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Magellan, by Joe Pfister

31/3/2017

 
The edge of Timmy’s world lies just beyond the Johnsons’ two-story bungalow. Timmy is seven. For several weeks, he wanted a puppy, but when his mother returned from the pet store in the mall, she brought him a turtle instead. Timmy has only had Magellan for three days when Mr. Wu’s teenage son, Lin, stalks into his yard and asks what Timmy’s turtle can do.

“Not much,” Timmy says. “He sleeps a lot.”

Lin spins Magellan like a top, until his silver diamonds become a blur. When Lin tires of his game, he stalks back inside. Timmy sees Lin has made a palimpsest of the sand at the bottom of Timmy’s driveway, where the word BASTARD had been crudely etched, with a subtle arrow pointing in the direction of Timmy’s house. Timmy isn’t a bastard, though. His parents just had a fight that has never been resolved. Timmy sets Magellan down on the lawn and goes back inside to get the rubber bone, which he saved up for and purchased in anticipation of a puppy. When he comes back outside, Mr. Ibanez—in his red tracksuit—is out for his morning jaunt, his terrier, Alan Turing, orbiting him on his leash like a moon around Saturn.

“Hi, Timmy! Whatcha doing?”

“Hi, Mr. Ibanez. Nothing.”

Timmy isn’t entirely sure what you are supposed to do with a turtle, so he throws the rubber bone. It bounces across the street and comes to rest in the gutter beside the Johnsons’ driveway.

“All right, Magellan,” he says, positioning him so he faces the Johnsons’. “Fetch.”

Timmy can’t cross the street without his mother, but in an unusual lack of foresight she never said Magellan couldn’t. The early-morning shadows have receded, but you can still see the salt-white moon, smooth and round as a stone in the sky. After a half-hour, Magellan has only ventured several feet and is veering left of the bone, toward a giant fissure in the street. Timmy decides to go back inside, watch TV, and dig into the last of his Halloween candy.

Just before his mom is due home for lunch, Timmy remembers that he left Magellan out-side and catapults himself down the front steps. The pet turtle is exactly halfway between Tim-my’s house and the Johnsons’ when Mr. Wu’s black SUV comes barreling down the block. A sharp crack splits the air, and Timmy stares at the spot where his pet turtle once was—now an unfamiliar tangle of splintered bone and shell.

Mr. Wu tumbles out of his SUV and pauses beside Timmy, taking a moment to appraise the situation.
He shakes his head. “Sorry, Timmy. I didn’t see your turtle there.” He starts to climb back into his car, but then stops. “If it had been a dog, I might’ve seen it sooner.”​

For Whom the Country Sings, by Sankar Chatterjee

22/3/2017

 
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Image: Flickr/Wikicommons
It was the first day of a new spring season. The sun was shining in its full glory. Blooming yellow daffodils were swaying in a gentle breeze. Just around high noon, the bipartisan members of the intelligence committee of the Congress faced the head of the country’s internal security agency. One of the members from the current opposition party did not want to waste any time. He threw the first salvo: “Is there any indication that there was a collusion between the members of the current President’s political party and a foreign hostile dictatorial government in our recent election? If true, didn’t this foreign government engage in undermining our democracy as well as our candidate, so that the current President could win the election?”

The intelligence-chief had known very well that he now served the new President. But, he stunned the committee as well as the rest of the countrymen who were watching the proceeding on live TV. He acknowledged that indeed his agency had been involved for a while in an ongoing investigation to determine whether such a collusion happened! However, it was too early to draw a conclusion, but he assured the committee that he would return to deliver the final investigative report. The very fact that any such investigation had been undergoing at all sent a shock-wave throughout the country. The newly-elected President had been denying vehemently such an accusation since winning the election. But, all this drama was happening in the capital of the country.

Half the world around, at the same moment, it was a dark but starry night along the European shores of the Mediterranean Sea. As a part of his country’s commitment to other NATO countries, young US naval officer Simon Jones was taking part in a nighttime grueling training exercise on the deck of his destroyer. Two years ago, he had received his graduation diploma, shaking the hand of the former President. He had taken the oath of serving the citizens and protecting the country from the enemies, even in exchange of his own life. He was taught that any betrayal, on the contrary, constitutes a treason.

​At the end of the exercise, exhausted Simon returned to his basement quarter of the vessel. He turned on his TV to catch up with the news from home. He learned about the ongoing investigation. Then he started to fall asleep amidst the thought “For whom the country sings, then?”

Palm-Leaf Clairvoyance, by Rekha Valliappan

16/3/2017

 
'Beware the Ides of March', was an oft-quoted ancient soothsayer's dire warning to a once mighty Roman emperor - Julius Caesar. The infamous legacy famously repeated would since popularly attach onto everyone's fertile imagination to live on in the psyche as an unlucky curse.

But what if one was born on this 'notorious' date? What would the moon and heavenly stars portend? Did one come unhinged at the thought?

The only Piscean that I knew who was ruled by the fish was the gentlest of souls, smart in dressing, artistic to a fault and made an innate good samaritan, with a natural instinctive nose to sniff out the fishy.

My late father's historical journey of life began on March 15th! Not a messy truth. But a day of rejoicing. Not a contagion of stigma. But one of courage and hope. Numerology has a way to be charmingly remembered.

