Days 76 – 100
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 fourth 25 days of my challenge.
The Final 25 Stories
- The End of Books
- Hang Loose
- Writing Prompt 015
- Monolith 3; Tammy’s Choice
- Challenge, A Rationalization
- The Holler Man ***
- Nicky
- After the Rain
- The Boy in the Ward
- The Interview
- The Proxy ***
- Before the Bang
- Zeke Vs The Real Zombies
- Papanca: A Story of Ten Dollars and Ten Minutes
- Henry’s Heart ***
- Tommy the Tube
- Zach ***
- Kenny and the Upside
- Note to Self
- Taxi
- Where are They?
- Mrs. Henderson ***
- 3:14 AM ***
- A Scorpionic Angle of Perception
- Very Bad Doggy
INTRO
I started posting stories to WordPress, MEDIUM, and VOCAL.media in February. The flash fiction challenge started on March 18.
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.
The Holler Man
My Grandma Hector was the only person I ever knew that used the word ‘holler.’ It was a lush green, deep valley that sat in front of her house. It was where she and her neighbors dumped their garbage. (This was the 1960s so please don’t ask me some snarky question about not recycling.)
The Holler Man is loosely based upon a young man I knew when I lived in Chester. There was, as always, lots of creative liberties taken.
The Proxy
I’m a diehard romantic. This story proves that, I would think.
Henry’s Heart
In The White Elephant I denied the idea that I was comparing myself (favorably) to Hemingway. I must now make a similar denial regarding Dickens. This isn’t your beloved Christmas Carol. This is me, a budding writer practicing in public.
Zach
This entire story is merely a setup for a cheesy punchline. But it garnered some attention on my BLOGs and I like it. It’s one part Cronenberg, two parts Kafka, stir and enjoy.
Mrs. Henderson
Confession time, Mrs. Henderson was really a teacher of mine a long time ago, in a world (now) far, far away. We did not get along. The humiliating incident I described, really happened to me.
The villain, a vampire, is so inured with life, she has grown bored, careless, arrogant. She taunts the timid child turned janitor even as he stands poised to kill her.
“What happened next?” several of my readers will ask at unclear endings such as these. Honestly I don’t know or care. The point of flash fiction is a bit of a tease. It’s not a short story nor a novel. It’s mean to evoke and incite like a haiku can.
3:14 AM
Approximately the first eighteen paragraphs were based more or less in reality. Then, of course, my story differs drastically from my one recent night of poor sleep. This one is ugly and brutal in the same way that my Monolith stories and In the Woods are.
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.
Stories by Shawn 