Flash Fiction - Day Four & Final

Whoooo, yes! Fist pumps and happy jigs. I managed to pull off this massive stretch goal of writing a new Flash Fiction story four days in a row.

I'm not going to lie to ya, this has been challenging. Getting today's story done was tough, and I think it reads like it. This challenge really took some work.

Today, the overworked Muse got a little silly. I hope you're willing to come along for this final ride.

Tomorrow, as promised, I'll be posting an oral reading of a New Mexico folktale as my wrap up of this crazy off beat week of Flash Fiction and Fables.

It's a good one, I think you're going to like it, especially the readers/listeners from my home state.

But for today, my randomly generated word is: portability

Without further ado:

The Device

by Karen Fayeth

Darryl and Sean worked quietly, side-by-side in the corrugated metal work shed they referred to as "The Lair."

Work was wrapping up on their invention, a device without a name so far. If you asked them, it was totally a fusion reacting, power providing, super über top of the line invention.

The whole deal was this, it was a small reactor that creates enough power to run a small city. Clean burning, no electricity or fuel required, and it only fills up a small footprint.

The genesis of the invention came when Darryl had entered a project in his college science fair to show how he could make small fusion reactions.

Sean had also worked on an entry for the fair, but wasn't able to complete it in time. His was a device for efficient distribution of power in a small space and without heat or exhaust.

The two ideas put together was an invention in which Pajaro Ventures had invested $3 million in R&D money. It would totally pay off, assuming they could get the device to be stable.

Initial trials were not as successful as they'd hoped.

The Lair had been replaced three times due to what the boys referred to as "misfires."

But if they got it to work right, they could rule the world. Literally, they hoped, because that would be cool.

When they weren't working on, or fighting over what to call the device, they were arguing over what to call themselves. Darryl favored Captain Hazard as his superhero slash evildoer name. His costume included a bright yellow vest, the kind road crews wear to be seen by passing cars.

Sean was leaning toward Dr. Reaction. His costume was a bit more ill defined, consisting mostly of a white lab coat with nuclear symbols attached to both shoulders like epaulettes.

The U.S. Army was interested in the unnamed device, as they needed strong, reliable power at many of their installations in the Middle East. A clean burning self-contained unit that kept them off either generators requiring gasoline or power lines requiring infrastructure was looking real enticing.

However, the U.S. Army was a bit skeptical that two recent college grads had the gonads to actually pull this thing off. No matter, the risk was on Pajaro Ventures. If it worked, Parajo got a huge contract. If it didn't, Pajaro ate the R&D fees and the U.S. Army would keep on looking.

Early on, Darryl and Sean had flown out to Washington to meet with senior ranking officials, including one five star general. The field commanders gave the boys their list of must haves and nice to haves around this thing.

The team agreed on device specs. Darryl and Sean would come back in six months to demo their progress.

That demo was due to take place the next morning. After a good night's sleep, the boys rose early and got ready. A black Suburban rolled up and men in dark sunglasses loaded up The Device and the boys and delivered them to the airport, where they boarded the Parjaro private plane headed for the Pentagon.

The flight went without a hitch and soon Darryl and Sean found themselves in a large auditorium surrounded by a lot of people, most wearing dark green uniforms.

"Yeah, so, ok, let's get right into this," Darryl said, doing the talking. He was the more eloquent of the two.

The Device sat on the floor in front. When signaled, Sean hit the go button.

Fans whirred, parts rumbled and the machine's lights flashed.

"As you can see," Darryl said, "It takes only a few moments to come online. Once you see an orange light here, at the side, it's fully charged and ready to go."

The light came on, and Darryl took the plugs from a refrigerator, a clothes dryer and a microwave and plugged them into the outlets built into The Device.

"These high power drawing items are but a fraction of what The Device can power. When up to full capacity, this device could power a small city, say the size of Austin."

The assembled crowed murmured their approval.

It worked. The Device was generating smooth power. It shook a little, but no fires so far.

"Gentlemen, I believe this meets your requirements for high voltage yet safe and steady power. We have achieved your list of must haves. Oh, wait, there's one more item we haven't demoed," Darryl said, flipping a red switch on the back panel.

