Category: Flash

Flash: Career Day Options

Erin Penn

ID 224354623 © David Wood | Dreamstime.com

“Stuart, time for school,” Mom shouts up the stairs.

Checking to make sure all the books I need for today are in the clear backpack, I notice the red binder for permission slips is still on my desk. “Shit, I forgot today is career day.” I grab the folder and shrug the pack onto my back, racing down the steps, passing by my sister taking down the laundry.

She graduated last year when she turned thirteen. Lucky her. Guys have to stay in city-school until sixteen. Girls switch to support-school, which was only a half day. Like I said, lucky.

Waving the red folder at Mom as I approach, she grabs a pen from the table where everyone dumps things when they come in. “Long night?” I comment; I really shouldn’t but the bags under her eyes had bags. The baby we got assigned as part of Angela’s support-training had colic so the woman-folk of the house spent the night walking the tyke around to keep it quiet while me and Mom’s latest deployment husband got the needed rest to do our jobs right.

Hey, school is a job! Especially, once they had peeled off the girls to support-school. I hope Angie gets extra credit for Red Face so she doesn’t end up like Mom, forced to marry an Army Unit and provide comfort whenever one of them was between deployments. A permanent match was so much better.

She was smart. And a really good cook. It could happen, even for a girl from the Northside.

Well, we would find out next month when she hits fourteen and goes up for matching.

Speaking of matches, “Thanks for the sign-off,” I grab back the folder from Mom. “I really hope the recruiters like me. I did well on all the tests.”

Her sad smile as she clicks the pen close twists my gut. “I hope you get what you want too.”

Today is the day everything will be decided for me. I give her a hug before running out the door.

I know, what am I doing hugging her at fifteen? I’m nearly a man. Well, I don’t hug her much anymore, but today it just felt right, okay?

I join the men-folk and other school-age kids at the bus stop. All the kids have clear-packs like mine, as required by the Department of Education and Patriotism Instruction. Donald and Bobby have the back of theirs lined in some bulletproof fabric, but the Millers always put on airs. The dingy, smoggy pre-dawn hour carries the diesel fumes from the extra generators needed at the nearby datacenter where their dad, they only had one, lucky dogs, works as a manager. Mom started with one, but after he died and the Every Man Every Woman Act passed in ’31, she got paired with 19th Battalion.

The bus is only ten minutes late, which means I got to the school forty-five minutes early for morning cardio. But better than taking the seven o’clock red-line and arriving thirty minutes late, if it even had room for the kids which most days it did not. Working men get first shot at the seats.

Anyway, I had time to drop my stuff off in the locker and hang with the boys. Our half-year class of ’42 would be graduating come December, the early class of ’42 long dispersed into their assignments.

“What are you going to try for, Donny?” I drop beside him on the bleachers waiting for the coaches to show up.

Donny is different from Donald Miller, who was different from Vance-Donald, etc. Some days it seems like half my class is named Donald, but it is actually only nine of them. Donny and I team up and go door-to-door getting cyber-coins for moving stuff and fixing things. For the last week, he had been bouncing a lot of ideas around, but today is the day.

“Oh, I’m hoping I can qualify for votech.” He rubs his jeans. “I think I could do good working in mechanics. The last set of aptitude tests say machinist would be a good fit.”

“What we talking ‘bout?” Mike falls on the metal seat to Donny’s other side. Then he responds to himself as he twirls the pencil he always carries with him. His brain hears things a couple seconds behind everyone else. “Machinist. Nah. They ain’t matching Northside fodder with glitter unless your dad already gots the job. You’re Army, like the rest of us.”

“I’m planning Navy.” I declared.

Both of them laughed. “You? You hate getting caught in the rain. Being surrounded by water? Bah-ha-ha.”

“Alright fodder chumps.” The two uniformed coaches show up exactly at seven-fifty-five. “Down for twenty, then we run stairs.”

And like that, we in the dirt doing pushups.

When the girls were around, we only had to do the run. And, we only had to run on the track. I miss those days.

***

At the door to the library, I turned over the sheet my mom signed emancipating me so I could sign up for a career to start the day after I turn sixteen in February. I inhale deep and step into the carpeted area. This is it. The rest of my life.

The tables normally set around the library had been lined up in front of the bookcases. The recruiters were sitting behind the tables, and my classmates stand in front of them hustling for the best options they could get. Army has the north wall and most of the boys are there, including Donny. I glance around and don’t see any options other than military. Marines, ICE, National Guard, Internal Enforcement Patrol. And the one table I care about which combines Space Force, Air Force, and Navy in all their flavors.

