As part of this year’s One Read program, we invited you to take inspiration from Daniel Mason’s “North Woods” by telling a story that emphasizes its setting in 250 words or less.
Thank you to everyone who entered and shared your works of flash fiction.
Our two winners are A.E. Cramer and Jessica Piccone. Honorable mention go to Sib Wylds.
We are excited to share these stories with you!
The Glacier by A.E. Cramer
Raven’s breath punctuates the winter air. Fog rises from the stilled and heavy river creating an ethereal world under Brotherhood Bridge. Concrete piers cast long shadows across the water’s golden surface. It’s 8 degrees, unusually cold for Southeast Alaska, comfortingly quiet. The silence broken by the crunch of my boots through hard packed snow; its surface smoothed from wind the night before. The occasional rumble of a truck crossing the bridge overhead paired with raven’s diatribe creates a perfect score for the day.
I walk along an oxbow – the glacier comes into view, cradled between spruce, hemlock, crumbling banks and rock. Linear crevasses of deep glacial blue cut the surface, a sharp contrast to the surrounding whites and greys of generations of settled snow and ice. A cake sliced, a geode cracked.
Approaching the frozen lake that feeds the river, currently acting as an open runway to the glacier’s face, I stop. Hundreds of locals are taking advantage of the shortcut, trekking to the ice caves. These frozen rooms entombed within the glacier are truly otherworldly- they call like sirens. People hike, ski, skate and slide their way across the frozen lake to visit every year. Warnings left unheeded. Butterfly wings and the glacier can shift, fracture, or calve and yet we go. A line of colorful coats and snow pants dot the way to the glacier’s face, a string of ants marching to the other side. Ice pops underfoot and groans uncomfortably from deep below the surface. I go.
Sludge by Jessica Piccone
Harsh fluorescents cast a piercing glare across Todd’s screen. He squinted: eyes strained from the monotonous slew of 1s and 0s that made up his spreadsheet. In the flimsy cubicle next to him, Sheryl clacked her acrylic nails against her keyboard. Perfume hung in the air like smog and clawed at the back of Todd’s throat. A dismal clock ticked on the wall. Set twenty-two minutes fast.
Agitated, Todd loosened his tie and rolled up his sleeves. The receptionist’s circulation was shot from decades of chain-smoking. She kept the office at a swampy 78 degrees.
In the break room, he poured the sludge they passed as coffee into a chipped mug. Generic inspirational posters lined the walls with their empty platitudes. He tore packets of sugar, stirring them into the murkiness until they dissolved.
He contemplated faking an illness. Something phlegmy was going around. He’d start coughing. Fake a few sneezes. Dramatically snot into a tissue. By Wednesday, he’d say he had the virus too.
“Working hard or hardly working?” Richard laughed like a villainous Santa, hearty and with too many vowels. He smacked a meaty hand against Todd’s shoulder.
Todd laughed in compliance.
Gagging on the smell, he rummaged through the fridge for his overnight oats. He’d hid it behind a mysterious molding container, but it was gone. He pushed past expired jars of mayonnaise.
“Have you seen my overnight oats?”
Richard’s eyes widened. “No.”
Clinging to the corner of Richard’s mustache, Todd saw it: a single, rolled oat.
View from a Cupboard by Sib Wylds
Mugs tower beside a little mouse. He feels secure amidst them. They always hold the same position on the shelf. He holds a biscuit crumb! A faint melancholy gnaws at him as he nibbles this remnant of another time.
He skitters towards the edge of the cupboard and surveys his surroundings. The mouse takes comfort in the certainty of this life. A three-legged chair still leans beside the door. The ceiling sheds occasional chunks of plaster. Thumbtacks secure a flannel scrap where a cabinet door once stood. Consistency is the mouse’s happy place.
But people rarely stay. The mouse’s eyes soften, recalling previous inhabitants: a crusty couple who banged out rowdy songs on the piano, the reek of noxious chemicals when the factory worker was home, the dancing wrinkles and booming laugh of the librarian. And recently, the student with the ashen mullet who recently made the flat her home! The sandy mouse is certain the youth is here to stay.
The mouse’s whiskers drink in the scent of yesterday’s poor man’s stir fry, a dish the student makes every other Tuesday. Ramen, canned peas, and wilted carrots once simmered on the stove. Sweet and sour packets from Panda Express finish the dish.
The nineteen-year-old bursts in and tosses down a tall stack of boxes! The mouse bristles. His breathing accelerates. He has seen this before! He pads forlornly behind the mugs. But, he wonders, will they save him from another uncertain future?