Flash Fiction--40%

As you may have already noticed, my blog schedule is a bit messed up this week.  It's going to stay that way, as I will be attending a conference this weekend (not writing; California School Boards Association, where I will contemplate education issues until my brain explodes).  So I'm writing and scheduling as well as I can for the time I'll be gone.  Anyway, I already missed Monday. 

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Last week I threw out 200 words for the newest Chuck Wendig challenge, the serial story written in five segments by five different authors.  Round Two links here.

My story, posted last Tuesday, was continued by Hana Frank AND by Connie Cockrell.  I will try to keep tracking developments on the story.  And on each that I continue.  This is going to get complicated.

This week, I picked my story for the second part, and wrote the next 200 words.  So, as of now, we have 400 words of a story.  Next week, I'll snag yet another story and write part three.

This week's story was started by The Urban Spaceman


Here's his beginning:

Joe’s Bar

“Buy me a drink,” he said, bloodshot eyes meeting mine from further down the bar, “and I’ll tell you how I broke the world.”


I gave a snort, took a long swig of my G&T, and turned my attention back to the game being shown on Joe’s decrepit TV.


“Go on,” he insisted, in a voice ravaged by years of strong alcohol. “It’ll be worth it.”

Glancing around, I looked for help, but none of the other patrons of the grotty bar were paying attention to me being pestered by the old loon, and the bartender was very focused on cleaning a glass. The old man’s eyes bored into me from beneath his dirty mop of hair, and in the dim light of Joe’s Bar I saw the dark red stains on his grey trench coat.

“Alright.” The game was dull anyway. “What’s your poison?”

“Scotch on the rocks.”


I nodded at the barkeep, and the old man watched hungrily as the amber nectar was poured.

 “Go on then,” I prompted him. “Tell me how you broke the world.”


 He took a sip of his drink, gave a happy sigh, and looked up at me with those bloodshot eyes.
  “It all started in 1939…”


And now, my continuation:

Nineteen thirty-nine?  That was an obvious place for a claim like his.  “So you were responsible for Hitler?” I guessed, humoring the old man.  He might have been alive in 1939, but he certainly wasn’t old enough at the outset of WWII to have played a significant role.  To have broken the world.

“Not exactly.”  His voice was still coarse, but now seemed somehow stronger.  “I was Hitler.”

I laughed.  “Yeah, you look it, Old Man.  Tell me another.  You were Mussolini, too, right?”

He wasn’t laughing.  “Yes.  And Stalin.  They were all aspects of me, and because of my incompetence millions suffered and died.”

I sighed, and bought him another drink.  The first one had sort of evaporated, and I wanted to hear what kind of story he’d spin.  The game really was dull as dishwater, and this lunatic at least had some imagination, unlike the coaches, who kept trying the same failed moves.

 His voice was much clearer now, the ravaging effects of the whiskey fading as he began to tell his story.

“I thought it would be for the best.  I started with Stalin, when Russia needed a strong leader.  Times really were bad, you know.”

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Note: Part Three is now available here.  But that's beyond my control :)

And now for something completely different. . . .