Wings: Flash Fiction Stories

By David H. Brandin

David Brandin loves tales that end with an unusual twist. In his collection of thirty-eight flash fiction stories, he cleverly intertwines satire with political incorrectness to deliver one of-a-kind political, historical, science fiction, and fantasy tales that each come to a surprising conclusion.

Divided into four sections, Brandins stories begin by exploring political scheming as a president struggles with a church sermon on the seven deadly sins; a poorly qualified candidate defends his nomination to an ambassadorship; and asylum is claimed under unusual circumstances. As Brandin continues into historical and fantasy tales, eclectic characters are brought to the forefront as a statistics professor attempts to beat the odds on airplane bombs; an attempt is made to reengineer the wings of chickens; Chicago politicians struggle with a plan to reduce gang warfare; and a robot wonders whether sex is possible. In his final section, Brandin chronicles the life story of a small boy cursed by Lord Shiva.

Wings is a collection of unique short stories that delivers satire, humor, and surprise endings as a group of wide-ranging personalities try to overcome lifes most challenging obstacles.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: May 15, 2015
• ISBN: 9781491763063

David H. Brandin

David H. Brandin is the author of several award-winning novels that include The Horns of Moses, The Lodge: A Tale of Corruption, and Willful Intent. His short stories collections include The Earthquake Prophet and Wings. Brandin is a retired mathematician and computer scientist who served as vice-president of SRI, and as president of the Association for Computing Machinery. Today, he studies classical piano, is a master scuba diver, and resides on the Central California coast.

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Copyright © 2015 David H. Brandin.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, names, incidents, organizations, and dialogue in this novel are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

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ISBN: 978-1-4917-6307-0 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4917-6308-7 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-4917-6306-3 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2015905894

iUniverse rev. date: 05/11/2015

Contents

Preface

Part I Political Fiction

Mr. President

Seven Deadly Sins And More

Little Big Brother

Little Women

The Common Good

The Ambassador

Political Asylum

Excesssive Force

Part II Historical And General Fiction

The Tomahawk

The Emperor

Deathbed Confession

Rachel’s Trip

Incident On Goethe Street

Dear John J—

Ten Toes

The Bomb

The Trade

Atlas Slugged

An Abundance Of Caution

The Pigeon

Howie

Woody

Burn On, Big River, Burn On

Part III Fantasy And Science Fiction

The Test

The Wager

Pitch Room

The Parking Nazi

Wings

My Kind Of Town

Titan

Bread And Circus

The First Law

Part IV The Linga Saga

Little Donald

Giant Beetles

Orange Crush

Boysenberry Pie

Stampede

Funny Bunny

To

Ellen Brandin

Survivor of Bergen-Belsen

No man but a blockhead ever wrote except for money.

−Samuel Johnson (1709-1784)

I am always at a loss to know how much to believe of my own stories.

−Washington Irving (1783-1859)

Citations

Author Photo, Back Cover, Ellen Brandin

Burn on, Big River, Burn On, Burn On, Randy Newman, 1972

Saruman’s Discourse, The Lord Of The Rings, J.R.R. Tolkien, Houghton Mifflin, 1965

Three Laws of Robotics, Runaround, Isaac Asimov, Street and Smith, 1942

Preface

After completing two novels (The Horns of Moses, iUniverse, New York, 2007 and The Lodge—A Tale of Corruption, iUniverse, Bloomington, 2009), I turned to short stories.

I admired O. Henry’s writing style, in which each tale ended with an unusual twist. Story ideas were a dime a dozen, but those with surprise endings were rare. Nevertheless, over the next few years, I wrote and published a collection of thirty-nine historical and general fiction, fantasy, and science fiction short stories (The Earthquake Prophet, iUniverse, Bloomington, 2011). Each followed the O. Henry tradition.

After that missive, I sought a more difficult challenge. I discovered a flash fiction working group in San Luis Obispo (SLO). The group, Long Story Short, part of the SLO NightWriters, concentrated on stories no longer than one thousand words.

In general, flash fiction (and non-fiction) stories are limited to a fixed number of words. The range is typically ten to 10,000 words.

Each story must have a place, a conflict, at least one interesting character, and some form of resolution. There must be a beginning, middle, and an end.

In flash, these constraints are quite difficult to satisfy; and, as the word count decreases, very tight writing is demanded. Sometimes gut-wrenching decisions must be made on whether some embellishment of the scene or the character is more important, or more critical, than the other. With limited word counts, short does not equate to easy.

From a technical perspective, flash fiction isn’t poetic prose, essay, or monologue. It’s simply a story with conventional requirements:

Hook—a story must grab the reader in the first few sentences of the first paragraph. The best start of a flash story is with action; beginnings with dialogue can deter or confuse the reader.

Characters—Fiction relates to how characters, protagonists, antagonists, and others change in fundamental ways. Flash fiction constraints usually limit the number of characters. But even with just one character, it’s difficult to develop a bond between the reader and the character. As in all fiction, the characters must be believable and appealing (this is a general rule, although it is possible to write flash fiction based on distasteful characters).

Story Elements—The tale must include scene, a problem or conflict, dramatic action, interesting characters, and a resolution.

Tense and Person—Flash fiction is often written in response to a prompt in a class, workshop, or writing contest. The prompt might be a word, a sentence, or an idea. It may, or may not, be the first word or sentence of the story. A writer may prefer to write in third person, past tense (as do I), but the prompt often dictates that choice. For example, a start prompt, such as ‘I lock the door,’ fixes a story in first person, present tense.

