Flash Fiction Stories

Ms. Matis Grade 8

What Happened During the Ice Storm by Jim Heynen

One winter there was a freezing rain. How beautiful! People said when things
outside started to shine with ice. But the freezing rain kept coming. Tree branches
glistened like glass. Then broke like glass. Ice thickened on the windows until
everything outside blurred. Farmers moved their livestock into the barns, and
most animals were safe. But not the pheasants. Their eyes froze shut.
Some farmers went ice-skating down the gravel roads with clubs to harvest
the pheasants that sat helplessly in the roadside ditches. The boys went out into
the freezing rain to find pheasants too. They saw dark spots along a fence.
Pheasants, all right. Five or six of them. The boys slid their feet along slowly,
trying not to break the ice that covered the snow. They slid up close to the
pheasants. The pheasants pulled their heads down between their wings. They
couldnt tell how easy it was to see them huddled there.
The boys stood still in the icy rain. Their breath came out in slow puffs of
steam. The pheasants breath came out in quick little white puffs. Some of them
lifted their heads and turned them from side to side, but they were blindfolded
with ice and didnt flush. The boys had not brought clubs, or sacks, or anything
but themselves. They stood over the pheasants, turning their own heads, looking
at each other, each expecting the other to do something. To pounce on a
pheasant, or to yell Bang! Things around them were shining and dripping with icy
rain. The barbed-wire fence. The fence posts. The broken stems of grass. Even the
grass seeds. The grass seeds looked like little yolks inside gelatin whites. And the
pheasants looked like unborn birds glazed in egg white. Ice was hardening on the
boys caps and coats. Soon they would be covered with ice too.
Then one of the boys said, Shh. He was taking off his coat, the thin layer of
ice splintering in flakes as he pulled his arms from the sleeves. But the inside of
the coat was dry and warm. He covered two of the crouching pheasants with his
coat, rounding the back of it over them like a shell. The other boys did the same.
They covered all the helpless pheasants. The small gray hens and the larger
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brown ones. Now the boys felt the rain soaking through their shirts and freezing.
They ran across the slippery fields, unsure of their footing, the ice clinging to their
skin as they made their way toward the blurry lights of the house.

Fish Cheeks by Amy Tan

I fell in love with the ministers son the winter I turned fourteen. He was not
Chinese, but as white as Mary in the manger. For Christmas I prayed for this
blond-haired boy, Robert, and a slim new American nose.
When I found out that my parents had invited the ministers family over for
Christmas Eve dinner, I cried. What would Robert think of our shabby Chinese
Christmas? What would he think of our noisy Chinese relatives who lacked proper
American manners? What terrible disappointment would he feel upon seeing not a
roasted turkey and sweet potatoes but Chinese food?
On Christmas Eve I saw that my mother had outdone herself in creating a
strange menu. She was pulling black veins out of the backs of fleshy prawns. The
kitchen was littered with appalling mounds of raw food: a slimy rock cod with
bulging fish eyes that pleaded not to be thrown into a pan of hot oil. Tofu, which
looked like stacked wedges of rubbery white sponges. A bowl soaking dried fungus
back to life. A plate of squid, their backs crisscrossed with knife markings so they
resembled bicycle tires.
And then they arrivedthe ministers family and all my relatives in a clamor
of doorbells and rumpled Christmas packages. Robert grunted hello, and I
pretended he was not worthy of existence.
Dinner threw me deeper into despair. My relatives licked the ends of their
chopsticks and reached across the table, dipping them into the dozen or so plates
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of food. Robert and his family waited patiently for platters to be passed to them.
My relatives murmured with pleasure when my mother brought out the whole
steamed fish. Robert grimaced. Then my father poked his chopsticks just below
the fish eye and plucked out the soft meat. Amy, your favorite, he said, offering
me the tender fish cheek. I wanted to disappear.
At the end of the meal my father leaned back and belched loudly, thanking
my mother for her fine cooking. Its a polite Chinese custom to show you are
satisfied, explained my father to our astonished guests. The minister managed to
muster up a quiet burp. I was stunned into silence the rest of the night.
After everyone had gone, my mother said to me, You want to be the same
as American girls on the outside. She handed me an early gift. It was a miniskirt
in beige tweed. But inside you must always be Chinese. You must be proud you
are different. Your only shame is to have shame.
And even though I didnt agree with her then, I knew that she understood
how much I had suffered during the evenings dinner. It wasnt until many years
laterlong after I had gotten over my crush on Robertthat I was able to fully
appreciate her lesson and the true purpose behind our particular menu. For
Christmas Eve that year, she had chosen all my favorite meals.