Immediately a bright blue undulating hole, about a foot wide, ripped into the fabric of time and space above the machine.

"And there you have it, General, sir. Your requirement is complete."

General Johanssen looked at the eerie opening in the air that was starting to exert a gravitational pull.

"What the sam hell have you boys done?" he shouted.

"You said that your key requirement was portal ability. We've succeeded. The Device not only facilitates powering your base camps, but also provides the beginning stages of time travel. This really is a cutting edge machine."

General Johanssen's face turned tomato red with anger. "I said it was mandatory that this device have PORTability, meaning moving the stupid thing as our troops relocate around the world. I did NOT ask for goddamn portal ability! What the hell is that, anyway?"

Darryl and Sean looked at each other, eyes wide. Darryl began frantically fiddling with the red switch.

"Boys, close that goddamn worm hole before someone gets hurt!" a major called out from their left side.

"Um, I'm trying, sir," Darryl said, sounding panicked.

Suddenly, a nearby office chair was sucked into the depths of the wormhole and sent two thousand light years ahead into space. It landed with a "whump" on the fifth moon of the planet Kranon, killing the opposition leader of the attempted violent overthrow of the King of the Kranonians.

Two thousand light years back on Earth, Darryl could only reply, "Whoops."

"The Device" by Karen Fayeth is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 United States License.

Flash Fiction - Day Three

I wanted to take a minute to thank my usual readers for sticking with me through this week of a bit different sort of blog post.

I'm not going to lie to ya, this challenge has been a lot harder than I expected. I compete in contests where we have 48 hours to write a thousand word story, and even then, the time feels tight. I've been producing the stories this week in around five to six hours.

I'm pretty pleased so far. They all could do with more time and distance to allow for extra editing, but I'm not ashamed of anything I've written so far.

I hope at least a few of you are enjoying reading them as much as I am writing them.

My goal for this week has worked. I needed to shake things up to get back into my blogging head and it's working. I'm looking forward to getting back into my groove next week.

For now, here's Day Three's story.

Today's randomly generated is: representation

Top O' The World, Ma!

by Karen Fayeth

Alex was on top of the world. Six months ago, he'd been promoted to Senior Director of Sales and he was rolling. He was the fair-haired boy employed at one of the fastest growing companies just shy of Fortune's top 100.

Yesterday the Executive VP of Sales had called Alex personally to congratulate him on landing the biggest client in the history of Jackflash Software. The ink was barely dry on the deal.

Alex and his boys had properly celebrated the victory.

After just two hours of sleep, Alex now looked at himself up and down in the mirror because he knew he looked good. Not just "hey, that's a nice suit" but "damn! You look GOOD in that Prada suit" sort of good.

Even his hair looked good and his eyes weren't the slightest bit puffy. A little chin stubble told the tale, but hell, that would just make him look a little rugged today.

If asked, he could say he was up all night on an overseas call. They'd buy that.

This morning he had a date with the CEO of Jackflash, Bob Jackson. The invitation had come quite a few days before the new contract had settled and had been somewhat vague as to the agenda.

Jackflash was still a pretty small company, so meeting with the CEO wasn't entirely unusual. Maybe there was another big deal in the works? Or maybe there was even a big bonus coming his way. He smiled at the thought. Oh so many toys like boats and cars he would buy...

Alex looked at himself in the mirror. "God, it's a great day to be me," he said to his reflection.

Turning from the mirror and picking up his car keys, he felt the burn from lack of sleep around his eyes. Unacceptable, he told his wavering body.

Revving the engine of his brighter-than-the-sun yellow Porsche, his first stop on the way into work was a 7-Eleven. Two Rockstar energy drinks should do the trick.

Alex was guzzling the second Rockstar when he parked and walked into the office. Burping loudly from the fizzy drink and tossing the can in the trash, he put on his winningest smile when he saw people in the lobby turn to look at him with nods and waves.

News must be out, he thought. But not everyone was smiling. Jealous, probably, he thought to himself.

He smiled and made like a politician. If there was a baby in the room, he would have kissed it.

