'Laughter'

[RobertM]

I have about a hundred and fifty of these flash stories in a file. They are for a possible book next year.

This is one of them.



Anything to get him out of the damn house, she thought.
She scrubbed the sink to hospital white and carefully rinsed it before blotting it dry with a clean towel.

Her heart beat faster now. It was dark.

He would be coming home soon.

He never stayed out after dark on Sundays. Work was Monday, and he always showed.

He’s been gone the whole weekend this time. And I’m not picking off the stupid feathers from those birds. No one ever eats the damn things anyway, they’re all full of birdshot.

She shut off the hot water on the sink tap and dried the faucet with a towel.

Truck. He’s home.

She listened and waited for him to come into the house. If he came in quick, that meant he probably wasn’t drunk.

A couple of minutes passed. The bang of the truck door shook the house windows until they rattled.

Too long. Way too long.

The door crashed open and her husband filled the doorway with broad shoulders and drunken anger. “What’s funny? Sumpin’ funny?” he slurred. “Come here, bitch…”

She reached behind the door dividing the living room and the kitchen and picked up the shotgun, leveling it.

The resounding blast threw him into the corner. He died with a look of utter surprise on his face.

She touched her swollen eye. “No more. Not ever.”

The End

 

[eyez0nme]

I think it's time for you to find a different profession.

What do you say?

 

[jaybe]

Don't give up the day job - yet.

 

[Rien]

You really need to work on giving some depth to your writing. I've read over the few pieces you've showcased, and none of them have any real substance. I had to read them twice to understand what happened because it happened too quickly and none of the characters were really reacting to any of it.

One thing you really need to do is getting into at least one of the character's heads. Let them lead the story along and give them a meaning to the story. Make us fall in love with them, or make us hate them. If we don't care about the characters, we don't care about the story. All of your characters are meaningless puppets.

 

[RobertM]

Two hundred and fifty words or less is a tough genre to do major characterization. I thought the story was right to the point...abused wife finally has had enough. I dropped a clue to her personality with the over-cleaning of the sink. It was a simple story. I wouldn't read any more into it than that.

Stop writing? Not a chance. My last novel, 'The 13th Day of Christmas,' goes to national distribution in June. Copies already reside in the library of the Canadian Space Agency at the John H. Chapman Space Centre. Chief Astronaut of the CSA, Julie Payette, loved it. She bought a copy in paperback. So, we sent her a free copy in hardcover.

Maybe I just don't do the shorter stuff very well.

 

[RobertM]

I said:

"Maybe I just don't do the shorter stuff very well."

Hmm. And maybe I was little arrogant in that last post. I had to come back to this and apologize. When someone made the comment about my day job, I suppose I overreacted there...

I think it's somebody else's turn to post up their work, and for me to back off a bit.

 

[bren]

When I read the bit about the wife scrubbing the sink and so on, it felt like a clipped foreshadowing of something she had planned rather than character development. I think that's what feels like a letdown with this fragment - that we should be reading about dismemberment or something, even though that obviously wouldn't fit in as it is.

This is purely from a reader's perspective - I don't write.