Hello, hello, hello my brother and sister bloggers and flash fiction writers and the rest of you cats out there. The word “cats” really dates me, doesn’t it? But the Old Soldier doesn’t mind being dated. The Old Soldier is a survivor. Today is a day of celebration.
It’s a day of celebration because according to Google, The Gazette is the #1 flash fiction blog in the world! If you Google flash fiction you will find The Gazette on page one. As of today, The Gazette is #4 on the first page. The other three links are not blogs. So, there you have it. The Old Soldier must be doing something right.
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So, that’s it for Thursday. The Old Soldier is celebrating with a six-pack of Past Blue Ribbon…
Scott Delaney is the Old Soldier’s alter ego. I really lived what Scott goes through. The thing about the following story is that it’s all exposition. It flys in the face of “show don’t tell.” It’s a perfect example of how not to write a flash fiction story.
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Jocks And Ballerinas
When Scott Delaney turned eighteen he joined the army to get away from killing his father who would get drunk and beat his mother. He attended Point Park College in Pittsburgh just before he joined the army and went to Vietnam when the college was still a two-year institution, a junior college. After he was discharged from the army and after he enrolled and finally dropped out of Duquesne University in Pittsburgh he hung around at Point Park College for several years. He wasn’t an official student but many of the professors knew of his serious interest in writing short stories. His youngest brother was president of the student body. Scott was admired by his youngest brother who introduced him all around. Scott became well-known on campus. He was issued a special library card and could take out books just like a student. He carried his notebook and collections of the writings of Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, John O’Hara and Gertrude Stein everywhere he went. He usually sat at the same table in the snack bar, writing in his notebook and watching the students.
By chance he had picked an empty table where the female ballet dance majors always sat. He was surprised when several student ballerinas in black leotards and white tights, their dance bags slung from a shoulder, came over and sat down. It was their table and that’s where they always sat. So, he always sat there, too. You could tell a student’s major by where the student sat. There was mixing but the groups stayed relatively stable.
The school had a fine baseball team. Many of the jocks on the team belonged to this one fraternity which had the worst reputation of any group on campus. Sometimes in the snack bar they really carried on occasionally bringing their bats and taking full swings at imaginary baseballs. Scott was always afraid they’d smack someone walking by. It never did happen while he was there. He became friendly with the president of the fraternity. He joined the fraternity as a “social” member.
The president of the fraternity was no saint but he was constantly worried about the wilder behavior of some of the other members. It was funny. It was like riding a souped up truck with one foot on the gas and the other foot on the brake.
Still, to be a dancer or a jock you had to work through a lot of pain to become any good. Not until years later, long after he had stopped hanging around Point Park College and was putting together his first book of short stories, did Scott Delaney realize he liked jocks and ballet dancers for the same reason.
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Ladies, Have You Ever Done A Public Sex Act?
Hello, hello, hello my brother and sister bloggers and writers. The Old Soldier has a sexy flash fiction story for you in this Friday’s edition of The Gazette. Yes, I have a man and a woman…Well, why give it away? But I want you to notice that this isn’t some cheap porn story. There is not one vulgar word in the story. The characters are fully developed, as fully developed as you can have in a very short story.
There is dialogue. The story is a perfect example of “show don’t tell.”..
The snow continues to fall in Pittsburgh. But there is nothing I can do about the weather; so there’s no use in complaining. Remember, the next edition of The Gazette will be published on Monday. Have a good weekend.
Ladies, I hope you like this story, too. Leave a comment to let me know.
This is the Old Soldier reporting from Pittsburgh.
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Lust
It was a Saturday several years ago in downtown Pittsburgh. Paul Bremmer and Colleen Hammond sat opposite each other in a booth in a corner in the back.
“No,” he said. “You’re wrong.”
“Five years and you want more time,” she said. “I’m sick of it.”
“What the hell does he have?”
“Me.”
“No, he doesn’t have you.”
“We’ll see about that.”
A sliver of September sunlight crept through the big window up front. Several workmen sat on stools at the bar up front. The TV above the bar was not on. On Saturdays these workmen worked only half a day, and now they sat at the bar eating a spicy chili con carne and drinking bottled Iron City beer.
“Lou,” one of the men said. “Put the Pitt game on.”
The bartender said, “It ain’t time yet.”
Paul stared across the table at Colleen. He said, “Have you set a date?”
“Whenever I’m ready. A civil ceremony and then in June a church wedding. He wants a big one.”
Paul looked down at the melting ice in their glasses. “Are you crazy?”
“Isn’t everyone?”
“You hardly know this guy.”
“He works and he wants me.”
“I work.” He looked up at her. “I want you.”
Paul Bremmer was thirty-five years old. He worked as a shift supervisor in a downtown fast food restaurant. The company medical plan covered eighty per cent of any medical bills he might ever have and he belonged to the pension plan. He got three weeks paid vacation a year. He had four thousand dollars in a passbook savings account, two thousand in a five-year CD and he had just opened an IRA. In two years he could pay cash for a newer used car without destroying his passbook savings account.
“Oh, Paul,” Colleen said. “We would be so good together.”
“Too much overhead.”
“I’ll be there.”
“You’re part of the overhead.”
“Oh, fuck you.”
He slid around to her side of the booth. She wore a short dress with no pantyhose and sleek white sandals were on her feet. Her legs were smooth, lightly tanned, strong and tapered long.
“What,” she said, “may I ask are you doing?”
“Is he what you want?”
“You’re what I want. Paul, what on earth are you doing?”
“Relax,” he said. “No one’s paying attention.”
They sat side by side. She picked up her glass and held it with both hands in front of her face, her elbows on the table top. She put the glass back down, sat back against the leather, slid down a little to tilt her hips upward with knees apart and the palms of her hands down on the table top.
She said, “If anyone has to use the restroom…”
She said, “I don’t believe I’m letting you do this…”
She said, “This is so perverse…”
She pressed her face into his shoulder to muffle her sounds. After a few moments she tensed…and then she slowly relaxed. A faint flush suffused her neck and face. He held her close, kissing her mouth, cheeks and closed eyes as she leaned weakly against him.
Up front, the legs of a stool scraped the floor. Paul and Colleen composed themselves. A workman glanced at them on his way to the bathroom.
Paul said, “I just wanted to do something crazy like we use to do.”
“You know it thrills me. You know it turns me on.”
“Does he know it turns you on?”
“He would think it was vulgar.”
Paul laughed. “It is vulgar. It’s cheap and vulgar.”
Paul took their glasses to the bar for refills. The bartender turned on the TV and then said to one of the workmen, “Now are you happy?”
“I got one hundred bucks on this game.”
“I don’t bet.”
“Ah, Lou, where’s the spice in that?”
The bartender took Paul’s order. Paul paid and then went back and sat opposite Colleen.
“What just happened,” Colleen said, “what we just did doesn’t change anything.”
“Does it get me an invite to the wedding?”
Sunlight flooded through the big window up front. Colleen Hammond looked down at her fresh drink, dipped the first finger of her right hand into the drink and then circled the lip of the glass. She kept dipping and circling until the glass began to sing.
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Short Story Ideas That Work
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