Waiting to Know

Did flash fiction/short shorts/micro fiction (under 500-1,000 words - this one is under 200) with the kids today. Some got that you really have to insert conflict EARLY in order for it to work, some will have to work on it. Here's what I wrote at the park with the kids - the first one I wrote sucked, totally expected, and off, but this one is actually quite good, if I do say so myself...

Waiting to Know

Short short by Miriam Hall

The sharp sound of screaming began at exactly 2:02pm. He knows this even now because his watch face froze in his mind at that moment, hands both perking to the right. The only other detail he recalls from that time is a debilitated rust and black beetle next to his left hand, wing ends crushed in some accident, or on purpose.

“It’s a soccer game and someone’s team is winning,” he convinced himself, though the calls were blood-curdling. He needed it to be a game. He had just found a handwritten note from his wife on her lavender stationary, with her black fountain pen. It included, amongst others, the following lines: “Not like it used to be,” “He just makes me happier,” and “I can’t live with your depression about dying.”

Later that day, he read in an evening rag that a school bus had gone off the single lane, ruby-colored, covered bridge near his waterside home. Forty schoolchildren, kindergarten aged, and two teachers, plus the driver, plunged into the raging river. Somehow, they all survived.