Short, short fiction

by Jack Seay

I just recently listened to a book on tape of short fiction that began with a contest called Fifty-five Fiction.

Fifty-five Fiction rules

55 words max. Must have: characters, setting, plot, conflict, resolution. Topics must include love and/or death (perhaps love of death, death of love, loveless death, deathless love). No poems or jokes. Count as separate words: initials, words-separated-by-dashes, and numbers.

Dec. 4, 2001

No Tears In Hell

Holding her first baby to her breast; he was too weak to cry. She had no milk to give. Fighting just miles away. She had never heard of Karl Marx or Adam Smith. Her baby would soon die. She had never heard of Darwin. It was hot and dry. She would cry if she could.

First Regret

I was six. So was she. She skated up. Want to dance? Shocked, I blurted out - no. She skated off. I knew instantly I had just made the biggest mistake of my life.

Dec. 9, 2001

This one is 90 words, but I haven't figured out how to make it shorter yet.

Two Worlds

They sat silently, trying to compress reality into words; knowing that to the extent that truth is abridged, especially below the level of irreducible complexity, it becomes false. Words are merely symbols that point to reality. She picked up fragments of his actions and words, pegged them according to quick and easy categories given by popular media psychologists. They lived in separate Universes. Each word having separate meanings, different contexts. He looked into her eyes and held her hands. The separate circles of their lives touched and overlapped - a little.