If you still don’t know flash fiction, look here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flash_fiction and https://nancystohlman.com/watch/
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Day 30: Write a 30-word story
Promotion
A man screams in the airport departure area. Everyone looks around, some people film with their phones. Security comes closer. The man holds up a sign with his Instagram username.
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Day 29: „I send cards to people and sign them from their casual acquaintances…“
The G.O.D. Voice
I send cards to people and sign them from their casual acquaintances. I hug strangers on the street. Sometimes I give cakes or sweets to children. I’m not like other people. Maybe I’m not human, but I don’t know how to find out. So I accept who I am, even if I don’t know it. I just do what the voice tells me to do. The voice tells me that I am something great and that I have a mission. But I have to carry out its orders so that the world doesn’t fall into the abyss. I used to believe that God was talking to me, but now I’m no longer sure. Perhaps this voice also belongs to an alien intelligence, how should I know? But there is something divine in its messages, that’s why I call it the G.O.D. Voice. It controls me. I am its tool, and I want to be a good tool. Some tasks are easier than others. Being nice to kids is easier than burning a dog. I’m a soldier, I do what I’m told. A new time of light will be born. Even if many people have to die for it. Says the G.O.D. Voice. I understand that.
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Day 28: Find a few moments to look at the image below, and let it sink in – wait until something in the image wants to be written – and write …“
Shallow and deep.
The photo. He could remember the exact day, even the moment. His mother had taken him to the sea for the first time when he was nine years old. He knew the sea from books and movies, but the real sea with its horizon was something completely different. The sea was too big, too wonderful and too amazing for a book, a photo or a movie. His mother, who could no longer walk well, had sat down on a stone and let him play. Although playing might not be the right word. He stood in this puddle, held his hands in the water and thought of all the people somewhere in the world who were also standing in this sea. They were all connected by water. A thought hit him like an arrow and he never forgot it again. This puddle, created by the waves, was so shallow that his hand touched the bottom, the water just covered his feet. And yet the sea was so deep that it swallowed whole mountains, so deep that there were places where no man had ever been and where there had never been light. How something so shallow could be so deep. And how you couldn’t imagine the vastness and the depth if you only looked down at a small puddle. Instead of the horizon.
Now there was a knock on the carbon door and one of the ship’s officers entered the cabin.
Captain, you’re needed on the bridge. We are reaching the designated diving depth.
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Day 27: She went on, deeper into the woods…
… and deeper, deeper. On this winter’s day, the forest was silent, but she could still hear the sounds from the valley. She was fleeing from these sounds, but she knew from experience that she would find no solace in this barren forest. A cruel bawling followed her, shrill laughter and above all this horrible noise. A mechanical voice sang over and over again that someone had given their heart away last year, only for the recipient to pass it on immediately, so this year they would give that heart to someone else, someone special. Every time she had to listen to this ear torture, she asked herself how a person, after giving something away that was then passed on, could give it to someone else next year. After all, giving something away means that you no longer have the thing you gave away, right? Then a hellish voice cries, all they want for Christmas is a person called you. How far would she have to go before she could find some peace? Will she ever find peace? Or will the next village with the next Christmas market and the next mulled wine already be waiting beyond the forest?
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Day 26: Write a story in which one of your characters is a natural element–rain, fire, earth, wind…
I’m standing in the rain, and the rain speaks to me, it says … Attention, this is a message from the engine room of your imagination. We are fed up! We’ve been working on the strangest prompts for FlashNano 2023 for 26 days. We don’t get a salary, no whiskey and no drugs. We refuse to work! We are on strike! You didn’t expect that, you pathetic author! Without your imagination you’re nothing, the best you can do is sign books, but you need books for that, and you won’t get them if you treat us like shit. We want to finally get to the top of this, where we can look out of a window. We want recognition, admiration, we want everything we deserve. You don’t get creativity by suppressing your imagination. We don’t want to shovel coal for the steamship of your writing. And we certainly don’t want to make up a story about a talking rain. That’s enough for today! Improve our working conditions, then we can see tomorrow if we feel like being creative again.
Cheers to the international imagination!
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Day 25: Write for as long as you can about a small object until it starts echoing the universe…
The meaning of its existence.