After all the schmoozing and stopping by to talk to friends along the way, it took him a half hour to get from the front door to his office. His heart was trip hammering in his chest from all the caffeine and he couldn't sit still. He glanced briefly at email and ignored the flashing message light on his phone.

A note was taped to his monitor. Terry, his boss, wanted to see him as soon as he came in. He checked his watch, 9:45. Terry was probably already in the day's meetings, but he figured he'd give it a try.

Alex walked so fast to the elevators, the back of his jacket trailed out behind him like a little woolen cape.

"Hey Susan! Is she in?" Alex said, putting on his charming voice for Terry's admin. Susan wielded all the power in the organization, including whether or not Alex flew first class, so he treaded lightly.

Susan looked at Alex with a face drained of blood. "No, Alex. She's gone."

"Gone? You mean meetings?

"No. I mean gone. Fired." Susan whispered the last word.

"Fired? What the hell?"

Susan shrugged.

Alex checked the Rolex on his right wrist and noted he had five minutes to get upstairs to meet Bob.

"Ok, I'm going up," Alex said, pointing toward the ceiling, the company recognized gesture to indicate Bob's office on the top floor.

Susan was VP of Sales. If she was gone, and with Alex coming off such a huge victory...well, the writing was on the wall. He was going to get promoted again.

Alone in the elevator, he did a little "yes!" fist pump dance/jig sort of a move.

When the elevator doors opened, he was met by Bob's Admin, Charlene. "He's here," she said into her boss' open office door, then with an out of character syrupy voice, "I believe Bob is ready for you. Go on in."

Alex walked into the office with his head high, but faltered when he saw Ellen Banks, VP of Human Resources and Stan Ingersol, Jackflash General Counsel already seated at the conference table.

"Hello Stan," he said, shaking the man's hand, "Ellen," he said, nodding. "Bob, how great to see you! You heard about the Techtron Telco deal, I assume?" Alex said, all smiles and sales training in his demeanor.

"Yes, I've heard. But that's not what we're here for. Alex, why don't you have a seat?"

Alex was still grinning ear to ear when he sat down at the head of the table.

Alex drummed his fingers on the table impatiently and looked at Bob who turned instead to Stan. "How about you take the lead on this meeting?"

Stan cleared his throat and shuffled through the stack of paperwork in front of him. He found the page he needed and held it up.

"Alex, this is a copy of the resume you submitted when you applied to Jackflash."

Alex leaned forward to squint at the document, then nodded.

"It was your representation at the time you were hired that you both attended and graduated from Yale School of Management. Your hiring manager failed to do a background check before extending the very generous offer. During a routine audit, Ellen's team found the lapse in procedure and conducted the appropriate check."

Alex swallowed. He knew what was coming next.

"Son, you never even graduated high school."

Alex closed his eyes.

Visions of Masaratis stopped dancing in his head.

"Top O' The World, Ma!" by Karen Fayeth is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 United States License.

Flash Fiction - Day One

Today's word from the random word generator is: gibberish

And so, without further ado....

What Leibniz Never Learned

by Karen Fayeth


Anton dropped his head into his hands with a deep sigh, allowing frustration to wash over him.

He had so many things to say, deep, powerful, urgent emotions, and all he could squeeze out onto the pages of his spiral notebook were gibberish lines and jumbled words.

If only it were as easy as the calculus he loved so much. Figuring derivatives of complex equations happened with ease and grace.

Math made sense. Feelings did not.

He turned to a clean page and wrote down a problem, crafting the most difficult math he could think of and then solved the equation without breaking a sweat.

Math = Easy. Clean. Pure.

Words. They sucked. They could be misinterpreted and used against you. Fumble over the wrong words and people laugh, they make fun, they misunderstand who you are at your core.

Words were squishy like jell-o. Numbers were clean and simple and rarely misinterpreted.

Anton sighed again. Be that as it may, words were what he needed to use right now. No calculations could explain how he felt about Lisa.

She was his graduate teaching assistant for his hatefully required English Lit class. She was a lady who liked words.

