Category: Visual

Flash: Crossing Over

Erin Penn

Painting: A Laborer At Celeyran by Henri de Troulouse-Lautrec

Image courtesy of the Henri de Troulouse-Lautrec Foundation
Painting entitled: A Laborer At Celeyran
Shared under the Creative Commons attribution

Wearily, the old man sat down on the rock. Spring flowers surrounded him, blooms created by the spring rains. Before him the rains combined with melting snow from the distant mountains had swelled the creek to a full swirling torrent of mud, sticks and foam. His nomadic family barely made it across with their herds. Everyone except for him.

He had made the journey more times than he could count. The miles embedding agony into his legs .. knees … ankles … hips, screaming all his years at him, whimpering the distance from the winter lowlands to the summer mountain pastures.

Three creeks they had already crossed in their long journey to green grass. Sweetwater, Yellow River, Narrow Ford. Four more waterways lay ahead. This creek his family named Abandon.

When they had to leave his mother behind, unable to carry her across all those years ago, he had watched her go to a bare rock. Maybe even this one. There she sat. He had looked over his shoulder a dozen times until too many hills were between them. She never moved.

His father, left behind a handful of years later **screamed** at them and kept trying to splash across, until the waters swept him away. As the strongest male, he had been too busy trying to keep youngest, humans and herd, from drowning.

He vaguely remembered when his grandparents no longer could make the journey.

At least he hadn’t needed to leave Jacomina behind. She died from the cough many winters ago, her bones in the mound.

The dog worried him. Most of the dogs stayed with the family, but BlackFoot stayed behind. The dog wore a track between the waters where everyone crossed and where the old man was sitting. Eventually it sat beside him on the rock and put its head into his lap, whining. He petted its head.

No one looked back as they walked over the hills. Not that he could see. Nodding once the last of the animals crested the hill, the old man stood and began to look for shelter. He knew he wouldn’t last until the winter return, but the dog needed caring. A den of some sort. More rains were coming.

(words 370 – first published 4/17/2016)

Flash: Bunny Hop Line

Erin Penn

Man in Bunny Ears

Image originally on Breathless Press; found again on Pinterest
Cannot find original attribution

Howie always knew a police lineup was in his future. He just always figured it would be for a break and enter, or a bar brawl, or a drug deal, or a hooker who was a cop in disguise, or speeding. He actually hoped for the speeding. Speeding would mean they had set up a full road block and used a plane to catch him during one of the times he pushed over a hundred. His boys would buy him drinks for a year on that story alone.

He never thought it would be for helping out at a kid’s birthday party. God, the cops wouldn’t even let him take off the bunny ears during his mug shots. The fuckers were laughing their asses off.

It had gone wrong, oh … so … wrong.

(words 132 – originally appearing at Breathless Press 9/4/2013 for the 4/8/12 Sunday Fun)

Blog: Inspirations for Flashes – Visual and Text

Erin Penn

INSPIRATION: FLASHES – VISUAL AND TEXT

EXAMPLE: MY BLOG

Hey all, this is the fifth Thursday of the month. I decided for the fifth Thursdays instead of pointing you to someone else’s blog, to write my own. For this one, I thought I would let you in on how I write a little.

You may have noticed I sort the Sunday Flashes into “Visual Flashes” and “Text Flashes”. So, what is the difference? After all, nearly every post I do seems to have a picture associated with it.

First off, flashes are very, very short stories aimed around 1,000 words. Most of mine fall between 500 and 1,200 words. For fifth Sundays, like in January, I will be posting a flash of around 2,000 words. Flashes are meant to be written flat out and tend to be more “scenes” than full short stories requiring character development, plots, and growth. Since I am posting the flashes instead of hiding them away, I do a little editing – correctly the worst of my grammar and spelling errors – before letting the world see my babies.

The difference between Visual and Text flashes is what inspired them. With visual flashes, I am working from a visual prompt. I saw a picture and tried to create a story around the picture. Visual prompts started my blog.

Back toward the end of 2013, I discovered Breathless Press’s blog where they posted a picture every Sunday and asked readers/writers to post a line inspired by the picture. I wrote a few flashes – about three-week’s worth. Then I decided to start my own blog and posting the stories there as well. That way if anything happened to Breathless Press, I would still have my stories. Man, am I glad I did that. Because in 2015 the small press died, as so many have done. Publishing is a tough business.

I no longer have any of the original pictures, unless I was able to hunt them down and find the correct permissions. I am a stickler about creative attribution – but that is another blog (likely for the fifth Thursday of June).

Text flashes were written without any visual inspiration. I don’t have to tie them to a chair being red or a man wearing suspenders because that was in the picture. These stories may have been inspired by a conversation with a friend, an observation at work, or just spring from my head like Athena from Zeus’ (after a very nasty headache). Before posting, I try to find a good picture to go with the story.

A cool note that using visuals as inspiration and using writing to choose a picture have publishing industry equivalents. During the pulp era, sometimes publishing houses would buy a cover from an artist and give it to an in-house writer to build a story around. Modernly, author write the stories picked up by publishing houses, and an in-house artist builds a cover around.

I find that my visual inspirations tend to create new worlds and storylines, while my text flashes revisit and expand the worlds I have previously created.

As a reader, do you have a preference on the stories? Do you find the visual or the text flashes to be more interesting?

As a writer, have you used visual or text prompts for inspiration? Do you find one or the other easier to work with? Have you ever tried to find a picture for a story you wrote or work with an artist?

