Farther Stars Than These published my short sci-fi story. Perhaps story is too strong a word since it is more a snatch of an otherworldly transmission.
[:a: blinking cloud]
Category: Published
A Fortune
Issue #27 from Blink-Ink features 26 microfiction stories, including a 50-word story from yours truly. Pocket-sized and nicely printed, lots or hard work and fine words go into each issue. I urge you to subscribe today and support this publisher.
Tasting Apples…
Of the many stories I’ve written, this is one of my favorites. First published in October 2016 by Page & Spine (no longer available), it is dedicated to my friend Dianne McGill who has her own apple orchard.
Tasting Apples at the Edge of Epidemic
by DL Shirey
Fresh picked they are almost too tart, if that’s possible. The flavor becomes quite rich and complex when stored two weeks. Dark red skin with a stripe of pale yellow. Crisp and juicy. Would make excellent apple butter.
Phee would have loved this. The first sharp bite, the skin as it folds with a snap, a shock of sweet-sour before the subtle flavors reveal themselves. Not that I dare get caught eating them straight off the tree, though I wish I could. No question a ten-minute soak in G4 affects the first taste of the apple, but the memories of fruit are still so vivid, even I can forgive the brief, metallic tang.
Perfect Square of Sky
Published in November 2016
by Flash Fiction Press (no longer available). Given the name of the journal, you will be fooled into believing that this story is made-up, when in fact it happened to me. So in reality, these 350 words are non-fiction, and having admitted it, the flash fiction police will soon be on their way.
Please read it anyway and pretend it happened to a fictional character. That’s what I did.
Perfect Square of Sky
by DL Shirey
No way did I think I would end my day gazing up at tropical sky. It’s hard to accept the image above me; am I really lying in a hammock, staring up through half-closed lids at palm trees? I want to believe it. I try to convince myself that the soothing warmth is from sun and equatorial air, but it still feels like the placidity isn’t real. Must be because the day didn’t start out anywhere close to this.
Barbarism
In September 2016 my 50-word story was published by 50-Word Stories. What are the odds of that? The idea sprang from one simple word: LOBE. Enjoy, if you will:
Barbarism
by DL Shirey
The first one gets a careful trim; blade running along edges for a new, neat, well-sculpted line. For the second, I cut off the lobe completely. I hear people scream reactions to my previous work. There are worse things to do in a retirement home than reshape jigsaw puzzle pieces.
END
Spat
Published June 2016 by Fewer Than 500. Unfortunately the publication is no longer available. But you can still enjoy the story in all its sad glory:
Spat
by DL Shirey
Every day, the same thing for breakfast: cold, tasteless ridicule from a woman who owned everything but happiness, served to the husband she surely blamed for it. She couldn’t start her day without cupping her displeasure in venomous words. It didn’t matter if the man or the cat or the kitchen wallpaper sat before her, the room received invectives. Most days, more than he cared to count, the husband was there to receive them.
Forget-Me-Pops
ZeroFlash features stand-alone flash fiction on their site. Today they published my “Forget-Me-Pops” piece. Probably the most fun I ever had on a job was writing radio spots for an ad agency in Santa Barbara, California. F-M-P is a throwback to those days.
Update: as of 12/9/16, the piece is nearly a mile of screen-scroll down the page. For your convenience, for your enjoyment:
Forget-Me-Pops
by DL Shirey
The pulse of electronica ends in a diaphanous swirl, the last reverberating echo lingers and fades. The radio voice has a too-cool-for-this-gig delivery and he starts his post-out with a growl, elongating the word to match the musical dregs:
“Weeeeeeee’re spinning more of club scene’s favorite synthsongs on KRDO. Another ten in a row, after this word from our sponsor.”
Surf Guitar
Published Monday, June 6, 2016 in
Microfiction Monday Magazine
“Surf Guitar,” a 100-word story was published by Microfiction Monday Magazine. The soundtrack for the piece came before writing it. I happened on a band I hadn’t heard before: Daikaiju. The word in Japanese means “giant monster,” but to me, as inspiration for this brief, grizzly tale, it was the band’s giant surf-rock sound. Please do not read this less than hour before swimming.
Surf Guitar
by DL Shirey
My little sister’s screams filter through salt water like the tremolo of a surf guitar. Who knew the undertow had a soundtrack? It crouches out where the slant of sand drops deep, always moving, crabbing sideways behind bones of coral, peeking up, pulling hard.
I call to my sister. The words skitter up the frets of my throat into a useless strangle of bubbles, left behind with scratched strings of flesh, cut by coral, picked by fish.
Black-green stands of seaweed block what little light remains. The last thing I see are long shadows swaying to the strums of riptide.
END
Monocle is for M
Published June 23, 2016
in Pound of Flash (no longer available). This flash piece is a study of two characters, the monocle and the man who wears it. The story is the result of a writing class assignment: choose an article of clothing and make it central to the tale.
Monocle is for M
by DL Shirey
The little bell tinkles a half-tone brighter when Maximilian walks in. He dresses like an English gent, but he is not English. Nor is he wearing the monocle when he enters the tea shop. As if flourishing a cape, he strolls with dramatic, elongated arm swings aside his lengthy strides. He has no cape, but the finely-tailored suit would look so-much-the-better if he had. His crisp shirts are monogrammed on the pocket, an M bookended by fleurs-de-lis. There’s even a special pocket in the pocket for the monocle.
Ask him his name and he’ll answer it fully, neither Max or Maxi. Friends may call him M, yet he’s never brought a friend to the tea shop. He leaves with one quite often.
On The Nose
Published January 9, 2016 in
Wraparound South
This is a personal essay about the day skin cancer was removed from my nose. It is quite funny, not preachy or morose. What was it George Bernard Shaw said? “If you tell people the truth, make them laugh, otherwise they’ ll kill you.”
On The Nose
by DL Shirey
In high school health class they called it the Triangle of Death, part of the educational philosophy to increase learning retention by overdramatizing worst-case scenarios. Whether it was that memorable label or the photo in the textbook, the angst was enough to make my face break out. The book showed a pretty teenage girl with a red polygon superimposed on the center of her face. The bottom points aligned to the corners of her mouth, the top of the triangle at the bridge of the nose, smack between the eyebrows. It was red for a reason; no popping of pimples or pulling of nose hairs, we were told, should take place in this danger zone. It’s where blood vessels, nasal passages and tooth roots jumble their wires together, and three senses–taste, smell and sight–all have major ports of call. Here, physiologies collide, the continental plates of anatomy meeting at one’s own, personal San Andreas fault, just offshore the brain. One tiny infection or a little internal bleeding and BANG, instant coma.
So what’s worse, 30 years of triangulated anxiety or getting skin cancer there?
DL Shirey 