The Confabulator Cafe

Tag: flash fiction

  • Piper

    From Are You Afraid of the Dark
    From Are You Afraid of the Dark

    The first time Eddie told the piper to fuck off it was about a quarter to ten. We parked the car down the street. Eddie said there was a government conspiracy to wait outside of Mickey’s Bar for drunks, and he needed to throw off the cops. That meant a brisk walk through the biting January air. I didn’t want to carry my coat around all night, so I left it in the car. The north wind tore through me within a half a block. I hate the cold. I’ve been cursing my dad ever since he moved us here from southern California when I was ten. What sort of asshole moves his family from paradise to Kansas? My dad was that sort of asshole.

    Loads of panhandlers hung out on the street on Saturday nights. Drunk college kids with money in their pockets were easy marks. Eddie hated beggars even more than he hates people, in general.

    “Jesus Christ,” Eddie said. “The city is pulling a shelter out of my ass and these bastards have the nerve to ask for money?” (more…)

  • Backwards, Forwards

    Disclaimer: Given I’m always late on my submissions, I get to peek to see what everyone else is doing during the weekly assignments. I see that many folks are looking at all of the various assignments and weighing in on the entire body of work that is Confabulator. I, however, originally thought the question posed to us was intended to focus upon only our own postings, so that’s all I originally looked at while working up my answer. As a consequence, my musings below may seem a bit egotistical. That’s not at all the case. I get at least as much enjoyment and food for thought from my fellow contributors as I get from my own efforts.

    I like this assignment. It encouraged me to go back through the last year of Confabulator posts and revisit them, which allowed me to recognize how much insightful commentary and inventive fiction we’ve generated as a group during the last twelve months. It’s pretty damn impressive. (more…)

  • The Lonely Attic

    The Attic – 1999

    Dan had felt pretty ambiguous about his family’s move into the manor house, but the discovery of the attic came as a pleasant surprise. It hadn’t been listed as one of the rooms of the house, and somehow they had missed the door. When they first moved in, nobody had noticed it, but one day he opened a door he thought was a closet and found stairs up to an attic instead.

    It was a huge room, spacious, and windowed on three sides. It was kind the kind of place teenage boys had their room in movies and such.

    He had to have it.

    “Merry Christmas,” his mom said, halfway sarcastically. “If you clean it up and find a way to move all of your stuff up there, it’s yours.” (more…)

  • Those Who Aren’t Missing

    “It’s weird, right?” my older brother says as we watch the muscled men set up the tents over on the fairgrounds. “I mean, I don’t remember the last time I heard of a circus in a big city, let alone a little shithole like this.”

    “Hush!” I snap, enthralled with the way they hitch the poles and raise the faded, striped fabric. Horses whinny from inside rusted trailers, and I would bet every quarter in my piggy bank that there was a lion around here somewhere. Someone may as well have pulled the circus from my dreams, from the faded photographs I copied with the library’s machine.

    With my arms over the edge of our fence and my feet braced in a hole in the wood, I look around for Mama. She’s still inside, on the phone, with her back turned to us. I steel my resolve and say, “It’s not a — a shithole. It’s our home.”

    Zane pats my shoulder and smirks like he always does when he thinks he’s right. “Give it two more years, squirt. You’ll be calling it worse when you realize how boring it is.”

    “It’s not boring,” I say. “We have a circus.”
    (more…)

  • The Things Which Must Be Done… (Flash Fiction)

    Disclaimer: I know I was supposed to write a flash fiction but once I got into the story, it took on a life of its own and grew into a true short story. Presented here is the first part of the two part tale. — Jason

    The Ringmaster of the Circus of Crime from Marvel Comics. Owned and maintained by Marvel.

    Sure clowns are scary – I’ve read that Stephen King book – but they’re not the ones trying to the end the world. Uh uh. It’s the twisted, evil ringmasters you’ve gotta worry about. That guy in the Marvel comics with the hypno-hat and all the circus ‘freaks’? He’s bush league compared to some of the ones I’ve taken down.

    The wind was October chilly and whirled the brittle leaves up the block in a swirl of orange, red and yellow as I took my morning walk. I had my hands in the pockets of my jacket, jingling some change and my collar turned up. The rubes were probably still in bed that early, and I could smell the warmth of fires in fireplaces or stoves. It’s one of the things I love most about fall . Anyway.

