Saturday, December 6, 2014

Bad Vibes & Things Discarded: 55 Worded Works

A Series of 55-Word Shorts & A Poem for Real Toad's Flash - 55 word challenge.


“Other Worlds”

“I have a bad feeling about this.”

You should, I think, watching you roll your thumbs on the joysticks and your Barbarian character simultaneously turn a corner in the dwarf-hewn cave. From the deep, a fiery balrog tears out of the earth, shaking your controller. You drop it.

In your shriek, the virtual becomes real.


-

“Experimentation”

Vibrations aren’t always good, she frowned, regretting answering the buzzing phone. She returned to the white linened table, heels clicking on the wood floor, and proffered an apology to her date on the way out, “Gotta go clean up a mess at the lab.” She felt a flash of guilt, but, hey, Bloody rampages qualify.

-

“Cosmic Mockery”

Vibrations aren’t always good, she frowned, immediately regretting answering the buzzing phone. It was her bank: someone had stolen her credit card. They’d bought $1,000 of baby items: diapers, food, and a crib. She sank to the ground, breath catching in her throat, next to the trash can that still held the pregnancy test, negative.

-

“Resonance”

Red balloon stretches thin -
pinprick, needle-scar puncture.
air escapes slowly, roundness
retains through shrinking
till shriveled it gives up.

In the trash, it meets discarded
apple core, once round and red, too,
now thin, bowed from depletion of
seeds and apple-meat.

Whether one lost
more than the other
they both ended up
the same.

9 comments:

Maude Lynn said...

These are really outstanding!

Yvonne Osborne said...

Great job on these. Perfect shorts.
I especially like the second one, so many possibilities, and the last stanza of "Resonance" seems to bring it all full circle. Thank you for these interesting 55's.

Margaret said...

I'm quite impressed! Vivid imagination you have and a talented pen.

Magaly Guerrero said...

" In your shriek, the virtual becomes real."

Ouch.

brudberg said...

Love the open-ended possibilities of the three flashes especially number 3... And yes the poem seem to add completeness to the mystery of what could have happened.

Grandmother Mary said...

Yikes- I watch my grandson play his games and think he'd shriek if the scene in your first poem happened to him.

Marian said...

whoosh, these are all so strong. more! more!

Hannah said...

Your story-telling voice is strong...for me, I enjoy seeing where those middle two pieces went...same beginning different paths...interesting!

Brian Miller said...

nice...they give just enough of the story to get us intrigued...i used to write 55s every week...