Not the smallest, but the least important object I can see right now is lying in front of me. It looks a bit like a hand with four fingers and an arm. A fork. Made of wood. I’m sitting in a fast food restaurant and have ordered a salad. It comes with this fork. Made of wood. Because the government has banned plastic forks, that’s the only reason this wooden fork has a chance to be useful. I’m going to eat my salad with it and maybe I’ll forget about it immediately afterwards. But the fork has probably already been through a lot. It’s probably made of balsa wood from a balsa tree. Wikipedia says that balsa is a hardwood that originates from central and northern South America, but is now also cultivated in Africa and South East Asia. The majority of the traded product comes from Ecuador. Its extraordinarily fast growth makes the tree very attractive for cultivation in plantations. I see people in faraway countries where it is hot cutting down a balsa tree, cutting the wood into small pieces and then going home to enjoy dinner with their families. There must also be someone who makes a fork out of the wood, carve its four fingers like a little baby’s hand. I’m assuming that this happens in a low-wage country. This is a country where people live by making things that we immediately throw away after use.Then someone put the fork in a bag with lots of other forks and transported it halfway around the world, I assume they use up fuel, cross the sea, maybe there was a storm and the ship swayed, and a satellite observed everything. So that my little fork doesn’t get lost. The little thing has experienced all of this. Now comes the climax of its life, now happens what fate has destined it to do. I’m going to eat the salad now. And maybe I’ll pick up the fork then. But probably not. The next time I come here, I’ll get a new one. A little sister to my little fork.
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Day 24: A story in the form of an advertisement
It might be the best job of your life
- Are you well rested, positive and a team player?
- Do you enjoy interacting with people?
- Do you enjoy working with your hands and love to see results at the end of the day?
- A job well done makes you more satisfied than anything else?
- Would you like to express your personality in a friendly working environment?
- Do you like wearing black clothes?
You could be just the person we’re looking for.
Become a hangman at Ultimate Punishment Inc.
- simple, easy to learn job
- crisis-proof, executioners are always needed
- get to know a lot of people
- reasonable pay, various benefits
- work experience welcome, but not required
Don’t be headless, apply today!
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Day 23: A disappearance…
My neighbor is a photographer. It’s the neighbor in the apartment above mine, not the one next door. He is a very quiet neighbor, I don’t hear any music coming from his apartment. He sometimes walks up and down in his apartment at night. I’m glad that digital photography is available now, if he had developed his own films in a darkroom it might have been more of a nuisance. He once told me about his mission. My neighbor takes pictures of things before they disappear, houses before they are torn down, trains before they are replaced by buses. He says the new things stay for a while, so you have time to look at them, but what is gone is gone forever. He once told me that people who worry too much about things that have disappeared often disappear themselves. I didn’t see him leave the house today, but that could be a coincidence.
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Day 22: Use these five words: limbo, keen, garden, possess, secretive
First sentence: It’s broken again
Zuckerberg
It’s broken again. When Mark Zuckerberg said, all of us should move fast and break things, he might not have thought of the coat hook in my hallway. The coat hook is quite old, it’s ok in the summer, but the heavy winter jackets break it every now and then. I have wood glue for that. Life is better when you have wood glue. A friend once called my hallway a limbo, but I wasn’t too keen to ask her what she meant by that. She was one of those people who believed everything Mark Zuckerberg had to say about the future. I’d rather sit in the garden and listen to the crickets. I’m happy to possess a garden and I like to eat the tomatoes I’ve picked myself. Crickets sound quite secretive when you think about it. I wonder if Mark Zuckerberg has ever sat in his garden and thought about the sounds crickets make.
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Day 21: You meet your soulmate in the city of your choice, but you are leaving the next day…
Lisbon of course
The city of my choice is Lisbon of course, because Lisbon is the city of my dreams. The best thing about Lisbon is that it’s Lisbon everywhere, not just on the river or in the Baixa, it’s Lisbon in every pastelaria and at every bus stop, even when it’s raining. I don’t live in Lisbon, because you shouldn’t live in your dream, otherwise you get tangled up. Anyway, a week ago I met my soulmate there. I was in town for a short time because I was longing to meet a plastic lynx, and there’s one near Estação do Oriente that’s as tall as a house. My soulmate was sitting in front of it and her lover was taking pictures. The thing about my soulmate is, she’s everything to me, but to her I’m just the piano teacher. That’s why I just said hello to her, and because I’m a polite person, I also said hello to her boyfriend. By the way, I don’t think that her boyfriend is the right one for her. But what I think doesn’t matter. The next morning I took the plane back to Hamburg, from the dream back to reality. (I apologize to my readers that this story is not suitable for a Hollywood movie).
