Untethered & Other Stories

By Sunanda J. Chatterjee

Flash ficiton means short stories. Very, very short stories, often just a few pages long. Each story has a beginning, middle, and end, and complete with character growth and plot twists.

Humans are social animals, with a primal, elemental desire to connect.

Maya yearns for flowers from her boyfriend, Amy wants to run a successful business, Robyn needs a place she can call home, and Lila just wants to survive.

In this cross-genre series of short stories, characters bond and fall apart, some seek retribution, and others deal with loss in unique, unpredictable ways.

Many of the tales in this collection appeared in podcasts, web magazines, and other anthologies.

 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Sunanda J. Chatterjee
• Release date: Sep 19, 2019
• ISBN: 9798215537770

Sunanda J. Chatterjee

Freelance author, blogger, and ex-Indian Air Force physician Sunanda Joshi Chatterjee completed her graduate studies in Los Angeles, where she is a practicing pathologist. While medicine is her profession, writing is her passion. When she’s not at the microscope making diagnoses, she loves to write fiction. Her themes include romantic sagas, family dramas, immigrant experiences, women’s issues, and medicine. She loves extraordinary love stories and heartwarming tales of duty and passion. Her short stories have appeared in short-story.net and induswomanwriting.com. She grew up in Bhilai, India, and lives in Arcadia, California with her husband and two wonderful children. In her free time, she paints, reads, sings, goes on long walks, and binge-watches TV crime dramas.

Book preview

Flash Fiction

Flash fiction is a genre of short stories where the entire beginning, middle, and end are completed within a thousand words, or about four pages.

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Some stories are micro-fiction, which is five hundred words or less, some being even shorter, at a hundred words.

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This genre is increasingly popular in this day and age, when we want to escape into a different world in limited time.

Most of the stories in this book can be read in a few minutes, on the bus, while waiting for a friend, or at lunch break at work.

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Hope you enjoy them.

The Grouchy Grandma

First published in A Bond of Words, an anthology

Look at her. Just look at her! Strutting up to take the microphone. Sure, Nona will give an impassioned mother-of-the-groom speech. She didn’t ask me to speak at my grandson’s wedding after all I’ve done for him; I raised Amir from a wee baby.

And who is Sheela anyway, the bride, the new member of our family? They didn’t even consult me. I hope she turns out to be just like her mother-in-law, ignoring and disrespecting her husband’s mother at every turn. Tit for bloody tat.

They stuck me in my wheelchair with this corpulent old hag I don’t know, at a table for two. Right next to the bathroom! It’s a small wedding; eight tables with seating for six each. I belong at the family table. Would seven chairs really ruin the aesthetic?

Nona is toasting to the young couple’s happiness. Let’s raise our glass to…

Her head is blacker than a crow’s, her skin taut like apples with naught a line crossing her brow. It must be nice not to have any worries; I did everything for her, especially after my son died. But has she ever thanked me?

Something sticks in my throat and I leave the champagne untouched. I’ve brought a big fat check for Nona to cover the wedding expenses. But I’ll take it back with me; my money will go to charity and disappear with my ashes. If she even shows up for my funeral. I’d love to be a ghost and watch her face when my will reveals what she got: zilch. Hah!

Look at her taking credit for Amir’s success. Didn’t I watch him while she went to work leaving the infant in my lap? Didn’t I cook meals for him, bathe him, take him to the library, and to the doctor’s office, bake cakes for his birthdays? I deserve a smidgeon of credit, an acknowledgment of my efforts.

I remember Amir’s baby smell and his velvet skin and his silky hair as he fell asleep in my lap. His constant begging, Tell me a story, Grandma.

Will I be a part of his children’s lives? Or will it just be Nona?

Her voice grates on my nerves. I want to thank Amir’s teachers and mentors who’ve contributed to his life…

Sure. Don’t thank me. I’m just the crotchety old grandma who taught your son how to cross the goddamn road.

The old woman beside me lets out an unfortunate emission borne out of dyspepsia. Embarrassed, she coughs. Her three chins wiggle as she blurts, The bride, Sheela, is my niece’s daughter.

So they seated me with the bride’s distant—and flatulent—relative! Perfect. That’s just perfect. I nod. I don’t tell her who I am. Instead, I toggle my denture with my tongue.

Nona