I frown as I walk over to their little corner of the world. The summer crowd got the Federal Teamsters from the Department of Interstate Transport as well as City Services recruiters. Did our tests not qualify for government work to meet our ten years of civil service, or are they beefing up the ranks to invade Canada or Mexico again?

I hope it is Canada. Whenever they do Mexico, the stores stop getting fresh produce for a while.

I stop at the Navy table where the two men sit chatting to each other. After a moment, when they don’t stop talking about one of them qualifying for Comfort Matching, I wave at them and say, “Hey, guys.”

The one beside the computer sighs and says, “Name.”

“Um, okay. It’s Robert Kennedy Hamilton.”

He types my name in. “Birthday February 9th?”

“Yes.”

“You don’t qualify. Go over to Army.” The computer guy turns back to the other guy and starts talking again. “Get the youngest one you can for your cyber. Train her up right.”

I interrupt, trying not to think about my sister ending up with someone like them. “Hey, now. I’ve seen my aptitude tests, I qualify for Navy, especially the Seabees.”

“They upped the standards kid, you don’t qualify.”

“But—”

“You don’t qualify. Go join the foot soldiers.”

“Could you at least tell me how close I am to qualification?” I don’t like the whine in my voice. It sets my voice cracking, but I have to know.  “I got a month left, maybe I can raise something.”

The other guy, the one with wings on his shoulders shook his head. “No can-do my guy. Just go over there. Everyone here is going into the same barracks come December 26th. Just roll with it.”

I blink and start walking over to the Army table.

I don’t get a choice.

I watch as my classmates get turned away from all the other tables but Army.

None of us are getting a choice.

(words 1,299, published 6/15/2025)

Flash: Mouse Monopoly

Erin Penn

Photo by James Wainscoat on Unsplash

(This flash is based on last week’s Writing Exercise: Trope Writing Prompts (6/5/2025).)

“What are you watching?” Brune asked, jumping over the back of the couch to land in the cushion area on the other side from me. I heard what was left of the springs complain. He wasn’t the worst of the offenders, but he did contribute to the wrecked state of most of the flat’s furniture. Three-bedrooms and five guys, all CIS except for me which meant half the time the other renters weren’t in residence, going hunting or hanging out with their most recent capture-of-the-heart in less crowded conditions, and the other half the time they brought the chicks over, I think in a half-hearted attempt to get them to cook or clean.

I missed Dave. His OCD kept the place dusted.

Anyway, I clicked to the next channel on the cable rotation. “Haven’t decided yet.” I had been watching a cooking show, but admitting that would mean either I (1) would have to cook the dish or (2) get teased for being gay and into girl things. Not something I could handle today. Between the bio-lab from University and the stocking at the dead-end job, I operated in the negative fucks. My brain was leaking out my ears from everything I had stuffed into it at school this afternoon, after a mind-numbing morning of reorganizing the paper products for my big-box store employer so people would not be able to find their toilet paper immediately and spend more time in the store looking around and picking things they didn’t need up, like unicorn-themed napkins on the end-caps. Mice were showing on the screen in a lab setting; probably some sort of news story about cancer or a new medical finding.

I clicked the channel.  I had dealt with mice for three hours today, I’m not spending downtime with them. The next channel showed a carpet of mice pouring down a street. Looked like downtown. One of the Peachtrees. But, hey, we were Atlanta, the Hollywood of the south. Everyone filmed downtown. As much as I like horror, no mice for me today.

The next channel was Fox News. Ugh, the reporter had mice in the background screen. I guess that medical news is a big thing. *Click*

Another news channel. They were clustered in our cable in the 40s. There was a scroll across the bottom of “Breaking News” and talking heads. Something, something about a lab accident and infection. Oh, mice, never mind.

I was about to click again when Brune dived across the couch and grabbed the remote control.

“Dude, what the hell?” I complained.

(words 428; first published 6/11/2025)

Flash: Bootstrap

Erin Penn

Photo by Will Porada on Unsplash (Color adjusted by Erin Penn)

The new boots were tight. Combined with the wool socks to control blisters, Dallas would need to give the bootstraps a good pull to get them settled right. He wiggled the leather back and forth using the tabs until his toes and heels reached bottom. Standing on the wooden porch, he felt his feet settle in the sole but it still wasn’t comfortable.

Dawn was making itself known, and he could hear the cattle lowing in the barn, complaining about the situation. Letting the world know that the green field-grass would be much obliged to be in their bellies.

He needed to be about it, and this not rightly-settled wasn’t goin’ to work none and he wasn’t particular wanting to restart. In a desperate move, just for the sure hell of it, he leaned over, grabbed one boot strap in each hand, and yanked harder than the bull does on the rope when the females start smelling particularly purdy.

