Wanted: Links to Your Quirky Holiday Flashes!
I’m making a list of quirky holiday stories to share in the Facebook Microfiction Group of previously published holiday flashes. Please share 1 or 2 of your own holiday-ish flashes in the comments. I will make a list of them later this week. I look so forward to reading your stories!
xox Meg
Here's a holiday story of mine ("Kill a Tree") that might be more CNF than you'd think! It was on the shortlist of Retreat West's Christmas Advent Competition in 2023. The story was deleted as Retreat West migrated to a new website when they became WestWord, so I can't send a link and am pasting it in:
Kill a Tree
It’s our first holiday visit as a couple to my mother’s. On the interstate, a jalopy with a bumper sticker, Kill a Tree for Christ, overtakes us. We hoot; neither of us believes. But Danish hubby C— expects paper hearts hanging on a candle-lit spruce and ris à l’amande. He’s brought his dead father along. Big C—’s knees press into our seatbacks. He keeps us awake through mind-numbing scenery grumbling and eulogizing his last Julefrokost meal of roast pork and caramelized potatoes, red cabbage, and aquavit. He belts Nu er det jul igen on repeat till we beg him to stop.
We arrive to a tree-free house. Our coats off and feet up, Mother lays the table, uncovers the casserole — Ta-da! She’s prepared our family favorite, stuffed grape leaves simmered over lamb bones. Little C— growls. There’s not an almond in sight. Big C—sulks and gurns, goes up in smoke. Clearly their needs for hygge haven’t been met. Little C— tries to let go, staggers into the cold. Mother looks stricken. This is the Christmas she will don a deep-sea diver’s helmet, never to remove it. I flick a napkin across my lap, tuck into lunch, suck on the bones.
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Here's one that I wrote in my first Meg Pokrass workshop! :-) It was originally published in Reflex Fiction, but the link is no longer active. (I believe they are now defunct) So pasting it in as well:
Neither Snow, Nor Rain
We drive the loneliest road in America on Christmas Eve. You worry your mother has been struggling with isolation again. I sing along to rocking carols to drown out the silence as snow falls across the windshield in a fast and furious blur.
The road melts into the sky. You stick your head out the window when the wipers can't keep up. You might have missed her big white house if you weren't on autopilot. I might have missed it if it weren't for the new bright red door.
Inside we're greeted by the smell of burnt coffee and the sizzle of an empty pot. Cookies lie cooling on the table amidst a smattering of crumbs and unopened mail. You stop to straighten a photo of your father hanging crooked on the fridge. We haven't been back since his funeral.
We follow the sound of music into the living room. A man pokes logs in the fireplace. I watch you take a step back.
"You made it," your mother says, tattooing your cheek with a bright red kiss.
She pulls me in for a quick shoulder hug. "This is the mailman," she whispers, all breathy blue frost in my ear.
I try not to shiver. This man has definitely rung more than twice.
"Beer?" The man puts down the fire iron and strokes his 'just for men' goatee.
You push out your chest and snarl that you know where the refrigerator is.
In the kitchen, I pull a half-eaten lasagna from the oven and catch you glancing at the photo of your father again.
I tell you I wish I could have gotten to know him better.
You tell me he never had much to say.
Back in the living room, the man lights your mother's cigarette with his. Smoke swirls like a spirit in the sliver of space between them. She sings along to Frank Sinatra and pours him a drink, her bright red nails clicking against the bottle. You squeeze my hand. I squeeze back.
A deer head with three antlers watches from above the mantel. Your father's urn sits on the shelf below.
Silent. Always silent.