Let's Talk About Flash Fiction

In the past, I dabbled in flash fiction. This can be any genre of fiction, but within a very tight word count limit. Usually 1,000 words or 500 words. There are even people that will publish flash fiction and there are awards you can win (usually monetary) for having "amazing" flash fiction pieces. I guess in a world where we want our information to be short and sweet, stories are trying to fit that mold to stay alive.

It can be considered tough to fit a story into so few words, but I'm a very "Are we there yet?" kind of person, and I find it hard to write 1,000 page tomes, so 1,000 words is right up my alley. I wrote a couple of pieces that I'm willing to call my own and I'll share one with you here.

This is a 1,000 word piece based on the idiocracy of vampires. Just becoming a creature of the night doesn't remove the human attribute of stupidity. You can decide if this very short story still holds the same weight as one that is fluffed up with excess words and sentiments.

Even Vampires Can Be Morons.

By Jennifer Innes

It was late June when Thaddius arrived. He seemed like a normal wanderer, looking for something in our town that few of us were sure we could give. A lost soul, perhaps; a man who needed a sense of purpose, a life of his own.

I guess the signs were all there; aversion to sunlight, wandering into town at night, only out during the early morning and after dusk; even a dislike for Sally Mae’s award winning garlic pie and more so, the refusal to go to church. We had assumed he just wasn’t Christian, and a good Christian doesn’t turn people away due to a difference of opinion, so we all let Thaddius into our lives and one by one we began to change.

The citizens of Sweet Lake had no desire to turn away a man in need and each tried to do what they could to help Thaddius find what he was looking for. Unfortunately, for these people, what he was looking for was human souls – for Thaddius was a vampire.

It was strange to see mothers attacking their children and grandfathers attacking small boys. My understanding of vampire activity was that feeding on other humans was either an act of anger or an act of lust. Now that can’t be true because mothers don’t hate their children and old men don’t lust after boys, right?

It seemed that our town was done in for, that no entity could save us, not even Jesus himself would come down from the heavens and put an end to this nonsense Thaddius had created. But then Johnny preacher came into town.

Johnny was a young lad who periodically visited the area towns spreading the word of God. He seemed to be looking for a place to settle down, but since we already had our own preacher and our own church, we didn’t need Johnny’s preaching, but being good Christians we didn’t turn him away. Now, some might say, being good Vampires we didn’t send him away, but most of the vampires were sleeping when he came into town.

He came straightway to my house, knowing I’m the oldest and wisest in the town. He wanted to know why the town wasn’t bustling, why the shops and school were empty. I explained our current predicament and then he wanted to know why I was saved from satan’s sinners. I had just figured, being the oldest and wisest, people kept away out of respect or fear – thinking that I knew a way to stop them. But in these situations, knowledge doesn’t work as well as faith. I’d been praying, but I had no solution until Johnny came to town and once Johnny heard all about this Thaddius ruckus, he decided that God had sent him to our small town with the mission to end this infernal creature’s damnation of our people.

Now, I know you’re wondering why an old man like myself would care about all this nonsense. Well, when they brought in the television, I tried not to mind, and when they brought in the internet, I kept my mouth shut. These devices changed lives, sometimes for the better, sometimes for the worse, but people remained relatively normal as times changed. But this Thaddius had no sense of good about him. Because of him, hate, lust and just plain laziness consumed our town. I mean, spending your day in front of the T.V. wasn’t the best way to use your life, but at least you weren’t out harassing people, attacking people and refusing to go to work because your shift happens to be scheduled during daylight hours. This town needed its order restored, and I really hoped Johnny would do the trick.

With bible in hand, Johnny waited outside the local bar. Once the sun drifted beneath the horizon, with its last blades of light shining dimly, people started strolling out of their homes as if they owned the place. Technically, Billy, a newly christened vampire, actually owned the bar, but everyone else was just pretending, as if the world was now their oyster, almost as if vampirism gave them a new sense of purpose, a life more meaningful than living as a good Christian. Anyways, Johnny started preaching at the top of his lungs, yelling at the miscreants to turn back to God, to turn away from their evil misdirections. From within the crowd, Thaddius marched up to Johnny, looked him square in the eye and asked: “Wha’dya think yer doin’?”

Johnny looked straight into this mask of satan and felt more fear strike him than he had ever felt before. He quickly turned tail and ran towards MacMill’s forest. Thaddius decided to chase down this meal and a big chase ensued, with other citizens following to see if they could procure their own bite of this novice preacher.

Now, many people often forget that MacMill’s Forest holds the finest pines in the entire State. People come from all around to saw off limbs to use for medicinal purposes. This wouldn’t matter much to normal town folk, but vampires running blindly through the forest in the dark as just asking to get skewed. All of the commotion came to a close, as Thaddius, ran himself right into one of these sawed off limbs on one of the sturdy pines.

Sweet Lake is now getting back into the old swing of things, as all of its citizens were returned to normal once their king was destroyed. A few people are missing, though, one being our old preacher. Gossip says he either got himself spiked by a pine limb or left town because of what he had done to some of his younger parish, but we’ve all sinned while the devil was in us and that’s the first bit of our new preacher’s sermon today. Forgive lest ye be denied forgiveness, says Johnny, pastor of the church in the small town of No Vampires Allowed Sweet Lake.