Surreal Flash Fiction Micro Prompt & Story Model
"It's Ghost Time Again" by Francine Witte
Surrealism lends itself well to flash. It cares nothing for logic or reason. Anything can happen! Surrealistic fiction, when successful, will show the reader a hidden truth more effectively than realism can. And when done well, these special little stories will be able to illuminate the heart of an emotion that is impossible to pinpoint through direct focus.
One of the most potent ways to write about a difficult emotional truth such as grief, loss, shame, vulnerability, or even being in love— is by personifying the emotion in a fictional situation that we perceive of as “weird/dreamlike/absurd”. In surrealist fiction, the metaphor for an emotional situation is projected into an impossible physical reality.
Story model and prompt:
It’s Ghost Time Again by Francine Witte originally published inCleaver Magazine, republished in Best Microfiction 2021 (Edited by Meg Pokrass and Gary Fincke).
Read “It’s Ghost Time Again”.
I marvel over how this story offers emotionally-accurate insight about the longing and sadness of a loveless marriage. Francine Witte accomplishes this with the introduction of convenient “ghost” and a collage of strange, unforgettably surreal images. One way to see it is that there many “ghosts” in the story; the mother is a ghost of her former self, the father is a ghost of what a husband once was, and the narrator is a ghost of a once-secure child.
Prompt: write your own (200 word or less) surreal ghost microfiction. Make sure there’s a solid reason for the ghost to appear. Allow them to be helpful in some unspoken way. Make sure to include some unforgettable images, as Witte does with the foxtrot, a white ghostly hand, a moan and a shift… etc.
Paid subscribers are welcome to post stories in comments section. I will read and respond to them. Looking forward..
Optional random prompt words: snap, flesh, shadow, pink, parka, azalea, rain, mother, tinsel
Death Don’t Have No Mercy
I hate buzzkills, which is why I’m leaving the bar before closing time, this stranger pretending to be my mother says to give her my keys.
The smell of wet asphalt hits me when I step outside, snaps of lightning pulse in the distance.
I’m seeing double, double key fobs, double driver’s side doors, double rearview mirrors until I see Uncle Haynes hovering over my windshield, floating freely like a jellyfish.
His legs were fluid, not confined like they were in the nursing home bed. His arms swimming laps in the shadows of night, the nerves no longer severed from his body after he flipped his Miata, fracturing his C1 vertebrae from driving intoxicated three times over the legal limit.
His skin translucent and smooth, clear of puss-oozing sores that stirred a banshee wail out of him whenever the nurses turned him for cleaning.
The old spiritual says, “death don’t have no mercy” yet never explains how death can also be cruel in letting you linger.
The blood rushes back to my legs, my car sits abandoned while I stand at the street corner, waving down the yellow cab who can hopefully still see me wrapped in the tinsel rain.
There Are Roads
There are roads to take, though I don’t know which one until the boy steps onto the ribbon of asphalt from wherever he’s been waiting. He’s got coppery hair, like my son did, that looks especially good with the color purple and a face as pale and full of promise as the moon. I know he’s a ghost because I’m late with the brakes, and when I manage to stop and whip my head around, steeling myself for another crumpled parka in the middle of the road, the boy is sitting in the back in his booster seat, the one he outgrew years ago. Mommy, he says, the word hanging there like tinsel on a Christmas tree, We’re going to be late. I remember the orange and black parka that he’s wearing with the hole in the elbow, the feathers drifting where they didn’t belong like snow in the desert. Don’t worry, I tell him, just as I did so many times before I knew the words flesh and snap, shadow and slick. I’m sure we’ll find a shortcut.