Tag / life

by booksoverlookedblog

FFM 31: Defiance

Without in any way limiting the author’s exclusive rights under copyright, any use of this publication to “train” generative artificial intelligence (AI) technologies to generate text is expressly prohibited. The author reserves all rights to license uses of this work for generative AI training and development of machine learning language models.

July is Flash Fiction Month! I’ll be sharing short short stories here through the month of July. This story is a companion piece to FFM 5: Guardian of the Gate. More notes at the end of the story.

This is also the last day of FFM! All my stories will be up through the month of August, after which some of them will be taken down. I also won’t have any posts in August, as I’ll be hibernating. Thank you for reading!

Rage. My rage is so loud it drowns out my sorrow. Screams and sobs become one noise, the sound of pure grief, spilling out of my tortured throat. I would tear down the world, wrestle Thanatos to the ground, spit in Hades’s face. I would defy the gods and return my family to my side. Grief is a weapon more powerful than death, and I am a sharpened blade. 

I cannot defy the gods. Every man has faced grief, and no man has brought the dead back to walk in the sun again. Even attempting to bring my wife and child back to the world of the living is unnatural. We are born, we live, we die. Should I try to break this most unbreakable law, what I have left of my life will be mired in torment. 

What I have left is a hut along the river that took my family from me. I have nothing. Nothing that matters without them. Food has no taste. Nothing brings me joy. My bed is empty; my life is empty. If I defy Hades, I cannot win. I know this. But without my family, I have no reason to continue living. For their sakes, I will defy death itself.

WE’RE DOOOOOOOOONE.

This was the final challenge of FFM. I didn’t follow it to the letter (please don’t eat me mighty Hydra), but it was to write an inversion of your last story. Instead of doing that, I wrote an inversion of my Cerberus story, this time from the point of view of the guy trapped under Cerberus’s foot. I wasn’t happy with my 369er, since every paragraph should be a story in itself, and that wasn’t the case of the Cerberus story. So I tried it here, while still trying to do the id-superego-ego combo.

And now I’m going to sleep for a month. Wake me up when September starts.

by booksoverlookedblog

FFM 30: Keyboard Gremlins and Drunk Snails

“Annnnd done!” I posted my final story for the month, copy-pasted links on the appropriate pages, and let out a happy sigh. I started to close my laptop, but a keyboard gremlin crawled out from between the keys. 

“Wait, wait! You can’t be done yet!” He tapped his clawed foot and crossed his spindly arms, annoyed. 

“But I am done. Thirty-one days, thirty-one stories, and now I need a nap and a cookie. Lots of cookies,” I told him. 

“But you haven’t bared your soul through fiction!” He protested. He reached down into the crevasse between H and J and pulled out a chart. “July 2022: first year of Flash Fiction, started because your cat died and you were having a hard time writing anything.” 

“Hey…why’d you have to bring that up?” I frowned. 

“July 2023,” the gremlin continued. “Flash fiction month became an important distraction as you learned to deal with a recently diagnosed medical condition.” 

“Dude…” I hid my face in my hands. “I’m fine now.”

“And finally, July 2024, with some newly minted PT–“

“Don’t say it,” I snapped. 

“Learning how to write again after the world exploded. You really put a lot on the page there. So, what’s going on for this year?” He flipped to the next page on the chart. “Two young, healthy cats, your own health is pretty good, and your mental health is way, way, way better than it was this time last year.” 

I stared at him, utterly confused. “So what’s the problem?” 

He flicked his tail in annoyance. “The problem is that you haven’t bled nearly enough onto the page. Your stories are normal and aren’t about meltdowns or your most personal fears. Where’s the edge?” 

“Did it ever occur to you that since I’m doing well right now…that this is just for fun?” 

The gremlin’s mouth dropped open. 

I put my finger on his head, between his curly horns, and pushed him back into the keyboard. 

A snail sitting on my shoulder hiccuped. “Why’d you keep that guy around?”

“He eats the crumbs that get between the keys,” I told her. “Want to do margs and karaoke, Progress?” 