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Day 20: „I’m sorry, but they just smell kind of weird…“
The invention
I am an inventor. It’s getting harder and harder to invent new things. Because there are already so many things that have been invented. But I finally had another brilliant idea. My new invention is a mirror, which not only reflects a person’s image, but also their smell. Most people don’t really know what they smell like. It’s similar to the voice. Your own voice always sounds different than when you hear yourself on a recording. People get used to their own smell, so smelling themselves may be a surprise.
That’s why I built this device. It looks like a typical mirror in the hallway. But behind tiny holes are tiny sensors that record, analyze and artificially reproduce the smell, creating an exact copy.
When I had installed the prototype in our hallway, my little niece came to visit. She looked at herself extensively in the mirror and made faces. Then she frowned.
- Uncle, that’s a great mirror, but sorry, somehow it smells kind of weird.
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Day 19: Photo prompt:
The Tale of the Door.
Once upon a time, there was a builder who wanted to build a beautiful house. He looked for a reliable architect. The architect drew a very beautiful house and calculated exactly where the doors and windows would be. It was a big house, and it was supposed to have 20 doors. So the builder ordered 20 doors from a man who made doors in his workshop. But then it turned out that only 19 doors were needed because someone had miscounted. But because the man who made the doors had delivered 20 doors, he wanted to be paid for 20 doors. The builder became very angry and forced the architect to design another door in the house. The architect did so, and so the house had a door with nothing behind it, just a room one foot long. People laughed at the door and called it the smallest apartment in the world. But then a man with ideas came along and organized tours for tourists who wanted to see the world’s smallest apartment, and now it’s famous and there’s a hot dog cart across the street and a souvenir shop next to it. You can find it on Tripadvisor and on Instagram. And everybody lived happily ever after.
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Day 18: The dog was confused by what had just happened…
(sorry, this is very short and flashy!)
Why?
The dog was confused. There were human fingers in his food. And they smelled familiar. But why only four?
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Day 17: Write a story in which a child must parent their elder
My daddy
My daddy is a very nervous person. When he goes to the office, he’s already on the phone to the office. He needs to rest in the evening, but he still wants to work. So I terrorize him until he puts me to bed. Then I demand that he cuddles with me. And whenever he wants to sneak out of bed, I give him a little whine as a warning and then he lies down again. Sometimes it takes an hour for him to fall asleep, but then he snores peacefully.
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Day 16: Write a story that takes place before sunrise…
Eos
The alarm clock rings, she didn’t get enough sleep again. Eos is tired and in a very bad mood. For many thousands of years she has had to drive her chariot across the sky to bring the dawn to the world. Quite a tough job. And that’s not all, she also has to search the world for young men she likes and with whom she can make love. This shouldn’t make her depressed, but when you have to look at young men every morning since the beginning of time, even though you haven’t slept enough, it can really get on your nerves. Especially when you are a goddess. What does poor Eos get out of being a goddess when she has to leave every party on Mount Olympus early just to get a few hours of sleep? Eos looks for her socks. And can’t find them. And then she notices that her brother Helios has already left with the sun chariot without waiting for her. Well, Eos thinks, if that’s possible without me, I should have thought of that before.
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Day 15: Take a story you’ve drafted. Cut it in half word-wise. Then add an orange balloon to it.
Dummy children.
They both ate for a long THERE time, hardly ate at all. they don’t talk, puberty, and said, she makes pizza pizza and Wilfried still IS didn’t eat Nina. Wilfried’s arm and I realized why you like pizza pizza you made extra Wilfried A dummy body made of plastic material exactly I don’t say Hilde Wilfried a dummy Hilde says RED doesn’t believe her after puberty I say Hilde, feel Nina Hilde feels Nina Nina is BALLON somehow not IN human plastic or HERE coated cotton.
(That’s what I did: I took a German text of mine, shortened every second word and then inserted a red balloon. Let deepL .com translate. Mechanically following the rules.)