It was Lisa's hand that wrote the red ink C minus grades on every one of his papers.

She also left comments like, "Where is the heart of Anton in this story?" and "It's ok to use adjectives."

Anton would never have believed that he could love a girl who was anything other than a math or engineering major. Maybe even a physics major, but that was pushing it.

And yet here was this raven-haired beauty, with eyes the color of periwinkles and a smile as bright as the North Star.

"Hey, that's not bad," he thought, then scribbled down "North Star and periwinkles" next to the first derivative and just before the next.

For inspiration, Anton dug into his desk drawer and withdrew the file labeled "Creative Writing." He fished out the paper that had netted him the worst grade and stared at her writing.

He sniffed the page, hoping to capture a momentary whiff of her smell, a mixture of rose oil and chamomile.

Hmm, he thought, and then scribbled down, "roses and chamomile"...that might be something.

She was right, his heart wasn't in his words. He wrote assignment papers in the last minute before class, fulfilling only the word count requirements (a number!) and caring less about things like sentence structure and meaning.

Anton ran his finger over the lines of the words she wrote, examining each letter with a scientific eye, measuring their weight and calculating the angles of the swoops in her pen stroke.

Lost in moony love thoughts, he was snapped back to reality by the thunderous return of Lars.

"Oy! Anton!" shouted his Australian rugby playing couldn't-be-any-more-different-from-me roommate who filled the corners of their dorm room with beer, cigarettes and cheap cologne.

"Hey Lars," Anton replied in a quiet voice, hoping his roommate would follow suit.

He didn't.

"Lend me a twenty, mate, I need beer!" Lars shouted.

Lars always borrowed money and never paid Anton back. He should tell him no. But if he did, Lars would only hang around the dorm room blowing unkind sounds from his tourist version of a didgeridoo.

If peace could be bought for the price of twenty dollars, maybe the math worked out in Anton's favor.

He sighed again and pulled his RFID blocking wallet from his back pocket.

"Here," Anton said, thrusting the note at Lars, "Go drink somewhere else, I have work to do."

"Oooh, someone's knickers are in a knot!" Lars taunted, then swiped the twenty from Anton's hand, scampering out the door. In as much as a 280 pound rugby player could scamper.

Anton turned back to his desk and looked down at his notebook.

The blank page stared back.

Anton closed his eyes. "Feelings," he thought to himself. "What am I feeling?"

"Mad. Goddamn Lars!"

"Ok, no. Not that feeling," his mind replied, sternly.

So he thought about Lisa. He thought about that day she wore a sundress with small yellow flowers with bare legs. He could see her feet in the tiny sandals she wore.

Anton had a thing for girl's feet. It was not something he mentioned to his friends, obviously.

Ok, the mental image was working. He was feeling something akin to a feeling.

"Yeah, that's the stuff," his brain encouraged.

He let his mind wander to fantasies of Lisa holding his hand as they walked together to the math building.

He thought about how all those other math nerds would lose their shit when they saw him with a girl.

Oh yeah, this felt good.

"Now!" said his mind, "Write! Write your heart!"

Anton scribbled furiously on the paper, opening the floodgates and letting the words fly with the fleet winged feet of Mercury the Messenger.

Oh sweet release of all that was pent up inside!

He quickly tore the page from his notebook, folded it roughly and stuffed it into his jeans pocket. He ran from his room to the admin office in the English building.

He found her name on the wall of mailboxes and carefully placed the note inside, heart racing out of his chest and into his throat.

Spent, he returned to his dorm room to wait.

The next day, Lisa noticed something in her mailbox. Usually it was empty, but a few Luddite professors still refused to use email.

She smoothed open the folded piece of notebook paper and read:

"Lisa -

Uh, hey. I noticed that you smell really nice and I think you have, like, really pretty feet, too.

So I was thinking, maybe you and I could go get a coffee or something?

Yeah, so, talk to you later."

The note was left unsigned.

Shaking her head, Lisa deposited the piece of paper in the trash.

It wasn’t the first stalker-y note she'd ever received, only the latest.

"What Leibniz Never Learned" by Karen Fayeth is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 United States License.