Comment below.

Flash: Coffee Urn

Erin Penn

Coffee Pot by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec

Image courtesy of the Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec Foundation
Painting entitled: Coffee Pot

Coffee. Warm, wonderful, life-giving coffee.                                         

The silver urn bathed in the late morning sun, alone on the banquet table, steam curling from the lip. The steam barely visible to my unfocused eyes but glorious all the same.

Hot caffeine. The motion of my life’s blood. The function of my synapses.

Throbbing, my head ravaged me for last night. My tongue ached for the Columbia Black to spill over the cotton-parched muscle, burning away … burning away everything. If only there was a mug.

If only I could move my arms.

I twisted my shoulders to see how tight the bindings were.

My dry tongue pressed against whatever was stuck in my mouth preventing me from screaming, adhering to the terrycloth fiber. Blood and sweat-sock duked it out for control of my taste buds. I think the blood is mine; at least one tooth is loose. So much for the extensive orthodontic work my parents paid for during my teenage years.

Bile rose from the flavors but I manage to dry swallow it back down.

Did they, whoever they were, leave the urn as torture? For torture it was to have coffee so close and so far.

(words 196 – first published 3/27/2016)

Flash: Barefoot with the Rain Falling Down

Erin Penn

Woman standing in rain

Image from multiple postings

Why couldn’t the rain have waited just a few more hours to break the drought? Alison thought as she stood in the law office foyer where she worked as a receptionist. She pushed up her umbrella before joining the throng outside on the sidewalk. She elbowed her way into the moving mass.

Unlike most, she did not have a short walk to one of center city’s numerous parking garages. Her massive school debt made owning a car a distant dream. Alison reminded herself, as her left sneaker was soaked in a deep puddle, the walk saved on gym fees. Exercise was good for her.

She huddled under her portable shelter, bringing the umbrella in tight, so its ribs touched her head, and scurried with the rest of the rat race from work to home. Alison tried not to think about the mountain waiting at home from her second job in medical transcription. At least between her two jobs, she managed to pay off the credit card debt from college last month.

If she could keep from punching Mr. Jewels, Esquire, for another six months, and kept dumping everything onto the loans, she would be debt free. She could spend a few more nights in sleeping bag in her little rented room. Ten years from the beginning of school to the end of debt. Show her parents for kicking her out.

Alison turned through the park. Normally more crowded than the sidewalk, the rain drove the bicyclists and basketball enthusiasts home for the day.

She focused her eyes on the concrete walk and picked up speed.

Mr. Jewels really needed to be knocked on his ass. She couldn’t believe he ripped up the contract he had her prepare in front of the client. All because of a clause he had told her to add. She thought it didn’t look right and had even braved his ire to double-check the wording with him. … But no, HE couldn’t look foolish in front of his client, so he screamed .. screamed! … at her for the mistake.

If she wanted screaming, she would go home. The only difference was here she was being paid to listen to his rants. The other lawyers of the partnership were so desperate to have someone act as his secretary, they paid her a bonus for the work she did over and above being the general receptionist.

Still no one should be treated like that. Churned her stomach.

She really should consider having her résumé hit the pavement.

No, no … just six more months, then she could start saving for her master’s degree. Must stay focused.

The sidewalk ended. The rest of the park was grass until she hopped the low brick wall near the project where she rented a room. Alison removed her canvas sneakers and placed them in a plastic bag. They might dry before tomorrow, but not if they go through the puddles covering the park lawn.

She tucked the bag into her carryall next to her office shoes and started crossing the grass.

She dodged the puddles as best she could, trying to stay upright in the slippery grass. The wind picked up and tugged at her protection. She firmly kept the umbrella close. A losing battle to stay dry, but she was getting good at fighting losing battles. Juggling her now thicker and heavier carryall made the umbrella harder to manage in the growing wind.

A gust blew the umbrella away. “Perfect”, she muttered.

She dropped her bag chasing the umbrella. The weather protector stopped in the pine needles between trees. Rushing to catch it while it was stopped, Alison slipped and fell.

Water slashed everywhere. She pushed up and stood. Her business suit was sopping.

Walking more carefully, watching for pine cones, Alison bent over to grab the umbrella handle. Her underwear crept up uncomfortably. The perfect end to a perfect day.

She returned to her carryall, keeping the ineffectual umbrella above her in sheer obstinateness. Water inside the umbrella dripped onto her wet face. Again she thought, the perfect end to the perfect day. She shouldered her heavy bag.

A flower bed was in the way of her beeline home. She looked for harder dirt between the flowers that wouldn’t leave evidence of her steps.

For a second, her eyes focused on the beautiful purple blooms lining the bed. She didn’t know the name of the flower.

… The perfect day.

Maybe it is, if I let it be.

Beside the flowers, she dropped the umbrella to the side and leaned back. The rain stroked her upturned face. Water trickled down her body and for the first time since her parents and her started nightly screaming matches all those long, angry years before she left … she didn’t think.

Alison let the heavens wash her and wash over her. She breathed in the ozone laden air and held it deep in her lungs. A hidden part of her unfurled.

Tears she didn’t know she had in her flowed out. Salt water at the corner of her eyes diluted in the fresh rain drops.

She started whirling and laughing, barefoot with the rain falling down.

(words 863 – originally appearing at Sunday Fun on Breathless Press 4/16/2013 and on blog 4/16/2013; republished 3/13/2016)