FLASH FICTION FRIDAY

Doorknobs & BodyPaint Archives

Guides & Prompts from Issue 71 Noir

Noir.  A private eye, a plainclothes policeman, an aging boxer, a hapless grafter, a law-abiding citizen lured into a life of crime. So, it’s a man’s story, then. Only a part, the woman are beautiful, mysterious, and always have a hidden agenda.  And, someone, man or women, is always looking for the big payoff.  Someone is always played for the sucker.  And, under it all the power of desire moves the story closer to the edge.

 HAYWARD FAULT LINE:  Leila Rae, editor (shake us up) 

1. Maximum length: 450 words.

2. The sub-theme is:  craving.

3. The setting is:  Cincinnati, OA.
4. Within the story, you must use this bit of text: the best of everything.

Write a story and post it in comments or send to Cairo Room doorknobsandbodypaint@gmail.com

FLASH FICTION FRIDAY

 DOORKNOBS & BODYPAINT ARCHIVES

Guides & prompts from issue 66

The work issue is often very personal.  This issue, however, takes work beyond your narrator’s experience and focuses on other people’s work.  Whether it’s watching a small child choose between fireman or baker; whether it’s someone in a mid-life crisis choosing to continue in a profession or start something new; whether it’s an end of life decision of how best to finish one’s life and work.

HAYWARD FAULT LINE (shake us up) 

1. Maximum length: 450 words.

2. The sub-theme is: restore.

3. The setting is: Port-au-Prince, Haiti.

4. Within the story, you must use this bit of text:  back into existence.

Write a story and post in comments or send to the Cairo Room at doorknobsandbodypaint@gmail.com

FLASH FICTION FRIDAY

Doorknobs & BodyPaint Archives

Guides and Prompts from Issue 65

Love Issue

You're in love.  You wake in the morning and the first thought is of your beloved.  And, your last thought at night is lover.  Then the inexplicable happens.  You are separated, maybe by family, maybe by work, maybe war.  It doesn’t matter the cause.  What matters is the separation, how to endure it.  What matters is how to make contact.  What matters is being together again.

DORSAL CONTEST

In Edwidge Danticat's short story, CHILDREN OF THE SEA, a young Haitian revolutionary on a small boat headed for Miami, and his lover, a young woman left behind in war-torn Haiti, narrate the story by writing letters that they cannot mail, but appeases their loneliness while they are away from each other.

Your father will probably marry you off now, since I am gone.  Whatever you do, please don't marry a soldier.  They're almost not human.

***

haiti est comme tu l'as laisse.  yes, just the way you left it.  bullets day and night.  same hole.  same everying.  i'm tired of the whole mess.  i get so cross and irritable.  i pass the time by chasing roaches around the house.  i pound my heel on their heads.  they make me so mad.  everything makes me mad.  i am cramped inside all day.... we have our whole lives ahead of us.  you used to say that, remember? but then again things were so very different then.

In 450 words or less, write a love story utilizing letter writing and two narrators. Post it in comments or send to Cairo Room doorknobsandbodypaint@gmail.com.