The Confabulator Cafe

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  • 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…)

  • Calliope (Flash Fiction)

    The calliope sang, and the dark child wept. The steam-powered notes taunted him through the dirt-hazed glass of the attic window, as he stared into the suburban abyss. A spinning Skittles rainbow of twinkling Ferris wheel lights teased him.

    The dark child retreated to the shadows. The thick hair of his back itched against insulation. Tears fell from his red, night-glow eyes. The days were bad. The sound of passing school buses and playing children tormented him. But nothing—nothing compared to the carnival.

    The joyous cries of children invaded his sensitive ears. He covered them with his hands, digging his long, sharp fingernails into the surrounding flesh. His pain could not silence the ecstasy of others. The world lived, and he died a slow, lonely death. (more…)

  • This is a Dark Ride (Week Ending October 27)

    This is a Dark RideYears ago, there was a television program called The John Larroquette Show. John Larroquette starred as a recovering alcoholic who had become the manager of a bus station. The show had a dark humor, characterized by John’s attitude toward his addiction. During the first episode, he hangs a carnival sign on his office wall that reads “This is a Dark Ride.”

    For the uninitiated, a dark ride is an indoor amusement ride in which guided vehicles travel through specially lit scenes. If you’ve ever been through a ride like the “Tunnel of Love” or Disneyland’s “Pirates of the Caribbean,” you know what we mean. A dark ride doesn’t have to be literally dark, but often darkness is used to conceal what comes next.

    That sign, and its implications about our lives, has stuck with me for nearly 20 years. Life is very much a dark ride.  Our future is concealed by the veil of time. It offers unexpected thrills around every turn. Sometimes the surprises are happy ones, but often they are terrifying.

    Our flash fiction assignment for this week was inspired by the season and the classic novel Something Wicked This Way Comes. Writer Ray Bradbury combines horror and fantasy in a story of a traveling carnival that comes to a small town one October. The carnival leader, Mr. Dark, fulfills the townsfolk’s secret desires … but at a price.

    We asked our writers in the Cafe to channel their darkest thoughts and write a short story for Halloween. They have been thinking about carnivals and the strange awful things that could be lurking in those traveling shows.

    So climb aboard. Keep your arms and legs inside at all times. This is a dark ride.

    Until Next Week,

    The Cafe Management

  • Are you ever jealous of other writers?

    The relationships we writers build with each other are very important to us. We provide a camaraderie and a support structure for each other that we all benefit from. That being said, sometimes our fellow writers are successful while we’re still waiting for a break, or they are able to do things in their writing or editing that we can’t. So this week we asked the Confabulators if they ever feel jealous of other writers.

    Ted Boone

    Yes, all the time. I see writers that successfully rewrite/edit/submit/publish their work, and I think, “How did they DO that?”

    Sara Lundberg

    Of course I get jealous. But it’s a motivating jealousy. And it’s a sympathetic jealousy. I understand the amount of work it takes to get to that point, and mostly I’m just proud of my fellow writers for buckling down and working that hard at it. Do I wish I was at that point? Of course. Do I worry that where they were accepted I won’t be? Definitely. But mostly I’m just happy that my fellow writers are getting to live the dream.

    Jason Arnett

    Yep. I could just leave it at that, but what makes me jealous of another writer is how an idea is approached rather than a particular technique or a turn of phrase or someone else’s success. Some writers throw away ideas that would make the career of a lesser writer and when I can perceive that in a story, that’s what motivates me to write more. I try to pick up the ideas that writers leave laying around and make it mine. We’ll see how successful that makes me.

    Christie Holland

    Honestly, is anyone ever NOT jealous of other writers?  I don’t think jealousy is a bad thing, especially when I can look at another writer’s work and study how they’ve done something spectacularly.  For instance, I’m horrible at world-building.  I’m jealous of a lot of writers who are really good at it, so I’ve taken to studying their short stories or novels to figure out just how they did it so that I can get better.  I’m jealous of almost every writer because they can do something better than I can, but that doesn’t mean I can’t turn that jealousy into something productive.

    Ashley M. Poland

    Absolutely. As an adult, I can take that jealously in stride and recognize it for what it us, but sometimes you’re just like — Ugh! That’s amazing! I am both pleased for you and utterly, devastatingly jealous of your success! If nothing else, it makes a good fuel for your own work.

    Jack Campbell, Jr.

    Of course, but I think it is healthy. That jealousy can give you the drive to push just a little bit harder to get recognition for yourself. You know that person accomplished your goals, and it adds fuel to the belief that you are capable of it, as well. Jealousy is part of writing, and it is a very important part. Embrace it.

    Amanda Jaquays

    Let’s not beat around the bush. Of course I’m jealous of other writers. Whether it’s because they’re published, because they can support themselves off their writing, or because they’re better at stringing words together than I am, I’m jealous. In fact, I’m so jealous I’m turning green. But those are all things I can hopefully one day have for myself… if I work for it.

  • Start. Stop. Fix it. Ugh.

    I can keep this week’s post very short.

    The easiest thing about writing? Writing. Telling the story, inventing characters, creating places and events and conflicts and disasters. Delving into the motivations of the cast of sundry folk that make the plot twist and turn.

    That’s easy.

    The penultimate hardest part? Starting. Pushing past the inertia of not writing to start writing again. Once I remove the chocks and get the wheels rolling, I’m good. But I stop and start (which I shouldn’t, but I do) and that initial start is…very tough.

    The absolute worst part? Editing. Not copy-editing. That’s stupidly easy, and I do it on the fly. But going back and editing the actual story? Uh…how do you DO that? Maybe that’s  Which is why I haven’t bothered…yet. Gotta start that some time, but…see penultimate hardest part for my issue with that. 🙂

  • The Plot is Both Easy & Hard

    Where should I start? When does it end?

    Boom. There’s the hardest part about telling a story for me. It’s by no means the only thing I find difficult about the job, but it’s incredibly difficult to look at the tangle of a plot and find the right place to start. Too soon, and it’s impossible to get sucked into the story. Too late, and the reader flounders for a hold on the story.

    Then there’s wrapping it all up. Not every subplot can be tied up in a bow, but there needs to be a feel of completion. It can’t be too abrupt, but you don’t want to end the story four times. You also don’t want to drag the story out too long. If the antagonist has been defeated, the couple reunited, then the story can’t go on for another 100 pages just because you like the world.

    If we’re going for the easiest, its when the story just moves. There are highs and lows in the process, but there’s definitely a middle point when I’m just flying on the whole thing. I’m in love with the process at this point, when plot points are hooking together and  characters are exploding formed and expressive on the page. It’s the artsy part of writing.

    There’s minutiae of writing that can be difficult. Finding the time is a pain. Pushing through the parts that don’t flow sucks. Sometimes the story gets boring. Sometimes the story is wholly useless.

    But the plot. Managing the plot is both the hardest and the easiest part of being a writer.

  • What Makes It Great

    There are a lot of times when I’m writing that I feel like this guy but without the spectre of death looming over me. Image borrowed from this site.

    When I read something I really like, that makes me think, that just stuns me with its elegance or simplicity or beauty, I want to emulate it. I want to know why it works so well, why it hit me so hard. I want to dissect it and hold its beating heart in my hands in order to understand. When I get frustrated, I watch this clip from A League Of Their Own.

    However, since I have very little schooling, or formal training, as a writer I don’t have any way to really dig in and get to the core of something I want to learn. The tools just aren’t there. So what I have to do is sit down and study. And study hard.

    The thing is that when I do that, it’s kind of frustrating. Actually not just kind of frustrating, really frustrating. (more…)