Flash Classic and Prompt: "Why This Isn't a Good Story to Tell" by Shellie Zacharia
I’ve enjoyed dipping back into SmokeLong Quarterly archives to bring you a new flash classic and prompt each week! It’s interesting to me how flash fiction style has changed over the years.
This week, I dove into Issue 21 from 2008. It’s a classic SLQ issue that I love more than I can tell you. This has something to do with the fact that my story “California Fruit” appeared in it— a breakthrough moment in my earlier flash fiction writing life.
But what I want to talk to you about here and share here today is Shellie Zacharia’s amazing flash from this issue, “Why This Isn’t a Good Story to Tell”. So many years later, I’m still just as charmed to distraction with this piece—find it to be funny and sad in the most wonderful ways. What seems to have gone out of style in flash (correct me if I’m wrong here!) is an age-old narrative device in which the author addresses the reader directly as a style choice. The first line of this story sets the stage for what is to come.
See, you ask me what’s going on, and I know you mean, tell me something good, but not much is going on.
I don’t see this device employed often these days. Here Zacharia makes us the narrator’s confidante, best friend or therapist. She even lets us know that she knows how we’ll respond, ie “and I know what you mean, tell me something good”…
Notice the self-deprecating tone of voice in the following passage that makes us care for this her unreliable narrator.
It’s just about this old woman at the grocery store and how she couldn’t reach the peanut butter because it was stocked on the top shelf. So while I was standing there picking out strawberry jam, I said, “Let me help you,” and I asked her, “What kind do you want?” and she said, “Peter Pan, smooth, please.” After I handed her the peanut butter, she said, “You’re a little pretty and very nice.”
Zacharia draws us in tight and she keeps us there, like a detective, sniffing out how lonely and isolated the narrator is through her reactions to the old woman’s suggestion to call her (supposedly single) grandson. How at first the narrator dismisses the idea of and then, as the story moves on, loneliness takes the reins and she puts herself in a most humiliating situation.
Lines like this one kill me.
I apologized and hung up and drank another glass of wine because he did sound like a nice boy. And I went to bed and it was another night like so many of my nights.
Please read this flash classic for yourselves. Take note of the places in which the narrator talks to the reader directly, and think about how this narrative device might work for you. Paid subscribers, please feel free to post your stories below. The comments are behind a paywall, and will not be considered “published”. If planning to post your stories, the word count is 400 words.
Prompt: Write a story about a misconnection in which you, the author (in the voice of a character) talk to the reader directly. Explore how working with this narrative device changes the feeling of a piece as you’re writing it. Consider this an experiment! 400 words. Have fun. Optional prompt words: wine, married, pirate, parrot, branch, salty, tangerine.
Memory Made of Half-Truths and Blind Spots
You were talking about missed connections the other day and the subject reminded me of Dad—how, when he was dying he got that creepy call threatening to blow him up with a car bomb. Remember, he told the guy he’d better step on it because he expected to be dead in about a week anyway. Still, every morning for the few days he had left, he would check the car for a bomb. Even though his time was medically up, he wanted to live. I wish I loved life that much, to want to hang on despite so much pain. Then I got to thinking about how memory lingers in snapshots; you never get the whole picture. And I started to wonder about the would-be bomber, of course hoping he’d had plenty of pain in his miserable life. Do you ever wonder what happened to him? What kind of life he had after he threatened Dad’s? Everyone loved Dad─ the whole town showed up at his funeral it seemed. Was the phone punk a disgruntled employee or something? Or was he just a loser calling from his mom’s basement, between tokes and action-figure fantasies? Maybe he developed one of those magical thinking disorders when he read the death notice in the paper, deciding it was his threat alone that killed Dad. Maybe he got religion, like Nana did when she wanted forgiveness for wishing Gramps dead. Maybe the bomber is stalking a street corner right now with a sign promising the end is near, his mind on fire, waiting for the relief of death if there is any.
That piece is incredible. So funny too, I love the part “you’re a little pretty and nice” 🤣
I love “California Fruit” Meg! I think I have that one in one of your collections.
Here’s my version of “Why This Isn’t A Good Story”
No Good Deed
The past two months, since you were curious, haven’t been that productive. Still job hunting. But there’s this house at the end of the street, the one you said was a hazard because there’s no fence separating the yard from the main road. Well, the husband died recently. I don’t think it was from poisoning, they seemed happy, at least when I saw them. The wife flagged me down one day, asking if I could mow her lawn. She said I reminded her of this gimpy house-painter she once knew, only I had better arms. I filled the gas tank and took the mower over. Her lawn’s difficult, you know how that one side slopes toward the road? Almost lost control, nearly Red Rovered my ass over four lanes of traffic. I finished and waited at the doorstep, greasy, grassy, and salty. She didn’t have any money but handed me a loaf of bread, said it was right outta the oven. I smelled it and smiled to be polite. She said the neighborhood cats eat it, so it probably wasn’t so bad. When I got home Amy said the bread was nice, but something with Ulysses S. Grant’s picture would’ve been nicer. The next time I went, same thing, I filled up the tank, unloaded it, only that time my blade got caught on some collapsed trellis wiring which had woven into the grass. Took twice as long to untangle all that mess, wasted half the day, you know how I hate that. By that point, my blade clunked around like shoes in a drier. I had to stop. I left a little mohawk of weeds near the house. She said I could finish it the next day, and if I wanted to use her as a reference she wouldn’t say anything about how I left jobs half-done. She handed me another loaf. I tried telling her I was already in the hole forty bucks on gas, but she shut the door. Can you believe it? Amy was furious, she broke the bread open, then took out a bag of Wonder Bread saying, look, it’s the same thing! And that I wasn’t going back. This woman, I swear, she’s memorized the sound of my engine. Every time I drive by her yard now, that silver head of hair parts through all that overgrowth like warm butter.