And so it became a significant one for me and for our family, my father's horoscope recorded into posterity on dried palm leaf scrolls of the palmyra trees which would predict his past, present and future, reconstruct the battles he would encounter, milestones he would cross and every astrological sign of note.

The influences that my father left remain branded within me. It helped me grow, crowning my sensibilities to manage the curve balls life sometimes bitterly threw. It helped me deflect and steer through the intricate roadblocks to stay ahead of the curve. It helped me to stand back up resolute and determined for the trip ahead.

'Tenacity is the fruit when the dust settles' was his favorite love aphorism, elaborating on the precepts of his ancestral ways.

​'I know Papa.'

Try, Try Again, by Arlene Antoinette

13/3/2017

 
After two attempts, I finally passed the Bar exam. Before realizing it, I was behind the wheel heading to my father’s nursing home. A stroke had left my dad unable to walk, but his mind was as keen as ever. I always felt I was an embarrassment to my dad. He was a retired judge with a son who couldn’t pass the Bar.

When I arrived at the nursing home, I found him sitting outside in his wheelchair, eyes closed and head tilted toward the ground.  I laid my hand on his shoulder. Dad raised his head and opened his eyes. He nodded hello as was his usual greeting to anyone who wasn’t my mother. I was so excited, the story of my triumph poured out of me like grapes under a press. Dad was quiet for a moment. I was nervous unsure of which way the conversation would go: His disappointment transformed into celebration or his dullard son finally catching a miraculous break.
​

 “Perseverance made you a conqueror,” he finally said.  My chest swelled as I held my head a little higher and fought to hold in a smile so powerful the world would explode if it were released.

Turnabout, by Bobby Warner

9/3/2017

 
My daddy was a hard man. I don't think he had an ounce of human kindness in him. He used to beat my mama for the least little thing he thought she done wrong; and it was the same with me. "Come on, boy," he would say, his brow all furrowed in anger. "You done done it this time. Get yourself down to the cellar." And we would go down, and he would make me drop my pants, then he'd beat the tar out of me.

That went on till I was fifteen or so. One day I came home late 'cause I'd been playing touch football and lost track of time. The minute I walked in the door, Daddy came flying in my face. "Down to the cellar!"

And down we went. Except now I had grown taller than him, and was fifty pounds heavier. So when he told me to drop my pants, I yanked the belt out of his hands and said, "No, sir. Now you take off your shirt!"

​After that, Daddy never laid another hand on Mama or me.

Slavery Finds A New Perspective, by Sankar Chatterjee

7/3/2017

 
It was widely believed in the scientific world that Prof. Fritz Haber, an early German Nobel laureate in chemistry had reportedly advised Prof. Albert Einstein, a Jewish physicist in early-carrier in 1920’s Germany to accept Hitler’s propaganda of German identity of nationalism and way of life. Pacifist Einstein, however remaining same, went abroad to deliver scientific lectures, while Nazi-s looted his home, forcing him not to be back in Berlin. Nazi-s, as a part of their “Final Solution for the Jews” found out that Haber, though converted to Christianity, had a distant Jewish lineage. Fearing for the safety of his family and himself, Haber who thought himself of a “great patriot,” had no choice but to leave Germany in early 1930’s.

But, that was more than four-score years ago.

Ganeshan Mishra, an Indian immigrant scientist in California was having an after-work drink with his fellow IT-colleagues. A few days ago, one of his best friends had been gunned down in another part of the country by a white supremacist. Influenced by the hate spewed against all minorities by recently-elected President, the shooter screamed “Go back to the country from where you came from.” To his disbelief, Ganeshan watched on the TV-screen on the wall that Dr. Ben Carson, a brilliant neurosurgeon from minority African-American community as well as a member of the ruling administration announcing in a meeting “That's what America is about. A land of dreams and opportunity. There were other immigrants who came here in the bottom of slave ships, worked even longer, even harder for less, but they, too, had a dream that one day their sons, daughters, grandsons, granddaughters, great-grandsons, great-granddaughters might pursue prosperity and happiness in this land.”

Ganeshan wondered “Wasn’t that equating slavery to legal immigration?”

Then, came his second thought “Why does history repeat itself?”

​(After this essay was completed, Dr. Carson, facing strong criticism from the citizens, commented on a social-media site “Slaves were ripped from their families and their homes and forced against their will after being sold into slavery by slave traders. The Immigrants made the choice to come to America. They saw this country as a land of opportunity. In contrast, slaves were forced here against their will and lost all their opportunities. We continue to live with that legacy.”)

    Longer
    Stories

    Longer Friday Flash Fiction Stories

    Friday Flash Fiction is primarily a site for stories of 100 words or fewer, and our authors are expected to take on that challenge if they possibly can. Most stories of under 150 words can be trimmed and we do not accept submissions of 101-150 words.


    However, in response to demand, the FFF team constructed this forum for significantly longer stories of 151-500 words. Please send submissions for these using the Submissions Page.

    Stories to the 500 word thread will be posted as soon as we can mange.

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    One little further note. Posting and publishing 500-word stories takes a little time if they need to be formatted, too.
    ​Please note that we tend to post longer flash fiction exactly as we find it – wrong spacing, everything.

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