    It was the police cars halfway up the block that really had my attention. Three of them, none flashing their lights, with a couple of officers standing in the driveway. The neighborhood was pleasant and probably forty or fifty years old. I mean, it’s pretty obvious which houses were built in the ’70s if you pay attention.

    “Excuse me, sir,” one of the officers said as he crossed the street toward me. I pulled out my earbuds and gave him a look that said I wasn’t expecting him to stop me. “Do you live in the neighborhood?” Leonard, his nametag said.

    “No. I’m at the Barrow Square Hotel a couple blocks over.” I showed concern. “Something happen?” (more…)

  • Fera Profanum (Flash Fiction)

    By the time the McPhereson Carnival and Circus Cavalcade left the county, six children had disappeared with it. Each of the kids had been orphaned, and had no real family to speak of. They were county kids, the kids who lived outside of town. If not for the fact that one of them had been my best friend, Flick, I might never have noticed what was happening.

    The carnival train arrived in the dead of night, its whistle piercing the veil of sleep and awakening every child. We listened as the clickity-clack, clickity-clack of its wheels gave way to a long screech of metal on the track as the brakes slowed the train’s progress.

    The days leading up to the carnival were a wash at school. We did nothing but dream of the coming festivities. We bragged about who was brave enough to ride the most frightening rides, who was skilled enough to win the midway games, and how much of the carnival fare we were likely to eat. (more…)

  • Carnival of Riddles (Flash Fiction)

    Benny stood over the disemboweled body, his facial expression unchanged.

    “Sonofabitch,” he said.

    He backed up against the flimsy structure of the milk-bottle toss, making the booth shake.

    “Hey,” Syd yelled from the other side. “Watch it!”

    Benny peered around the corner at Syd and signaled him to come over.

    “Problem?” Syd flipped his sign to “closed” and jumped over the counter. He followed Benny and looked down at the body. “Holy shit.” Syd’s face remained passive, but he hopped from foot to foot, and his eyes darted around the small space between game booths.

    Benny nodded. “That’s the third one this week. We have a definite problem.” (more…)

  • Confronting the Past (Flash Fiction)

    Under the wavering beam of my flashlight, strips of red and yellow flapped in the breeze from where something had shredded the abandoned carnival tent.  I’d been here before. Every summer, my cousins would come to town and we would all pile into the rusted station wagon and make the two hour drive to the clearing in the woods, eager to see what new performance the traveling circus had put together.

    I grabbed a fistful of the flap and pulled it open. I remembered the flap being heavier, but then I’d only been a kid the last time we were here. Dust choked the air, shining under the weak beam of light. I drew in a deep breath, and stepped into the tent. (more…)

  • The Last Traveling Carnival (Flash Fiction)

    Anna’s brother had been sick for a long time. It was around Halloween when he finally died. Only eight years old and wanted to be a clown for Trick-or-Treating. She remembered it very clearly. The traveling carnival had been in town then, too.

    #

    Anna joined her two roommates at their usual table at the Cafe. She managed to set down her steaming cup of herbal tea without spilling. She had gotten good at hiding the tremors.

    Simon had a textbook open in front of him, but Anna could tell he was too distracted by his girlfriend to study for class.

    “I didn’t know the old-school traveling carnivals even existed anymore,” Lisa said as she inspected the flyer she had rescued from tumbling down the street.

    Anna wasn’t able to suppress the shudder that slid down her spine. (more…)

  • Midway Mark (Flash Fiction)

    I remember the last time we thought she was dying.

    We had gathered there in the small, curtained hospital room, a place devoid of both privacy and hope. We’d taken turns kissing her cheeks for good luck, a small mercy suggested by one of the nurses. We’d said goodbye without speaking the words because the pending loss was still too awful to accept. And then they’d wheeled her away, presumably forever.

    My grandmother had seemed unaware of any of us at the time. As they took her, her eyes had been filled with a wild, rolling panic, like an animal whose only thoughts are to flee the fear and the pain and the death it knew was stalking it. Gone was the elder matriarch who’d held sway over us all, replaced instead by this being whose sole purpose was to survive.

    It had seemed unlikely at the time, but we should have known better. Our family doesn’t die that way.

    (more…)