A local Louisville newspaper is sponsoring a writing contest, and one of the categories is "Flash Fiction", which they define as a fictional story that's less than 300 words. I submitted one piece of work under that category. Here's a second story I wrote that I didn't submit.

Cruiser

The two young men had been drinking in the open field most of the night. "Billy Ray", Jimmy said, "ya know what I'm gonna do? I'm gonna shoot the next damn thing that moves."

"Includin' me, Jeemy?" Billy said.

"No, a course not you Billy. But anythin' else, I'm gonna shoot it." Truth be told, Jimmy knew it was late, and they'd likely just finish their beers and drunk-drive themselves home.

It was just this moment when Adam and his PT Cruiser appeared on the stretch of road along this open field, with ELO's "Don't Bring Me Down" booming out the car's open windows.

"Well, I'll be. I'm gonna shoot me a loud music SOB." Jimmy said, standing up to aim his rifle.

But just then the PT Cruiser did what it had done fifteen times before. "Damn Chrysler!" Adam yelled. The dashboard that Chrysler couldn't fix shorted out again, and at 70 miles an hour the headlights, dashboard, and engine all went dead.

Two months before Adam would have panicked, but by now this was routine: shift into neutral, drive straight, pound on the dashboard. But this time was different: the car wouldn't restart, and he was coasting in total darkness. Panic would be appropriate soon. Finally, on the sixth blow the dashboard de-shorted, and the engine restarted. "Don't bring me down baby!" Adam yelled, shifting back into drive, and gunning the accelerator.

"What happened, Jeemy?"

"I don't know Billy. I was gonna shoot it over there, then it jus' disappeared. Next thing I know it's over there."

"You reckon he's got some of that Star Trek cloaking stuff?"

"I don't know," Jimmy said, slowly sitting back down. "I jus' don't know."

"That's okay Jeemy, you can just shoot the next damn thing that moves."

(The end.)

About the story

I got the idea for this story while driving to the Toyota dealer in Anchorage, Alaska in September, 2007. I lived in Talkeetna, which is almost exactly two hours north of Anchorage -- or at least that's how long the drive takes in the summer -- and had to make this trek several times to have the Toyota dealer try to fix my RAV4.

I was driving down a dark road around 5:30 a.m., saw an open field, and this story popped into my head. When the idea occurred to me, I just traded my current RAV4 for my previous PT Cruiser, and the story just wrote itself in a few minutes as I drove down the road. I actually wrote the first draft of the story sitting in the waiting area of the Toyota dealership that morning.

The fun thing about flash fiction is that this story was originally 536 words, but I condensed it to under 300 words for this contest. I definitely had to throw some things out to get this story under 300 words, but the essence of it is still here. That's the fun part: stripping out every "extra" word until you have just the essence of the story. I guess it's the whole minimalist thing.