Creative Writing Samples: Flash Fiction
“The Death of Greek Gods”
Electricity drained from his veins, seeping into the clouds and striking the ground as the last of his siblings became nothing but a myth.
The sea showered the salty sorrow of the sea king, washing away his legacy as the mystical creatures of his kingdom drowns.
His flaming crown dissipates, its blue glow dies down as the souls that it harbors disappears and his hanging skin swivels up, bones clanging on the rotting grave.
“Before the End of Tonight”
It’s a nonsensical world they live in. The children. They live with zipzorps and glipglorps, fuzzy roaring beasts with large googly eyes that bounce up and down, rolling all over the place without any place in mind to go. They live in the land of the wild ones. The place where Max ran away to when he refused to eat dinner. Together they stomp their feet along with their new bobbly head friends.
Book to book to book. They step into a new world. The words zipping off of the pages and warping their reality. They bang their fists on their chests, stomping in their yellow flippers. One moment they are George and the next they are Horton. And, oh! What is that? Well that has to be a Who and Cindy Lou Who. Or maybe Thing One and Thing Two.
They live in a field of poppies, luring them to sleep, dreaming of a ticking rabbit and a purple cat. They lay on top of a curly main of a lion, next to a creaky old tin man who longs for a heart, while gazing at a scare crow standing guard, awaiting the arrival of a wicked witch.
They drift off to a land without parents and teachers to boss them around. Chores and homework bore them compared to the wonders of Wonderland. Rollercoasters and candies lure them away from their lives. They follow the Sugarplum Princess to her nutcracker and his powdery treats. Whisked away from the rules, they are taken down a monstrous road, riding a mystical train.
Missing faces on milk carts, they escape their dreary homes of black and white to find a world beyond the rainbow. The land of Oz, the land of the run aways, runs colors like melting crayons on a hot day, bursting their hot ballon home. Their youthfulness transforms them into Benjamin Button. Their faces droops into gray sacks that drag on the muddy floor of their prison. Young but old.
They live in the land of magic mushrooms and needles and crumpled up bills. Yes they do, the children do.
The ones who ran away to where the wild ones live. The ones who imagined a life free to monkey around and stomp in puddles. The ones who found a world in a dandelion or snowflake with a talking cat in a hat. The ones who fell down the rabbit hole and never got back up. The ones who blew away, so papery thin they floated away from their homes, leaving their lives in the ruins of their own twister.
They click their heals together wishing to go home to welcome arms, but only find slammed doors and new locks. They wait for someone save their lives before the end tonight, before they disappear into another book.
The tablet on their tongue.
The needle in their arm, dripping blood.
The powder in their nose.
“Writing Without Punctuation”
We have always lived in the forest tall trees smelling of dew clings to our skin like a perfume it is our scent we carry it everywhere with us through the long trenches weaving our way around the vines that hang down from the great blue sky that is painted with light hues of orange pollution that clogs our lung slowly suffocating us creating new cancer cells bubbling on our skin from the radiation that surrounds us some of us cannot talk I am lucky enough to be amongst the ones who can but lately my words jumbled together like a jigsaw puzzle with no matching pieces I know the day will come when the only words that come out of my mouth is a slight glimmer of what they used to be only mumbles growing softer and softer until I can’t speak at all I can feel it happening I can feel my brain deteriorating the soft gray matter turning into mush but I’m prepared at this point it is a right of passage the long decay the desiccation of my body slowly becoming riddled with tumors but never dying we never die our world is full of radiation from a war we never experienced or understand a war that split the atom one to many times and then split us split the world the earth is full of vegetation now it is dying like us but it is taking its home back the earth is now one great big ball expansive and never ending like us because it is our punishment or rather our grandparents punishment our air is full of poison but our bodies cannot die from it we grow tumors and cancer cells we lose our mind our ability to breath but our body never dies even long after we are gone no decaying just the overtaking of our organs humans want to survive evolution wants us to survive so we adapted dead is never quite dead it is just a regression into a vegetive state the long sleep we call it and I can feel it calling to me calling me to my everlasting sleep where my mind is nearly gone but not gone enough to not feel the pain dead but not dead it is our punishment
“Who Would You Choose?”
Who would you choose? Who would you choose to die?
The question has always thumbed at the back of your head. Or rather the back of society’s head. The great question of evolution. Humans are bred to nurture their own. It’s how a mother knows to care for her baby. Genetics. We are biologically predetermined to care and love our own. Without a parent’s love, without a parent’s desire to keep their child alive, humanity never would have evolved past the stages of our caveman days. No infant would live to see their way into toddlerhood.
But today, we are civilized. We live in tall fancy buildings. We have a formula that allows babies to live without their mother’s breast. What if we are changing? What if we don’t need each other anymore? Would we evolve to no longer care about our kin? That is the question, or rather that is the game.
Who would you choose? Who would you choose to die?
Your family? Mother, father, sister, brother. Or a group of ten strangers? It is up to you. But you only get to choose one. Choose none and they all die.
Let the game begin.
“Look What You Did”
She tried to forget Sam but never could. His words always echo in the back of her mind. Leaving her forever haunted. “Look what you did,” he would say over and over. She thought that if she forgot Sam she could forget those four words. She could forget what she did.
“Remember”
Remember. It’s all I ever do. Remember when the snow used to fall, its dainty little flecks on top my head. Remember when dark clouds would pour out sheets of rain. Remember when we still had the sun. Remember when there was no smog. Remember when I could breathe the earth’s air.
By Olivia Bridges 