“What do you know? That worked.” Dallas unbent to stand tall, the boots feeling fine.

And everything was fine until he took a step off the porch and ended up mid-air.

Two steps forward more and still midair, though not because of a tumble, Dallas looked back. He remained level with the porch.

“Well, dang it all.” He took off his straw hat, hit it against his jeans, ran his hand through his hair, and placed the hat back on his head. “I ain’t got time for this.”

He stomped off to the barn, as much as one can stomp the air, and got the day started. After opening the barn doors to let the cows into the corral, he made his way to the horse stall to saddle up Reliable, though threading the straps under the belly took a bit of work. The porch was only a couple foot in the air, but the barn was slightly downhill from the house, putting him nearly four-foot clear into the air. The only pleasant part was an easy swing of the leg over Reliable to mount.

A click of the tongue and the day finally started going right as he rode Reliable out of the barn.

(words 364, first published 6/16/2025)

Flash: The Biggest Wall

Erin Penn

Photo by Tim Mossholder on Unsplash

“Dang illegals taking honest work from honest men.”

I was stuck at the table with him again. My wife and his wife got along great, but him and I, well, our views on life didn’t match. But side-by-side we sit at another church potluck.

“Oh, you want to work in the fields in 100-degree heat in the summer?” I couldn’t help but prod him.

“No. I’m retired. But you know, someone could.”

“Yes, I suppose.” I debated if it would be bad to take a third turn around the dessert tables, not to pick something up but to get away. “But then they would have to be paid minimum wage and given safe housing. I think the studies show that the price of produce will double, unless we start underwriting it like we do the meat industry.”

“Harumph. We don’t underwrite the meat industry. Farmers are hard workers.”

“Yes they are. God’s own.” This time I wasn’t sarcastic. My brother and the family he married into operated a farm just outside of town. “I thank God for them three times a day. Every meal is possible because of them and the immigrants they hire.” I should have stopped before I added the part about immigrants, but “welcome the stranger” had been drilled into me by my Southern upbringing. I don’t know how others didn’t get the same message.

“Dang immigrants. Always sneaking across the border. We need to get that wall finished.”

“You know, there is a solution to stop immigration, better than a wall.”

“A wall is the best thing.”

“Walls always fail. The Great Wall of China didn’t keep the Mongols out. The wall the Romans put up to keep the wild Scots out after they conquered England was a complete fail. The Berlin wall fell in our time.” I gathered my wife’s cardboard plate and my own to take to the trash.

He followed me with his wife’s stuff. Of course he followed me. “So what would be your solution?” he hissed, like nothing could beat a wall except his hard head.

I leaned against the foldable wall carefully, the one usually dividing the fellowship hall into classrooms. “First, you need to define the problem. And it isn’t immigrants coming here, but why they leave where they are. Stop and think a moment. How bad does where you are has to be to make you leave everything behind and go to a country where you don’t speak the language or understand the laws. Where you have no friends and no support? Your family gone, your community gone. Think about that situation. People don’t come here lightly.”

“They hop the border all the time.”

“They cross desert. Sometimes walking hundreds of miles. Why would a person walk hundreds of miles from everything they know? They have to believe where they are going is going to be better than where they came from.”

“Exactly. They’re lazy no-goods wanting to take our social security.”

“I thought you said they were stealing jobs?”

The red either side of his neck started going up. I had promised my wife I wouldn’t get in a yelling match with him again.

“Back to the solution that is better than walls. I am working from the hypothesis, and I admit I could be wrong, but immigrants are always functionally refugees. That sounds bad. My white male privilege is showing. Sorry. But essentially where they are has become inhospitable to them or their family. Either no chance of a better future for their children or things are actively endangering them. They see our ‘Land of Opportunity’ as being better than where they are; a chance of survival and maybe even thriving. Despite language differences and uprooting their entire lives.”

He crossed his arm and braced his legs. I chose to ignore two of the gossips at the next table watching us like we were their soap operas.

“Based on that premise of why they are coming here, which, you have to admit is more important than what they do before they get here, right?”

“Right.” He nodded.

“There are two solutions, better than a wall to prevent them from coming, because anyone willing to walk hours, days, weeks even,  through a desert isn’t going to be stopped long by a wall. Right?”

“Right.”

“The solutions are: one, make things better where they are, so they don’t need to leave, or, two, make things worse here so they don’t want to come.”

He frowned.

“A good international presence, working to make lives better for everyone—”

“And send our money to foreigners?” He cut me off.

“To help our neighbors, as Jesus told us to do.” I snapped. A quick inhale and exhale had me refocused. “Safer places to live mean people don’t feel the need to escape to save their children.”

“Still, sending money overseas sound like socialism to me.”

“Well, the other option is making America so inhospitable and dangerous no one wants to come here.”

“That isn’t going to happen. We are making America great again.”

“That should do it.” I started walking to the table where our wives sat. My beautiful, loving wife saw my approach and picked up her purse from under her chair.

(words 873, first published 6/21/2025)

Flash: D is for Done

Erin Penn 4 Comments

ID 339656677 ©
Ulrich Allgaier | Dreamstime.com

I hate my life.

I have never sung so long for anyone in my life. Not even the one person in my Composer line who died since I became the Diva; he had been forty-two when the heart attack took him. Rosalynn is ninety-six. At some point, someone had turned on the light for the conference room. The sun had set long ago. Tears pour from my eyes, soaking my work blouse.

For sorrow and grief and loss.

For greatness and compassion; sympathy and determination.

For pain.

From exhaustion.

At last the keening drops to how she will die. Quietly, at home, holding her husband’s hand. The last words she will hear is how much he loves her.

The wail ends. In two days, the lady I and my sisters just sang for will pass beyond the veil.

Damn she had accomplished a lot for a peanut farmer’s wife.

The song is finally done.

I collapse.

Someone catches me before I hit the soft beige carpet.

How?

Why?

No one should be stupid enough to be here. In a room where a banshee is singing.

I had been looking forward to falling on the carpet. I never had had carpet before at the end of a wail. Falling on linoleum hurts. The carpet had looked so soft when I had snuck in here.

I try to focus my eyes on the face, squinting through the tears and exhaustion. The room swims around black eyes. The thin red line beneath them moves, but my ears aren’t working after being exposed to a banshee wail for so long. We are not immune to our own magic. Hence reason number one of why I hate my life. Insanity runs through banshee lines like the Dublin Marathon. I wonder what the person said.

A cloth runs over my face, drying it. I sniffle to get a scent. My eyes aren’t clear enough to see death right now, and I certainly can’t hear the person’s life song the way my ears feels all pressured-and-hurting. Smell is the easiest, but all I smell is snot. They hold the cloth over my nose after my sniffle, so I blow on it like a five-year old child. I feel the vibration from them talking against my skin before they lay me the super soft floor. Oh, to have money for this type of carpet in my studio apartment.

I practice breathing. I hum a note and it HURTS. No talking tomorrow.

At least, it is a Saturday.

Maybe I will be able to talk by Monday.

I’d hate to use sick leave the first week I qualify for it.

The person comes back and starts cleaning my face and neck with wet paper towels, and the cool wet slimy things feel absolutely wonderful.

I might be running a fever.

When the person lifts me up to a sitting position, I grab an arm to steady myself against the dizzy of blown out eardrums as they turn my head down so I only see the arm.

A male arm clad in really, really nice fabric. Like fabric that only comes in custom-made suits. Oops. Someone from the fifth floor.

Well, duh, I am on the fifth floor. Of course it would be one of the insurance company’s administrators. I am so going to quit from embarrassment. And I just finished my ninety-day probation!

(In case you are wondering, because people ask banshees these types of questions all the time, yes, a person can die of embarrassment. It is extremely rare, but we have a tune for it so it happened at least once.)

Are they…???

Ick…he is licking my ear!

Tongue in ear, gross.

I try to pull away, but he has a firm grip on my jaw and turns me so he can lick my other ear.

Lick INSIDE my other ear!

Oh god, oh god, oh god … wait, I can hear me whining!

That’s new.

I thought I would be deaf for a while. It’s a common-side effect after banshees use their powers. Like not being able to talk. We all learn sign language at a young age. More for others, when our voices drop into the death wail cords, but it has other uses too.

He lets go of my face and just supports my shoulders. I can squirm but breaking his grip is out of the question.

Now banshees aren’t the strongest of the supernaturals, in fact we are WAY down on that list, but we are still stronger than normal humans. Okay, maybe not me right now, exhausted as I am, physically, magically. I still can’t focus the eyes, and I can’t hear the person’s living song even though I can hear the building’s heat kicking in.

But I think I am calm enough that I am not longer crying. No, I am not certain; I’m exhausted, okay? I sniff again.

Ash, soil, stone. Specifically, crematory ash, grave soil, and tomb stone. Ash, soil, and stone smell different once death touches them.

Vampire.

Lugh-bless-it, he is one of the owners or progenies thereof.

Forget retirement, I will earn that embarrassment death tune for myself. I blush as only a redhead of Irish descent can.

I hate my life.

(words 875; first published 4/6/2025)

Ymir’s Songs series

  1. Fifteen Minutes (10/09/2022)
  2. Song for Rosalyn (11/26/2023)
  3. D is for Done (4/6/2025)