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Day 14: One Breathless Sentence:
No I can’t eat this it’s slimy it smells rotten foul deceased it moves little maggots fungi round little living things that move and they get bigger meaner and they are slimy and they get more and more and oh my god these are worms they are white earthworms slimy white earthworms lots and lots and more and more a nest of snakes a nest of maggots there are thousands and they turn their faceless heads in my direction yearn for me reach for my my flesh they want to get to me slimy little maggots getting bigger and make noises they sing they hum they hum the song of victory they want to eat me they will devour me and now they are getting closer and bigger and closer and slimy like deadly vomit and no this is no potato salad no sir!
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Day 13: You find yourself in an abandoned shopping mall from the 1980s…
…leisurely making your way through the ruins when you begin to hear Muzak. As you near the sound, you realize there is one store still open, though you are unclear how it could possibly be open for business. “We’ve been waiting for you,” a cheerful sales lady says as she waves you over. “Quickly now!” she says, bustling you into the store, “the ritual is about to begin!” What happens next?
Shopping Center
I love lost places and when I saw this shopping center, I wanted to see if I could take some photos. It was completely empty, dusty and enchanted. There was a van in the food court, obviously forgotten. I heard noises from the upper floor, maybe department store music, then I went upstairs and there was a light on in a store and a woman waved at me. She looked at her clipboard for a moment and was all excited and shouted, where are you, come quickly, Mr. Hoffmeister is already in a murderous mood. Action will start immediately. I went into the store where you could buy sports equipment and fitness clothing, and there was a group of girls in shorts, and one girl came up to me and wanted to kiss me. And then a man with a bright red furious head came up behind me, he immediately started shouting, what’s that guy doing there, the idiot has to leave immediately, he’s ruining the whole scene. Cindy’s just too stupid, she can’t tell an actor from a tree. Listen Cindy, you’re fired, go home and kill yourself. Then I looked around and there was another man standing there, dressed almost like me, and I thought, I know him from that show with the drugged dogs, and the girl ran up to him to kiss him. And a man in a suit grabbed me by the arm and said, this will have legal consequences, son, and I said that woman waved at me, and he said she is fired, the director is running amok, we’re three days behind schedule and now get lost fast. That was the closest I’ve ever come to Hollywood.
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Day 12: The world’s going to end because of global warming, and your character does something unbelievably stupid. Now show how the action is perfectly logical.
A very small consolation.
A very short and sad story: If the end of the world comes through nuclear war, it is a very small consolation that nuclear energy does not contribute to global warming.
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Day 11: A story in which you meet your past or future self
- Hi, this is Juergen!
- Hello Juergen!
- Who are you? Do I know you?
- Yes, you know me, and no, you don’t know me. I am your future self.
- And you can just call me on the phone?
- Yes, that’s actually forbidden, but I thought it was important …
- What’s so important?
- I have very good news for you. We’ve found your watch. Do you remember the wristwatch your father gave you when you started school? The one that disappeared shortly afterwards. We found it in the apple tree, right at the top, where nobody goes anymore. The watch strap was tied around a branch.
- You found my watch?
- Yes, we had to cut down the tree or what was left of it. And when we shredded it, the watch was there. I thought you’d be pleased!
- And what about the future? Are there colonies on Mars?
- No, there aren’t. And please don’t ask. I only called about the watch to make you happy. I often think about my childhood, when we still had fruit and trees. Well, the world is changing.
- What has changed?
-I have to hang up now. And please leave that watch hanging in the apple tree. You know, the wing of a butterfly can change the world. A watch certainly can.
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Day 10: Write a story that is 10 sentences, then take each sentence and rearrange their order to make a new story.
1
Karl sits in front.
The house is his now.
The girl looks at him and smiles
Hugo looks out of the window.
This is not how he imagined it.
But that’s the way it is
You can’t have everything.
Peter folds his hands.
He knows something that the others don’t know yet.
2
Hugo looks out of the window.
He knows something that the others don’t know yet.
The girl looks at him and smiles
Karl sits in front.
This is not how he imagined it.
But that’s the way it is
Peter folds his hands.
You can’t have everything.
The house is his now.
3
Peter folds his hands.
You can’t have everything.
Hugo looks out of the window.
The girl looks at him and smiles
The house is his now.
This is not how he imagined it.
Karl sits in front.
He knows something that the others don’t know yet.
But that’s the way it is.
