The Confabulator Cafe

Category: Confabulation

  • Return to Sender

    Jungle Room — 2010

    I’ve never been much of an Elvis fan.

    I had an uncle growing up, you can call him Dick because … well, that’s what he was. So Dick was coo coo for Cocoa Puffs when it came to all things Elvis. He collected figurines and costumes and those stupid little porcelain plates that only idiots and old ladies buy from shopping channels. He even bought a mantle-sized Velvet Elvis and had some local artist paint him into the picture with his arm around The King.

    I’m telling you, Dick was not a well man. I’m pretty sure I caught him beating off to “Blue Christmas” one time, and he was referring to his little man as a “hunk of, hunk of burnin’ love.”

    So, yeah, that’s a little piece of my innocence I’m never getting back.

    (more…)

  • Scratched

    Credit to mrheinzelnisse at deviantart.com

    Game Room — May 7, 1970

    I racked the balls tight, just like I taught him; just like my father taught me. I pointed the number on the black 8-ball straight up, for luck. The varnish on the rack had worn away, leaving light circular thumbprints. He always wanted to rack the balls. I always let him. I felt the place his fingers always touched as I put the rack away.

    I circled the table, examining the rack of balls. I traced my fingers around the felt bumpers as I walked. They grazed the spot where we engraved our names. We built the table together. Billiards had always been a family game. Building a billiards table is a major undertaking. It requires so much precision, so much commitment. If the slightest measurement is off — the level, the square — the game suffers. The slightest mistake changes the game.

    I positioned the cue ball at the first mark, lined up to the right. I set myself, exhaled, and then struck. I pocketed a stripe. I always took stripes. He wanted solids. He had loved the bright colors ever since I had to hold him up at the table. He had been so excited to build this. All he could talk about was the game. The game excited him. Everything excited him. When I was with him, everything excited me. (more…)

  • Whispers from Straeon Manor (Week Ending August 4)

    This week, we’re trying something new at the Cafe for our monthly confabulation. Instead of merely giving our writers a prompt for their usual flash fiction of 1,000 words, we decided to really challenge them to do something grand.

    Straeon Manor at the Confabulator CafeWelcome to Straeon Manor. Together, our writers are building this house room by room.

    Each writer has selected a room in Straeon Manor, as well as a time period for their setting. The only rule is that the story must exist completely within the confines of one room.

    In the coming week, you may read a story set in a wine cellar in 1880s, a trophy room during the Roaring Twenties, or a kitchen during the Lyndon Johnson administration. Regardless of where and when the story takes place, they all take place here, in Straeon Manor.

    And because of the special nature of these stories, we’re removing our 1,000-word limit on stories. Our writers can write as little or as much as necessary to tell their tales.

    If our experiment is a success, our writers will be revisiting Straeon Manor with new stories every few months. And when we do, there will be more surprises.

    Until next week,

    The Cafe Management

  • A Ghost Story for Pat (Flash Fiction)

    It was one of the first festivals of the season and a time to renew acquaintances and to greet old friends. Most of us hadn’t seen one another since that dreary cold day last winter. The sweet smell of woodsmoke summoned us to perch on camp chairs and coolers and begin to spin yarns from memories and moonshine.

    “I first met Davy, we were in high school together. He was one crazy sonovabitch then, too.” DJ’s booming voice carried easily over the crackle of burning brands. “We used to drag race cars down by the lake every chance we got. Of course, the cops know all about us; they knew our cars, and they’d take any excuse to pull us over whether we deserved it or not. One night the deputy sheriff sees Davy’s car parked along the side of the road. He was sitting there with his girlfriend at the time, just talking, and when the deputy shone his flashlight at them through the window, Davy says to him, ‘Now just hold on there! I haven’t even got her pants off yet!’ He never did have too much respect for cops.”

    “He only had the one girl in there with him?”

    “He mostly only ever had one at a time. He tried dating two at once a time or two, but he always said that was too much work.”

    (more…)

  • Two Sides to Each Door (Flash Fiction)

    “You gotta understand,” Momma says to the doctor as though Annabelle can’t hear her. “She has always been a special child. Very particular, you know. Apple of her Gramma’s eye.”

    The Doctor peers over the top of her horn-rim glasses, tapping her pen against the pad of paper in her lap. Annabelle feels small when the Doctor looks at her, even though it was just her birthday and everyone was saying Look how big you’re gotten!

    The Doctor nods slowly and says in her strange, slow voice, “Annabelle, can you draw a door for me?”

    Her heart pounding in her chest, Annabelle looks from the Doctor to Momma before shaking her head. You mustn’t draw a door, young lady — Gramma had been clear about that. She could draw whatever else she wanted, so long as it wasn’t a door. Annabelle rubs her sweaty palms on the skirt of her nicest Sunday dress, trying to pretend she doesn’t know that Momma is glaring at her. “No,” she says, her voice so soft that it’s almost too quiet to be heard over the rattle of the air conditioner.

    (more…)

  • The Death Ranger (Flash Fiction)

    Photo from here.

