Monthly Archives: August 2010

A tall man in a trench coat stood between the potatoes and carrots of the Winn-Dixie swearing into his Bluetooth.

“You can’t do this to me. I’ve been on this case too long to just be thrown away like some moldy,” he looked around for a good noun, “cucumber.”

The other shoppers kept their distance.

“What do you mean he’s already on his way?” the man continued.

Another man in the same trench coat but wearing a goatee stood beside the livid man. “It’s time,” he said.

“Twenty-seven years. Twenty-seven years and this is how it ends?”

“‘Fraid so.”

A muffled shot ripped through the first man’s stomach.

“Clean up in produce,” the intercom buzzed five minutes later.

“I don’t get it,” Jessica said as she tilted her head to one side. “Is it supposed to mean something?”

Mike sighed in disgust. “It means everything! This painting is my very life, my very soul!”

“It looks like a bunch of paint splatters,” Jim chimed in.

“That’s right! Jim gets it,” Mike said. “The randomness of the splatter expresses the randomness of life, the confusion and frustration, and also the very beauty of life.”

Mike’s patrons stared at the painting a moment longer, and in unison shook their heads and walked away.

“You ignorant savages! You Philistines!” Mike yelled out to them.

Mike’s next project dripped paint onto canvas like the tears dripping from his face.

~~~
Here is something slightly different. This is not 101 words. (Gasp! The horror!) I wrote this in five minutes with only the prompt of a single word: “expression”. While my 101 word short stories challenge my writing skills in terms of brevity and variety, this five minute fiction challenges me in a few different ways (namely, I don’t have a time limit on my 101 word stories). The five minute fiction challenge is held over at Write Me! on Tuesday afternoons, so maybe I’ll participate again. The competition is awesomely more talented than I–an added challenge of stepping up my game.