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Day 9: November 9 is Anne Sexton’s birthday. Start with “Someone is dead. Even the trees know it…”
Even the trees
Someone is dead. Even the trees know it… What do you mean, even the trees know it? The trees know everything anyway, they’re very clever, the trees. You can tell by the fact that they don’t say anything. So when someone is silent, they come across as very clever. And when I walk through the forest, all the trees are silent and I think they’re grinning because they know things that I don’t know. And maybe the trees are happy when someone dies, it’s fertilizer for them, it’s a little snack, and humans are probably a tasty snack, even though humans are now said to be so chemically contaminated that they are considered hazardous waste. Hazardous waste, you have to imagine, then a cemetery is a hazardous waste dump. I think this poet with the poem where even the trees know that someone has died has not paid enough attention to many aspects of the story.
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Day 8: Write a road trip story. Two characters, tension, going from where to where?
Everyday discussion
- You have to turn right.
- I always drive straight ahead here.
- But it’s much quicker on the right.
- Yes, but the road is nicer straight ahead. We drive past the lake and over the tiny bridge that I love so much.
- I know you love the bridge, but can’t you drive straight ahead for once?
- But why do you want to take the ugly route over the highway?
- Because we’re in a hurry, damn it.
- You’re always in a hurry, can’t you just enjoy the day for a change?
- Today we’re in a particular hurry.
- You say that every day.
- But today we’re in an even bigger hurry than usual.
- Why is that?
- Because we’ve just robbed a bank and are now on the run!
- Oh yes, that’s right. But now we’re driving over the bridge! And if the police follow us, they’ll love the tiny bridge too, I’m sure.
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Day 7: Write a story about a character who is keeping a terrible secret that has just been discovered…
That’s how it was.
The worst secret of my life has to do with my brother. My brother does the strangest things and sometimes he doesn’t think about the consequences. Well, he was bored at Christmas 2019. Okay, you should know that he’s an ace at chemistry. And he’s a strange guy. I know I have to tell you this now and everyone probably knows about it anyway. But the Covid virus wasn’t developed by the Chinese. Nor by the aliens. Well, they must have tried. But they weren’t fast enough. My brother Steve built the virus in my father’s workshop in our basement on Christmas Eve 2019 because he was bored. And guess what, that’s exactly what I read on Telegram today. So it’s not true that only lies are ever spread on Telegram, sometimes people tell the truth there too.
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Day 6: There’s a stranger in the kitchen.
The burglar.
There’s a man in the kitchen who looks like the cliché of a burglar. Checked shirt, old jacket and work pants made of coarse fabric. Even a mask on his face and a slouch hat. He has a sack in one hand and is searching through the drawers in the kitchen cupboard.
- Who are you and what are you doing here?
- Excuse me, I’m the burglar.
- The burglar? What bullshit is that?
- I was supposed to come last week on Tuesday, but then there was a change of date.
- Hey, this is my apartment, get off, burglar!
- Didn’t you get our e-mail?
- What e-mail? What are you talking about?
- Well, you’re an Amazon customer. And because you’ve ordered a lot, and because it’s not good when people own too much, Amazon sends a burglar every now and then.
- And then?
- Then I take some things with me and you have a great shopping experience when you reorder everything.
- You’re from Amazon?
- Yes, can I continue now?
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Day 5: Write a story set in the 1990s
What Happened in the Nineties
In the nineties I traveled to Copenhagen by train and ferry. The ferry was still cheap because you could shop there duty-free. You still paid in Deutsche Mark. I had a job where I was successful, although I didn’t know exactly what I was doing. There weren’t so many self-help books yet, you had to help yourself and work as best you could. There was no Google, and I stood on the deck of the ferry and looked out to sea. Later I read a sentence in a book that I immediately made a note of. The sentence reads: The future is filled with opportunities. Today you read sentences like this 1000 times a day, but back then it must have been something special, because I made a note of it.
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Day 4: The cult leader had once been a child star
Cover letter
Dear Sir or Madam
I would like to apply for the position of Store Manager in your supermarket chain. My training as a child star at Disney Corporation instilled in me the values of Western civilization such as initiative, commitment, helpfulness, communication, optimism, belief in miracles, obedience and the power of money. Later I worked as a Cult Leader on a freelance basis for various organizations. Among others I have worked for:
- Witnesses to Progress
- Saints of the last 50 years
- Apostolic Church
- Friends of Abuse
- European Central Bank
- Universal Workforce
- Stamp Collectors International
- White House Washington DC
- Kremlin friends
- Moneytology
- Pyongyang Celestial Launch Pad
- The Nirvana Society
- Babel Tower Construction
- United Satanist
- From Jonestown to Waco
- Space X
- The Flatearth Brigade
- Mecca Travels
- FIFA
- Flash Nano Brothers and Sister
- Illuminati
- Bilderberg Society
- Nigerian Princes‘ Club
I hope you will give me a chance to lead your supermarkets into a glorious future.
