Flash Fiction 8: Summer on the Farm

The flash fiction contest run by Janet Reid this week was in honor of her aristocratic cat, the Duchess of Yowl. I entered, but this time got no recognition. No worries: win or lose, it’s good experience (and a ton of fun).Once again, we were given five prompt words to use in the story, which could be broken up with spaces and punctuation but otherwise had to be intact. The words, reflecting the Duchess’s mood this week, were MIFF, TIFF, SULK, HUFF, and FLUFF. So many double Fs! I had a really hard time pulling them together into some sort of story, and it seems others also found it difficult since there were only 54 entries this week. Here’s what I came up with, which isn’t really a story and doesn’t pack as much punch as I was hoping it would, but it’s the best I could do this time around.

Summer on the Farm, submitted 5/14/16

Oh, that last, lingering summer on Grandad’s farm. If fall never came it would have been fine with me. At age eight I was happy to shuffle through the tall grass, climb the old sulky disintegrating in the barn, watch dandelion fluff drift on the breeze. I wondered why my parents were silent on the drive here and why they just dropped me off and left, but didn’t think about it much. Not until Grandad sat under the Tiffany lamp and cried, explaining how they might not love each other any more, but they still loved me very much.

Though the challenge was very challenging indeed this week, nonetheless some folks were able to take those prompt words and knock them right out of the park. You can read the results here, and see that the stories that made the short and long list, and the winning story, are really amazing. These people are GOOD!