Challenge #10: Flash fiction
AUTHOR
Retallick's piece, which recently won first place in the Flash 500 flash fiction competition, imagines a scenario that begins with the words "What if." The narrator, a trombonist in an orchestra, strikes up a friendship with a fellow musician and imagines the two of them becoming close for a short period of time before their lives take different directions; then, years later, she is informed of his death while living in another country and flashes back to their time together. The story consists of three sentences, with the first one running for hundreds of words without a comma; then, the reader is hit with a second sentence consisting only of the word "Died," before another sentence (long, though shorter than the first one) concludes the paragraph.
For your challenge, write a three-sentence piece using the same format described above. Start with the words "What if" and then write a scenario that involves you and a person whom you have seen but barely know. It could be another student, a person who lives in your neighborhood, a celebrity that you saw once, or someone else. What paths might your lives take, both together and apart, if you forged an actual relationship? And is there a small moment, as with the "drone note" in Retallick's piece, that you might use as a motif?
What if you were a trumpet player and I were a trombonist who was studying at Bangor University and we met when we played in a North Wales orchestra and became friends and started to tune up to a drone note together before every performance and got talking about how you’re an artist and I’m a creative writer and after you’d looked me up and found my website you said you draw comics and have been wanting to make a picture book of some kind and I said you definitely should Phil and that I’ve been thinking of starting a blog but haven’t plucked up the courage and you said you definitely should Cara and we talk talk talked until the lights went down for our first Christmas concert and the audience quietened and you gathered yourself for an opening solo and when you played it beautifully I whispered nice one and you nodded and said thank you and as two three four five concerts passed the evenings became shorter and easier and filled with creativity and the sharing of ideas and I wrote articles on my phone notes during pieces and you would give me a nudge in case I missed my entries which I never would but how were you to know that and then on my last evening when you walked me home from orchestra and we said goodbye I just assumed I’d come back very soon and maybe catch you at a rehearsal but never did because life is like that sometimes and instead moved to New Zealand to be with the love of my life and I emailed whenever I wanted to show you my work or tell you my news or see how you were or congratulate you on your achievements and eventually as decades passed our lives got richer and more fulfilled and our emails became less frequent until we stopped talking completely and many years later when my accent had changed and my time in Wales had become a hazy dream I received an email from someone I only met once when she was nine who wanted to inform me that you had. Died. And before I could fully process this news I was transported back to Theatre Gwynedd to play trombone in an orchestral concert where I’m sitting next to a trumpet player who becomes my friend and I want to tell him how he writes a best-selling graphic novel and how I’m a full-time blogger and how when I listen hard I can still hear our music tilting towards the drone like sunflowers following the sun and it reminds me what’s possible.
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