Flash fiction doesn’t often come with a plot, although like most other forms of narratives, it comes with a beginning, a middle, and an end. It’s more about a mood, a thought, a memory, and a prompt to make the reader think deeply about the story that is usually larger than what is written. Flash fiction can go as short as six words, but there’s no hard-and-fast rule as to how short it should be to classify as a microstory, instead of short-short story. Here are four short-short stories written to explore brevity, a key attribute of this genre. Of these four stories, only one, “Fling,” numbers more than 200 words.
Kiss
They met at a bar counter. The conversation over single malts was mindblowing, so was the connection. He knew from the get-go that the stranger at the bar was gay. He read through the pick-up lines, the hints being thrown now and then to test if the attraction was mutual. It never crossed his mind ever if he himself had gay tendencies, never found the male body attractive, but when the stranger leaned in, he didn’t recoil. When the stranger kissed him, he let him. He closed his eyes, trying to see if those lips would feel any different. They didn’t. He could be kissing a girl. He made a mental note to stop, but he let the stranger go further.
Swing
They were married for 10 years. A few months after the anniversary, she confessed to him that she found herself feigning sleep when the main doors downstairs announced his arrival. “I’ve tried every trick in the book,” she said, citing headaches, long days, stomach cramps, not being in the mood. But she could only make too many excuses and it was soon established that her default reaction to her husband’s amorous responses was to flee. They agreed that she was bored. They agreed that sex became to him a harness by which to keep her from straying. Someone proposed partner swapping. She doesn’t remember being horrified. For a while, they considered doing it, even going through a list of couple friends they wouldn’t mind doing it with. And then it became too complicated. Her boredom turned to contempt. She saw and did not see herself in her husband’s preferences and either way she was annoyed, realizing that on her own she sought a man so far removed from everything her husband was or represented. They broke up before their 11th anniversary came up.
Escape
On the eve of her 25th birthday, she overheard her six-year-old daughter whispering to her husband about how excited she was about the surprise dinner being prepared for the next day. She burst into tears. She didn’t understand what she was feeling, but she was very angry. She was enraged that her husband had their daughter by whom to tie her down to what seemed to be her fate. Although she felt love, albeit resentful, toward her husband and her daughter, she knew that neither he nor she could fill the void into which she would fall helplessly when they weren’t looking, when she could let her guard down, when she didn’t have to pretend nothing was eating her up. The next day, her daughter woke up and found her bed empty. She was nowhere in the house. Her husband looked everywhere, but she left no trace.
Fling
His father threatened to disown him, and it took a miracle to convince the father to let the son handle it. He knew, as his father and all of society knew now, that his wife was having an affair, but after what felt like an eternity of outrage, he decided it was just a passing fling. The truth was his wife was the best thing that ever happened to him and the only good thing in his life that truly mattered. From the moment they met, he had wondered what he could have done to deserve her. While it was true that he was a prized catch, as the headlines were wont to portray him, he was no more than his father’s son. To this beautiful woman who was his wife, he couldn’t be half the Prince Charming. Far from gallant, he was awkward. If not for his father’s powerful surname, and the wealth he represented as his father’s heir apparent, no one would pay him mind, but his wife did. She looked past his faults. She didn’t mind that he was a bad kisser, that he was bad in bed, that he was bad at conversations, that he was bad at grand gestures, that the only way he could try to sweep her off her feet was through gifts of diamonds and dream vacations and a luxury chain of hotels to run. Even his Maserati did not deserve him, so he kept it in the garage, along with the other collectibles. Instead, he goes around in a chauffeured Mercedes, too busy to even look out the window at the passing scenery. But those weren’t the worst things about him. Born to inherit his father’s empire and already on top of many companies, he was tied to his work, even during those dream vacations he would take his wife on, only to leave her alone while he spent an inordinate amount of time attending to business matters. His whole life was about his father’s legacy that even his wife was expected to uphold. It broke his heart to see his wife lose more and more of herself as the years passed. In the vacancy of her eyes he could see oceans of tears that would pool in those orbs when she felt alone, languishing in a marriage that felt more like a trap. So he decided he could let her have her fling. Despite his helplessness, though it seemed impossible, he hoped against hope that in time he could charge at last like a knight in shining armor to free her from this madness, knowing that, in order to do so, he had first to free himself.