A slow smile came across her slimy face. “Always.”

This one’s a bit personal. At the end of FFM, I like to write a little reflection about how the month has gone for me. And since I’ve started doing FFM, it’s always seemed to come with some big life problem. But this year has been just…normal. I’m a million times better than I was at this time last year. Progress isn’t measurable in the way that a lot of things are. But comparing this FFM to last year’s, I can see how far I’ve come. It’s a good feeling.

I’m not 100% fixed. I may never be. But I’m doing really well. As some of you may remember from last year: Progress is a drunk snail. It moves slowly, and never in a straight line.

It’s okay to not be okay.

But you know what?

It’s okay to be okay too. 💜

by booksoverlookedblog

FFM 23: Aging: Please Rate 1-5 Stars

Without in any way limiting the author’s exclusive rights under copyright, any use of this publication to “train” generative artificial intelligence (AI) technologies to generate text is expressly prohibited. The author reserves all rights to license uses of this work for generative AI training and development of machine learning language models.

July is Flash Fiction Month! I’ll be sharing short short stories here through the month of July. More notes are at the end of the story.

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

I just turn 7 and i have almost all my grown up teeth and i am rsponsable enof for a pet hampster!! His nam is FLUFFY!!

⭐⭐⭐⭐

17 is pretty cool, I guess. I have the best friends in the ♥♥WORLD♥♥ and I’m getting out of this high school hell soon! My parents are always on my back about everything though. There’s SO much pressure: get good grades, get a date for prom, get a job, get into college. 🙄 I kinda hate what everyone calls the “real world.” But I’m almost out of this shithole for good!!

⭐⭐⭐

Well, here I am, a middle-management jackass. Honestly pretty embarrassed to look at my last review from 10 years ago. Because, old me, you’re not going to change the world, you’re not going to keep your friends (you still talk to one of them), and guess what? You move back to your hometown that you said you’d never go back to, you end up living with your parents for three years (who, it turns out, are actually reasonable people), and your asshole boyfriend cheats on you with your cousin. I wish I could warn you about these things. I wish I could tell you that the pressure doesn’t end, it just gets bigger: get a better job, go to grad school, get married, have kids. But you get better at handling it. You know who you are, and you’ve got confidence and a say in your life. And having control over your own money is pretty sweet. Last week I spent like $200 on Legos, and no one could tell me no. 

Your body really goes downhill after 25, though. Last week I blew my knee out playing pickleball. Watch out for that.

⭐⭐

Has it really been 20 years since I updated this?! Well, I’m fat now, with a bum knee and gray hair, three kids and a mortgage that I’ll never be able to finish paying. Life is expensive, I’m too busy doing everything to have any time for myself, and I’m just counting the days to retirement. 

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

This will probably be my last update, 30 years since my previous review. 87 isn’t bad at all. My joints ache all the time, and I forget things a lot. My eyesight isn’t what it used to be. Faces are a blur now, and I have to hold anything close to my face to see it. But my kids come to see me a lot, and my grandkids, and I’ve even got a great-granbaby on the way. I hope I get to meet her. It’s been quite a ride. Lots of ups and downs, but if I got the chance to do it all again and not change a thing, I would. Everything, from Fluffy’s terrible demise at the claws of Pepper, the broken hearts, the stress, the pain of losses that I thought I wouldn’t have the strength to bear has shaped me in so many ways. There is just as much joy and love and beauty in my life as there was ugliness and pain. This kaleidoscope that we call life is far from perfect, but it is utterly magnificent.

87 is a fine age to be. So is 57, and 27, and 17, and 7. 

Highly recommend.

This is another challenge for FFM: Five Stars, Baby!

Write a story in the style of an online review. Popular targets for online reviews include hotels, restaurants, movies, books, utensils… but why stop there? You can write up a social media comment or recipe note – the choice is yours! No matter what you choose, the narrator should be actively rating a product, service, cosmic power, etc., AND the entire story should be contained within the review itself.