Flash fiction, for when you want your story quick. . .

Here is a story I wrote several years ago when I was advising a literary magazine at Citrus College and experimenting with the new-to-me concept of flash fiction.

Are you familiar with the term? Just in case you aren't, I've lifted the definition of flash fiction from Wikipedia: "Fiction of extreme brevity. There is no widely accepted definition of the length of the category. Some self-described markets for flash fiction impose caps as low as three hundred words, while others consider stories as long as a thousand words to be flash fiction."

Anyhow, here is my first attempt, a little piece called "The Sweets." I think it holds up well, particularly since this is the season of Christmas cookies and all manner of sweet things, not to mention "The Nutcracker Suite.

flickr photo by Aljabri

The Sweets

She liked to fill the coffee filter full to brimming with sugar, brew it and then bitter it up with a spoonful of coffee grounds. He had a sweet tooth, too, and though her cooking—particularly her elaborate preparations of crepes, ganaches, tarts and brule—was legendary, often he would excuse himself, saying, "Sorry, dear, I had a heavy lunch," and go to the garden where he would indulge himself in a light liquid dinner of red-dyed sugar water sucked straight from the hummingbird feeder.

Miraculously, neither Mr. or Mrs. Sweet had diabetes, but they tested their blood sugar twice a day, almost religiously, one might say. If Mr. Sweet's vital sweetness ever fell too low, then Mrs. Sweet knew what to do. She would make a brew of the finest liqueurs—chocolate, orange, anisette and poppy seed—which, witchlike, she would ferment and bottle herself.

"A strengthening tonic is what you need," she would tell her husband in a brisk tone, "and some hot butterscotch pudding, and never mind that carrot I saw you surreptitiously reaching for in your coat pocket." (For, like most wives, she always saw what tricks her husband was about.)

"Alright, dear," Mr. Sweet would say sheepishly, knowing, after all, she was right. For though he was old enough to have licorice-whip-thin traces of hair as white as Devonshire cream in his moustache, he'd never been sick a day in his life. And the Sweets, in general, were models of good cheer, their tempers only threatening to fray a bit, as is the case of the best of us, when their blood sugar dipped precipitously.

—Sarah Torribio