After a long, productive, hot-and-sweaty two months in Japan this summer, I’m finally getting around to updating my site. Yay! Maybe I’ll write a post about our time in Japan; maybe I won’t. I’d put my money on the latter, but who knows–maybe enough internal nay-saying will be the kick in the butt I need to do it, if only out of spite.

Anyhoo, Japan was great, but that’s not what this post is about! This post is introducing something I’ve been thinking of doing for a while now, as a way of stretching my creative muscles and keeping the site updated at least once a week in a while (who am I kidding?).

Flash fiction is basically a really, really, really short story. A couple hundred words at most. I first learned about it in my high school creative writing class. The example my teacher gave us was this six-word story by Ernest Hemingway:

For sale: baby shoes, never worn.

Depressing, amirite?

I never gave flash fiction much of a thought since I’ve always fancied myself more of a novelist, and at the very least a short story writer, but a couple weeks ago I was alerted to a flash fiction contest and decided to try my hand at it. The rules were simple: tell a story in three sentences, no more, no less.

Needless to say I didn’t win. Womp, womp.

It didn’t take me long to write the story. When I was finished, I got a brain blast and thought, I should make this a weekly thing on my blog!

So while it might not be every week, once in a while, on Fridays, I’m going to post a flash fiction story, along with a prompt to invite you, dear reader, to try your hand at the same, and the inspiration behind my own story of the week. Cool? Cool.

The inaugural story is, you guessed it, my failed contest entry! So, without further ado, I present you:

Out of the Bag

The other inmates watched from their cells as the parade of guards marched the new prisoner to her quarters.
She held her head high, her eyes wide and round, her nose twitching ever so slightly, her hands twisting in the metal cuffs that bound them to her waist.
Some brave soul shouted The Question as the newcomer passed by, and her answer accompanied a spray of blood as her fetters fell and the guards around her collapsed: “My cat commanded me to purge this world of Evil, starting with this place.”

this week’s Prompt for you, dear reader

My cat made me do it!

Inspiration

We stayed with a couple of friends in Yamagata Prefecture for two weeks while we were in Japan. They are the proud owners of what could quite possibly be the world’s three most adorable cats. One night as I was lying down to go to bed, one of the kittens climbed atop me and lied down. As I was scratching her behind the ears, looking at her half-lidded eyes, feeling her deep purr of contentment, I thought, What if this cat suddenly spoke and commanded me to do–I don’t know, something horrible? I bet I would listen.

So there you have it, dear reader.

I look forward to what shenanigans your cats coerce you into!