Category: Flash Fiction

Olympus OM-2 by Patrick JenningsSep 19, 201510:13 am

The China Shop

On Saturdays, I like to stop in at the china shop on my morning walk. It’s best first thing, just after they’ve opened, when it’s quiet and I have the place to myself. Betty, the owner, always has a pot of tea on the go and lets me choose any tea cup from her inventory to sip it from.

Olympus OM-2 by Patrick JenningsSep 13, 201512:52 pm

Pic and a Word Challenge #2: Attraction

Zuhra noticed Tahir was still at his shop. She shuttered her own, the veils and headscarves already neatly tucked away for the night, and closed the clasp on the lock.

Waving goodbye to Patime, who sold baskets, Zuhra aimlessly made her way across the street, being careful to take in all the sights of the nearly closed marketplace before innocently stopping outside Tahir’s shop.

Poetry by Patrick JenningsSep 1, 20158:00 am

Drought

I watched the white paint shrivel and dry
On the old shed out back

I watched it pucker and peel
In successive seasons
Of wet, then cold, then wet again, then heat
Since decades past

Mood by Patrick JenningsAug 18, 20157:00 am

Sink 1

I’ve always wondered what they do at Sink 1. I only see it after working hours, after everyone else has gone home, on my rounds of the building. There’s something … creepy about it. There always was, even before the night I saw all that blood in there. Blood and some sort of, flesh.

Landscape by Patrick JenningsAug 10, 20157:00 am

Three goblin sisters astride a camel

“Ugh! This thing stinks!” lamented the youngest.

“It’s shaking me to bits!” the middle sister garbled, her tongue flapping against her lips.

“Quit your complaining!” croaked the eldest. “Would you two malcontents rather walk in this foul heat?”

Poetry by Patrick JenningsAug 4, 20159:00 am

The Fog of Love

Continued from Enveloped.

I feel her, on the other side.
Know she is there.
Waiting.

Impatiently.

A mother knows these things.

And daughters always think they know better,
When they hardly know themselves.

I love the man.
She never understood that.
He is derisive,
Angers easily.

Abstract by Patrick JenningsJul 30, 20157:00 am

The Seashell Nebula

Continued from An Artistic Encounter With Nature

I return to Chesterman Beach every year now. It always surprises me that the house still isn’t there, that she is nowhere to be seen. I look up from the beach, expecting to see her, there at the top of the rocks, cradling a steaming mug of tea in her hands.

Abstract by Patrick JenningsJul 21, 201511:49 am

The little tornado that couldn’t

They tracked the little tornado as it began forming. It was on a steady Northeasterly bearing, trailing the massive storm cell which had already wreaked so much havoc on Fayette county. Storm chasers were reporting the formation of a funnel at this location, but that it hadn’t touched down yet.

Sometimes, these conditions could lead to a very powerful twister. Everyone was hoping it would be the little tornado that couldn’t.

Detail by Patrick JenningsJul 5, 20157:00 am

Come, it said.

“Come,” it said, gesturing with an upturned palm, the gentleness of the movement belying the rigidity of its fingers, its joints, the stiffness of the steel with which we’d made him.

Him? It.

Landscape by Patrick JenningsJul 1, 201511:02 am

A million parallel universes

In 1996, standing atop Coit’s Tower, I scanned the city’s skyline, thinking about nearly a million souls living there, working, playing, getting over a cold, making love, fighting, watching Gilligan’s Island re-runs, having pizza and beer with friends, perhaps even taking photos of Coit’s Tower.