    “Okay, okay.” I accept the plastic two-liter bottle signifying my turn to tell a story. I need to think about it, size up my audience a bit. I close my eyes and go ‘round the fire:

    Beth – who I have always wanted to go to bed with – is to my right. I want to startle her. Give her the chance to reach out to me instead of George, her boyfriend and an acquaintance of mine for nearly twenty years.

    Todd was next, a friend of Holly. Yeah, she’ll be the most frightened if I tell the story right. She said that Todd was just along for the ride because he had the pot.

    Directly opposite is an empty rock where Noah had been, but he was out gathering wood for the fire. We’ve been friends almost as long as I’ve known George.

    Janice, Noah’s wife. A true stick in the mud.

    Carla is next to her and always game for a good story. She’ll heighten the mood at the right time.

    Mike is off to my left. He’s sullen tonight and drinking too much.

    On my left is Willow, my soon-to-be ex-girlfriend. This trip had been planned for a while, and I don’t want to break up with her before I’d given our relationship – if you could call it that – one last chance.

    “Are you finally ready, o master storyteller?” Todd is trying to be funny and already high as a kite. His pot is pretty good, and everyone except Janice and Willow have taken a toke.

    “Yeah,” I say, opening my eyes. “This -” I hold out my hands over the fire and draw them apart, “- state park we’re in has a long history and there are lots of things out in the woods that’ll take you to hell in a heartbeat if you’re unwary. But there’s nothing more terrifying than -” I wait for effect, “The Death Ranger.”

    (more…)

  • Netstrider (Flash Fiction)

    “And then, the Netstrider passes in the night and eats the internet.”  Laney paused to let the chills go down their backs, as they poked at screens under the covers.

    “But Mommy, they can still use their phones, right?” Dana asked. “That’s not the internet.”

    “The Netstrider doesn’t care how you are on the internet, my love. He only cares that you are on, and it draws him like honey. In those lands where the Netstrider has recently passed, oh, the chagrin, oh, the horror–for all around, the phones disconnect, the computers grunt and groan and settle down in a poof of dust.”

    The children gasped.  “Then what do we do?  What does anyone do?” asked Will.  His phone beeped three times then, three messages. (more…)

  • Angry Levi (Flash Fiction)

    “Who’s our first volunteer for bear patrol?” Mitch asked.

    Huddled next to the fire eating mushy baked beans out of a tin plate, I exchanged covert glances with my fellow rookie scouts. None of the four of them looked anxious to volunteer. They kept their faces buried in their food bowls.

    Mitch snorted. “So much for Helpful, eh Joe?”

    Joe barked a laugh. “Untrustworthy lot we got here, looks like.”

    (more…)

  • Bobo’s Haunted Circus (Flash Fiction)

    Photo credit: Wee Willy Wicked http://stayingscared.blogspot.com

    Okay, guys. Chill. It’s getting dark. I need you all around the fire so I can keep track. Nobody wander off. Two steps into the trees and it’s pitch black. You’ll get turned around and lost. I don’t want to explain to your parents why their kid didn’t make it back home.

    Jimmy, come on. Why didn’t you pee when it was still light? Fine. Just to that tree there, no farther. Hurry. You don’t want Bobo to find you out there alone.

    What? You guys haven’t heard about Bobo? Hurry up, Jimmy! You don’t want to miss this. Finish up over there and hurry back to the fire.

    They say years ago, in this very spot, a circus pitched their big top once a year. Right where we’re sitting. They had elephants and dancing dogs, a high-wire act. They had everything. The Macelli Brothers owned it.  Giovanni and Enzo. They did everything together, and the circus was their dream. (more…)

  • The Fools on the Hill (Flash Fiction)

    Alan positioned the flashlight directly in front of his mouth and made eerie ghost sounds. The light, tainted red from shining through his flesh, made disconcerting shadows on the sides of the tent.

    “Bre-e-e-tt, are you afraid of the da-a-a-a-rk?” Alan asked in the same ghost-mimicking voice.

    “No, of course not,” Brett replied, all the while thinking Yes, yes, oh dear God, yes I’m afraid of the dark. But they were safe in the tent they had pitched in Alan’s backyard, Brett chided himself.

    “We should tell ghost stories.”

    Even in the dim light, Brett could see the wicked gleam in his friend’s eye.

    “I don’t know any,” Brett muttered.

    “Have you ever heard about the house on the hill?”

    Brett shook his head.

    “They call it the Fool on the Hill, like that Beatles song.”

    “What’s so scary about a fool on some hill?” Brett asked skeptically, and then wished he hadn’t asked because he knew that now Alan was going to tell the story whether he wanted him to or not.

    “Some crazy guy used to live there. Just a regular dude, worked at the factory, and then one day he just snapped and killed his wife and kids and boarded himself up inside of his house up there. Nobody has seen him since, and now it’s haunted by his restless spirit.”

    The flashlight was back to illuminating Alan’s mouth, and Brett watched, mesmerized.

    (more…)