Point of View (POV)—A large challenge in flash fiction is managing the POV. There’s an urge to write in various omniscient forms. Sadly, that requires the use of multiple tags, i.e. the use of additional words to identify the speakers or characters. Without the tags, the POV is likely to be muddled. Multiple scene changes can help, but they demand additional descriptions of place. One’s choice of POV can have a large impact on word count.

Title—It’s good to pick a title that conveys information about the story. Titles aren’t included in the flash fiction word count.

I intended to call this collection Flash, but renamed it WINGS, after the story (page 117) with the same name in the Fantasy and Science Fiction section. Developed in a ‘What If?’ writing workshop, the tale suggests rather obvious graphics for the cover.

WINGS contains thirty-eight general, historical, political, and science fiction and fantasy stories (1,000 words or less). Many were written in response to specific prompts in my writing groups and workshops. Examples follow:

Seven Deadly Sins and More, page 7: Prompt—Seven deadly sins.

Rachel’s Trip, page 49: Prompt—Begin with ‘Rachel’s first trip to Europe didn’t go as planned.’

Dear John J—, page 57: Prompt—Dear John.

An Abundance of Caution, page 77: Prompt—déjà vu.

The Parking Nazi, page 113: Prompt—‘white wine chilling.’

Part I Political Fiction is based mostly on current events. Written during the past six years (2008 forward), the stories examine political scheming in the White House, Islam and Christianity, the effects of the Affordable Care Act on Big Brother, presidential nominations, and immigration and amnesty issues. For example: Little Big Brother, page 11, is based on a fictional coup d’état in Washington; The Ambassador, page 23, offers an interesting look at a senate confirmation hearing; and Political Asylum, page 27, takes a cynical view of the flood of children on the southern border of the U.S.

Part II Historical and General Fiction reaches back through time to the Roman Empire (The Emperor, page 41) and travels through World War II (The Pigeon, page 83), the Vietnam War (Dear John J—, page 57), and the Cold War (Atlas Slugged, page 73). A few stories are based on jokes (Ten Toes, page 61) and personal experiences and thoughts (The Bomb, page 65; Deathbed Confession, page 45). An exercise in unreliable narrators resulted in Woody, page 91.

Wings (page 117), the namesake story of this book, is in Part III Fantasy and Science Fiction. The tale examines the possible impact of bioengineering and molecular mutation research on birds. Some of the other stories cover witchcraft (The Parking Nazi, page 113); alien invasions (Pitch Room, page 109); robotics (The First Law, page 133); and modern-day gladiator games (Bread and Circus, page 129).

Part IV, The Linga Saga, contains six chapters of a single story, carved into chapters of 1,000 or less words. These can be considered stand-alone episodes, but they should be read in sequence.

Complex story lines with multiple characters are best served by larger word limits. Some stories, e.g. An Abundance of Caution (page 77), suffer from flash word limits. They beg to be long short stories, novellas, or books. Indeed, the events fictionalized in Excessive Force (page 31) serve as the basis of my next novel, Under Color Of Law. With luck, some of the other stories will lead to longer works.

The names and locations in one story, Rachel’s Trip (page 49), were changed to comply with a prompt. But the event actually happened; my wife was deported by the Nazis from Poland to Bergen-Belsen; she was liberated by the British in 1945; and she did meet a British brigadier in the ‘80s who had liberated the camp.

Ideas come from all directions. Some are inspired by real events. Newspaper stories, TV news alerts, the inane babble of politicians, the upside-down logic of international rhetoric, and Orwell’s Doublethink and the curse of political correctness, offer an inexhaustible supply of story topics. As Dave Barry has said, I am not making this up. Indeed, one doesn’t have to make it up, or stray far from reality, to write an exciting story. You just need character, conflict, place, resolution, and that unique twist for an ending.

PART I

Political Fiction

Mr. President

President Thomas M. Ashford slumped in his chair. Tall, with a full head of silver hair and large bags under his eyes, he glared at his Chief of Staff Albert Fuentes, a diminutive Latino. Vice President Henry Puthoff, a portly man who shared the president’s ire with Fuentes, seemed engrossed in the presidential seal on the carpet.

Poll ratings had plunged, and reelection prospects were dismal. The president sensed Fuentes avoided eye-contact.

These numbers stink! complained the president. What can we do about them?

Mr. President, consoled Puthoff, the polls are rigged. They cook the questions.

I know, Henry. But these polls were taken by our supporters. We need to do something, or we can kiss the White House good-bye. We’ll be lucky to get jobs as neighborhood organizers on the south side of Chicago.

Vice president Puthoff folded his hands over his bulky belly. What do you think, Albert?

Are we being recorded? asked Fuentes,

The Secret Service switched off the microphones.

Fuentes nodded. I have an idea.

It better be a whopper, thought the president. He knew Fuentes would never go back to the Woodland district on the south side, where impoverished black and Latino neighborhoods shared a common border. At one time, it held the title of Murder Capital of America. Woodland still looked like an open sewer—abandoned buildings, junked vehicles, empty lots, garbage in the streets, and it had a childbirth death rate greater than central Africa’s.

Whatever we do, said Fuentes must address the unemployment rate, the national debt and our trade deficit. We owe the Chinese a bundle.

President Ashford rubbed his eyes. So what do we do? Everything we’ve tried has failed.

We need a crisis, declared Fuentes.

What kind of crisis could solve those problems?

War, replied Fuentes. "It worked in the Great Depression; it’ll work this time. We attack China—pick a reason: