Modern Problem

By N. WS. Jokela

A mishmash of stories picked from an array of three different types of flash fiction events between Flash Fiction Month 2015 to Flash Fiction Day 2019 and genres ranging from fantasy to horror and beyond. Along the way, you meet a bored traffic cop, a man stuck in a Bootstrap Paradox and many other characters!

• Language: English
• Publisher: N. WS. Jokela
• Release date: Nov 15, 2020
• ISBN: 9781005502096

N. WS. Jokela

N. WS. Jokela, more commonly known as WindySilver, is a Finnish IT student and a hobbyist artist fighting a war against procrastination on the losing side. When her free time is not taken up by things like reading, procrastination, video games, watching series or more procrastination, she mainly writes sci-fi fanfiction and original flash fiction of various genres. While she dabbles in a lot of things ranging from digital art to jewelry to plants to whatever catches her interest, writing is her persistent forte.You should not give her yet another crazy flash fiction challenge to take part in because she simply cannot say "no" to it.

Book preview

Introduction

So, you have opened this book. Please, do go further. Sorry about the mess inside, though; this assortment of stories is a product of the madness of Flash Fiction Month (FFM for short), an annual event where you write a piece of flash fiction – 55 to 1000 words – each day throughout July, and Flash Prompts, a series of challenges outside of Flash Fiction Months. It was first launched in August 2016 as a monthly challenge and turned bi-monthly in August 2017 until it was discontinued at the wake of FFM 2018. In addition to that, there are the stories I wrote during the annual Flash Fiction Day in 2016, 2018 and 2019 as an added bonus.

Before you go further, I'd like to explain a little about the contents of this collection. Due to the high number of Star Wars fanfiction that I wrote when I took part in my first FFM in 2015, back when I had no idea I'd end up publishing what I wrote back then, the number of stories I could publish was cut rather low. This prompted me to include the Flash Prompt and the Flash Fiction Day stories to make up for the small number.

You can find the list of omitted stories near the end of the book. If you wish to read them, they are all available DeviantArt and/or FanFiction.Net, posted under the name WindySilver.

Even if the contents of this book disappoint you, I hope you'll give my newer and better FFM stories a chance. After all, this collection is a mere beginning which has since then brought forth growth both as a person and a writer.

Good reading, stranger.

7: A Bad Day

Challenge: Make a challenge by picking elements from a given list of elements and create a story with the chosen elements. My elements are: a crystal pendant, 999 words, school story, bored traffic cop, a disused sewer.

I sighed and gestured the annoyed drivers to go the other way around. Who's the asshole who planted the idea of the work of a traffic police being nice to my head back when I was a little brat? Who and why?

Honking, honking every day. Always the same voices. Boring. And my ears have been ringing for damn many years. Why did I ever end up to this? I could have been a general in the army! But no, I had some goddamn delusions and became a traffic cop! I've always thought that I see the stupidity of humanity here along the traffic, but when I think about my decisions, I see it in them too.

Fuck...

Okay, Morris, your shift is over now. Andy is coming to your post so that you can go to the school festival, Pauline told me through the radio and I noticed Andy coming.

Finally! I hope I didn't miss Diane's performance! I said and left. My daughter would perform as part of the school's dance club. She had been very excited about it and I did not want to miss it. After all, I truly had promised her to be there.

I walked through the chatty masses and got to the school quite soon. It sure was lucky that my post was so close to it.

Hey, Morris! What brings you here? asked the school principal, Thomas.

You know well enough that my daughter performs here today, I murmured. I was not in the best mood today.

It'll be in five minutes, Thomas told.

I walked past him and remembered my manners. I turned and thanked the principal briefly and left.

I made it just in time. Diane had been talking about barely anything else than the performance for the last month. But this is odd. Where the hell is Natasha? She, if someone, promised to be here to see Diane's performance!

I sighed inwardly and concentrated on looking at the performance. I hoped I would not have to explain anything to the ten-year-old girl. If Natasha misses this, Diane will be very sad.

I've never really liked dance performances,