"the next big thing" flash fiction
by littlefallsmets
Entries 101
Page 4 of 5
Despite what you’ve been told by Seventies drive-in exploitation schlock cinema, the sasquatch bares no particular sexual proclivity toward humans, let alone toward human women in specific. Consi...
keyword: drowsy, title: armed against a seam of trembles
I’ve been falling asleep in my dreams a lot, as of late. I don’t mean that I’ve been beginning to dream at the start of sleep, I mean that I’ve been having dreams where I fall asleep inside them ...
prompt word: memory, title: objects in mirror
Frank’s earliest memory was as a toddler of a mere fourteen, his species’ equivalent of three. His parents went off into the other room to talk to the local healers about his stunted growth, “he ...
theme word: etch, title: this land is your land
In general, humanity’s most prominent landmarks tend to fall into one of three broad categories: marvels of nature, marvels of engineering and marvels intentionally symbolizing a narrative the d...
keyword: accusation, title: the indifference of heaven
“You’re a miracle, you’re… impossible,” the scientist yelled, but not as a compliment or even a statement of fact, it was an accusation, “I’m only normal. Christ, I’m far less than normal.” I ask...
Los Angeles has its ghosts, like anywhere, and like anywhere else, most sightings have practical explanation. Ninety-nine-point-nine-nine-nine percent of all hauntings are hoax or heating duct, d...
keyword: fracture, title: desperados under the eaves
“It’s like the San Andreas Fault,” the Amazing Mitzi told Frank the Yeti once, describing the way magic worked, “the more movement applied, the more violent the fracture.” Simple tricks don’t ev...
theme "trust" title "in search of"
Hard enough being the last of your kind, that’d be burden enough for Frank, to be certain he was the last sasquatch on Earth, but only being mostly sure, that’s what hit him hardest. To wake up a...
keyword: abyss, title: lucky me
Just about any Denny’s, there’s generally a claw machine game somewhere near the front of the house. You know, you put in a quarter, these days as much as a dollar and get twenty seconds to posit...
key word: montage, title: the opposite of elephants
Mark Twain once said “if you don’t like the weather in New England, just wait a few minutes” or maybe he didn’t. Maybe someone said it first but because he was famous it was remembered as his alo...
theme: melody, title: if you can't say anything nice
I asked Frank how he was able to function here, even with the curse making him seen as a person instead of a sasquatch, even knowing his education in human studies. “You took classes about us,” I...
keyword: help, title: the tarzana shuffle
I went out to L.A. to help or at least that’s what I’d hoped to do. My brother and I lost our father in January, his father-in-law passed in July. I’d house-sat and tended business while Ma was o...
key word: limbo, title: just be yourself
“If she knows God-honest magic, though, why doesn’t she just make herself television-pretty?” I asked, “If that’s the only thing holding back her dream.” “For her, it’s not that easy,” Frank said...
keyword: smitten, title: the twenty seven club
I am no longer merely older than that age when celebrities die tragically to lock in their iconic beauty forever, some put it around twenty-seven, in fact I am almost too old to even be socially ...
keyword "transient" title "rallying for extra innings"
He should’ve been in Southern California playing first-base for the Dodgers, had life gone the way it seemed into his teens, “Big Ben” Eisen then, nicknamed so for breaking the scoreboard clock w...
keyword "precocious" title "the king of paupers"
I’m not saying this is true or not, Frank couldn’t tell me either way himself, he could only repeat what he’d been told. The busking license his friend carried read “Cesar Zimmerman” a name he cl...
keyword "bones" title "not slight at all"
It wasn’t that she was ugly because she certainly was not, the problem was more simply that she wasn’t perfect. Looks are not the measure of a woman or a man, of course, but even if they were, by...
keyword "masquerade" title "at the gates of heaven"
If you’re famous, on your death, some hack cartoonist will draw the shallowest representation of your life, standing at the gates of heaven. Even if you died at ninety, if the thing you’re famous...
keyword "luminous" title "disillusionment"
Finally, Frank got back to the question of why I could see him as he was, a just-under-seven-foot tall sasquatch, when everyone else only saw a street-busker who’d left his costume on inside the ...
keyword "nightmare" title "the mourning routine"
Frank Yetti woke up late in the morning most days, there weren’t enough tourists walking down Hollywood Boulevard at ten to make the effort worth it, especially on a weekday, so he afforded himse...
Still, even if I believed what Frank said, that there was a curse placed on what would eventually become Los Angeles, where you’ll see what you want to see unless you are insane, very high or unl...
keyword "sullen" title "ellipsis"
She was beautiful, everyone around there was, that slightly sullen hiding how tired you are kind of beautiful you’d see in actresses and actors, beautiful like grocery-store produce kept ripe for...
keyword "liminal" title "wigglers in West Hills"
There’s a million things to be said about picking up a semen analysis specimen as a medical courier, only a handful that could be shared in polite company. Most of the time, it was not as gross a...
The later in life that we succeed, the later we will collapse into success-sheltered self-parody, this is our artistic covenant. We are all better off without turning into DeNiro, taking every ro...
keyword "pilot" title "meltdown"
I was well-jaded to celebrity sightings at that point, working for the modestly famous myself. I wasn’t anyone, of course, just a gofer in a small production office, go for this, go for that but ...
Book Description
Wherein the typist quarantines the flash fiction about the Sasquatch and Los Angeles in case it can be stitched into something bigger.