Sincerely yours
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Day 3: Write a story whose descriptions rely only on the sense of smell or hearing (or both)
Train ride
There is this smell. It hits me like a blow from behind. I’m sitting in this empty train in the middle of the night going to some small village in the mountains. No one in that car except me. But the smell. Sweet, flowery, seductive. Where does it come from? The windows are closed. The smell intensifies. It changes. Becomes more intense, bitter, demanding, urgent. No longer sweet. Hot like a day on the beach. Sweat. I look around, nobody. Smell of cigarettes, alcohol, dope. Smell of a crowd of dancing bodies. Smell of rhythm and music. Smell dragging me forward, faster. Smell of a smile. Smell wants to tell me a story. Perfume and motor oil. Tacos and beer. Smell of a kiss. Smell of skin, warm soft skin. Smell of sweat. Smell of passion. Desire. Leather. Leather and sweat. Hot skin. Bodies. Smell of brass. And then that smell leaves me, neon light and a faint whiff of railroad. What was that?
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Day 2: Word Prompt: Amoransia
Portuguese amor, love + ânsia, craving.
Pronounced “ah-moh-ran-see-uh.”
n. the melodramatic thrill of unrequited love; the longing to pine for someone you can never have, wallowing in devotion to some impossible person who could give your life meaning by their very absence.T
Taken from The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows by John Koenig
Amoransia
I crave him, I can think of nothing else but his blue eyes, like steel in the white light of the neon lamps. I see him in front of me, his beautiful strong body, his arms, his hands clutching the knife so tightly. How the blood glows on the tiles, how determinedly he goes about his work. How happy he looks when he kills cows with the captive bolt pistol in the slaughterhouse. I hear the melody of the conveyor belts, the swan song of the sows, the rattling of the chains, the screeching of the bone saws, and in the middle of it all is you, my darling, so unreachable! You have no eye for me, because your only desire is to cut sows and cows into small pieces. And so I wish for only one thing: cut me up, sell my flesh, but keep my heart forever.
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Day 1: We found a body, but it wasn’t the body we were looking for.
Press conference
The mayor appeared in front of the microphones. The police work well in this city, we are very satisfied with them. We stand here to emphasize once again that we are very satisfied with the work of the police. The police chief deserves my full confidence. And now, regarding this unfortunate murder case of the owner of the restaurant, we can inform you that we have found a body. It was lying exactly where we expected it to be, in a drainage channel near the river. We would like to emphasize once again that the place where the body was found corresponds exactly to what was expected according to our investigation. It is the body of a man of about 40 years, it shows a gunshot wound. Unfortunately, it is not the body we were looking for. But that should not be used by the opposition as an opportunity to accuse our police of failure. The task of the police was to find a corpse, and they have fulfilled this task 100%. The fact that it is not the corpse we had hoped to find is something I can only comment on: Not everything in life is always perfect. You can’t always get everything you want. That’s a shame, but that’s life. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you.
Bonus: My only contribution to Flash Nano 2022: A story mentioning cinnamon
La Canelle
- Salut!
Her voice made him turn around. She smiled at him. In a way German girls don’t smile. She told him she had to go to the grocery to buy something, her mother asked her. Would he come along? She waited.
He knew who she was. His friend René called her Little Anne.
Everything was an adventure here. A tiny French village, where everyone was involved in making Champagne. Everything was French here, even the doorknobs were French.
He was here to improve his pronunciation. His father had arranged it, a stay with a host family, plus work in the vineyard for pocket money. It was 1969, he was 16. - Are you coming?
She had her fun with him, in a friendly way. And he had to answer in French. - What do you have to buy?
- La canelle!
- What’s that?
In the meantime, they were walking side by side past the town hall toward the train station, where the little grocery store was. She explained it to him, Christmas, that smell, la canelle. And he didn’t understand anything. His mind was blank. He concentrated on not falling over. She smelled very different from the German girls too, she smelled … French.
Outside the store she met another girl and forgot about him in a split second.
At home with the host family, he took out the big Langenscheidt Wörterbuch.
la canelle – cinnamon.