Posts Tagged ‘flashfiction’

Naramata Road

“I have water for you. There’s a fountain down the road a little.” “Thank you. You’re being very nice.” “It’s the least I can do after trying to steal your bike.” The two men laugh gently. “I’ll never forgive you for that.” “I can live without forgiveness.” They laugh again.   Billy and Jim in…

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A More than Half Full Moon

Billy knew that when the curtains were pulled across the windows of the trailer that he shouldn’t come in. He looked up at a moon that was more than half-full that hung above the pine tree on the land as though stabbed there on the pinnacle branch, and the moon and tree were framed in…

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The Last Bits of Light

“I hope the winds don’t pick up again. That was horrible last night.” Billy was lowering the blinds on the bathroom window. The window was open to let in the air that blew cool down the mountains, and the night before when the winds picked up the blinds shook and slammed against the windowpane over…

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The Small Warmth of the Sun

Billy had gone when the poplars started to bloom, and when they did the last thing he was doing was lying in the winter dead grasses of the hydro cut between the dogs and the dogs laid there with him, Dublin asleep against Billy’s thigh and Maggie at a small distance watching ravens against the…

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Six Ravens

Six ravens in the sky and one peeled off from the rest. That left 5 ravens together cawing their way up, circling on warm air pocketed below the mountain and one raven ditching toward the forest canopy with it’s wings tucked tight against the body, twisting and checking speed and balance, twisting into the branches…

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Billy in the Maron Valley, snippet

Melissa smiles and the boy relaxes and he smiles at her too. She puts her hand on the rear railing and swings herself out of the truck to land in the dirt underneath. A little wind whistles through the grasses nearby and Melissa looks toward it, wild oats bending with the breeze and the rigid…

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Writing

For many of us, when we do something, we want to nail it. The drive towards perfection is a strong one, and we’re conditioned, through things like television and social media, to accept nothing less. So when we write, we write when we feel like we’ve got something really, really important to spill, when we…

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The Bunkhouse, An excerpt

There is no wind tonight. The heat from the fire in the woodstove hums through the chimney, air racing into the flue to feed the flames and then racing again, tempered and smoky out of the metal chimney and into the night sky. Tenaya is cleaning up the kitchen after dinner, her night for the…

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As Plain as Day

Toward Morley on the Trans-Canada highway, out of the mountains to the west of the reserve and then the foothills, passed the casino sitting blank with flashing lights and waiting on the future for its payday to come home, along the ragged asphalt watching pickup trucks on the reserve roads dragging dust clouds behind them,…

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In the Shadows

In the Peaks of Grassi the elk have been gathered for weeks. They lay in the hydro cut in the cold with the wind coming through Whiteman Pass. When they are still over the night hoarfrost grows white crystals on their fur. And in the night, if the clouds part in the sky and the…

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