below, but please read the stories first if you wish. Please don’t fault me for giving away too much.

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The Elders; A Creation Myth of String & Feathers

The writing prompt for this story was simply ‘Invent a creation myth involving string and feathers.’

What an intriguing proposition. This is why I love writing prompts. I like to think I have a creative imagination, but I doubt I would have ever strung these words together on my own. They can provoke mad creativity, in my opinion, and I happily use them when I need.

 

Treatment Room 11

I cried while writing this one. I usually cry when I reread it. Not because it’s especially powerful, but because I loosely based all the characters in this story on my real-life coworkers. I love the tragic, damned ghosts stuck in their time loop existence (HEY! I told you there were spoilers here!). It is just a tragic, sad story. I was reminded of 12 Monkeys not in plot, but in the similar structure.

 

Reynaldo the Rat

I just boasted I have a creative imagination. Here’s proof of that rather arrogant claim. This story was my imagination. What if I saw a rat? What if that rat had a human face? What if it went on to speak to me? What if the rat possessed an outer sense of decorum, but lurking beneath that superficial level of politeness and words was an altogether different something underneath? This story is good. If you like it, that’s great. If you don’t, I still like it a great deal. Most of my stories I write for me anyway

 

Midlife Mambo

I have stated elsewhere I’ve yet to settle upon a single vein of creative ideas to mine for the duration. Midlife Mambo is from the opposite side of my creativity that gives birth to talking rats and realms in hell. This is aging, love, hot air balloons, and accidental romance. I listen to David Byrnes ‘Make Believe Mambo’ on loop while writing this one. If you’ve not heard it, do yourself a favor and rectify that now. Don’t even finish reading this post. Seriously. You can thank me later!

The woman in this story was based upon a woman I once knew. Briefly. She was lovely and wild and crazy. All fun attributes for a fling, but, in my experience antithetical for something with a slower burn. I hope all is well with you, Dawn.

 

Rewind

I love this story. I love the structure, I love the idea, I even sort of like the execution. I will polish it, and, I suspect, this one will really shine. I think there are several truths here. You can’t relive the past and even if you could, you couldn’t. It’s a nice idea, but thermodynamics and other things I might mention that will make me seem worldly and wise.

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Other Thoughts

WASP is an ugly, brutal story. I dislike wasps. I have a hate / love relationship with this story. In the end, of course, you’re supposed to root for the wasp and against the antagonist. The narrator is no protagonist. The conception of this story creeped me out. The execution creeps me out. This story scares the hell out of me. It’s not one of my favorites in this section. I’m sure the wasp nest above my Matrix in my covered parking spot is purely a coincidence. (Hmm? Is that another story I see lurking shyly on the horizons of my imagination?)

O’Malley’s Books is just an excuse for me to say how very much I like the flying dreams (hint, hint, subconscious…)

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Final Thoughts

When you spend only a day creating a story, they are not all going to be winners. But it surprised me to find that I have mined several nuggets during this challenge. After I complete this challenge, I plan on doing three things.

1. Celebrate accordingly

2. Take a few days off where I catch up on my reading.

3. I will begin sifting through the treasures I found during this time. I plan on editing, rewriting, finessing these things until I can release them under an actual (physical or virtual) sellable, self-published book.

I am trying to imagine anyone reading this entire post about my other posts. If you’ve read this far, please accept my sincere gratitude. Stephen King talks about his ‘constant reader.’ I hope to have my constant readers, eventually.