Snow by Julia Alvarez

Our first year in New York we rented a small apartment with a Catholic school
nearby, taught by the Sisters of Charity, hefty women in long black gowns and bonnets
that made them look peculiar, like dolls in mourning. I liked them a lot, especially my
grandmotherly fourth grade teacher, Sister Zoe. I had a lovely name, she said, and she
had me teach the whole class had to pronounce it. Yo-lan-da. As the only immigrant in
my class, I was put in a special seat in the first row by the window, apart from the other
children so that Sister Zoe could tutor me without disturbing them. Slowly, she
enunciated the new words I was to repeat: Laundromat, cornflakes, subway, snow.
Soon I picked up enough English to understand holocaust was in the air. Sister Zoe
explained to a wide-eyed classroom what was happening in Cuba. Russian missiles were
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Ms. Matis Grade 8
being assembled, trained supposedly on New York City. President Kennedy, looking
worried too, was on the television at home, explaining we might have to go to war
against the Communists. At school, we had air-raid drills: an ominous bell would go off
and wed file into the hall, fall to the floor, cover our heads with our coats, and imagine
our hair falling out, the bones in our arms going soft. At home, Mami and my sisters and I
said a rosary for world peace. I heard new vocabulary: nuclear bomb, radioactive fallout,
bomb shelter. Sister Zoe explained how it would happen. She drew a picture of a
mushroom on the blackboard and dotted a flurry of chalkmarks for the dusty fallout that
would kill us all.
The months grew cold, November, December. It was dark when I got up in the
morning, frosty when I followed my breath to school. One morning as I sat at my desk
daydreaming out the window, I saw dots in the air like the ones Sister Zoe had drawn
random at first, then lots and lots. I shrieked, Bomb! Bomb! Sister Zoe jerked around,
her full black skirt ballooning as she hurried to my side. A few girls began to cry.
But then Sister Zoes shocked look faded. Why, Yolanda dear, thats snow! She
laughed. Snow.
Snow, I repeated. I looked out the window warily. All my life I had heard about
the white crystals that fell out of American skies in the winter. From my desk I watched
the fine powder dust the sidewalk and parked cars below. Each flake was different, Sister
Zoe said, like a person, irreplaceable and beautiful.

CHARACTERIZATION
What Happened During the Ice Storm
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Ms. Matis Grade 8

Focusing on the boys and/or the pheasants, share 1 example of ACTIONS,

SPEECH, APPEARANCE, and INTERACTIONS from the story and explain what each
of those examples tells readers about that character.
Fish Cheeks
Using any of the characters in the story, share 1 example of an SPEECH,
APPEARANCE, ACTIONS and INTERACTIONS, and explain what each of the
examples reveals about the characters in the family.
Snow
Using any of the characters in the story, share 1 example of an SPEECH,
APPEARANCE, ACTIONS and INTERACTIONS, and explain what each of the
examples reveals about the storys characters.
CONFLICT AND RESOLUTION
Choose two stories (Fish Cheeks, Snow, or Ice Storm) and do the
following:
1. Identify the conflict specifically. What forces are in conflict? Is it internal or
external? Where exactly in the story is the conflict clear? How far into the
story is the conflict clear (count actual sentences or paragraphs)?
2. Explain how the conflict is resolved. Be specific. Where exactly in the story
does the resolution occur? How close to the end is it?
FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE & IMAGERY
For your assigned story, mark up the text for the following:
Share an example of a SIMILE, METAPHOR, PERSONIFICATION, and strong
IMAGERY.
Explain what is being compared, personified, and what senses the imagery is
appealing to. Most importantly, talk about what these examples add to the story?
Do they help to build conflict? Develop character? Establish and describe setting?
How do? Explain.
VIVID VERBS
Using What Happened During the Ice Storm, list five vivid verbs, choosing the
best ones. Then, discuss the connotations associated with each word. Finally,
think about and explain how these words especially their connotations add to
the story. Do they help reinforce the tone? Build conflict? Establish character?
Form images in the readers mind? Explain.
BREAKING THE RULES
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List 5 examples of traditional writing rules being broken in the stories. Explain the
rule and how it is broken. Then, think more deeply: Why would the author choose
to break this rule? What does it add to the storys meaning? How does it affect the
audiences reading of the story?

Bullhead by Leigh Allison Wilson

Every story is true and a lie. My mother tells a story about the love of her
life. Its a simple one, but she always cries when she tells it and looks right
through me, as though I hadnt been born. Something about the detail makes me
feel theres a sadness in the world that will last until the rushing crack of doom.
It goes like this: In the forties, when she was a teenaged girl in Tennessee,
my mother fell in love with the boy next door. That same year the government
decided to build dams all over the state. As if some crazy rainstorm had come and
gone, pristine new lakes puddle the landscape from Knoxville to Memphis. One
lake formed right over my mothers hometown people lost their homes, lost their
businesses, their graveyards, their farmland and, in some cases, their hearts. On
the night before the government moved everybody out of her hometown my
mother and the love of her life embraced in my mothers bedroom. Her parents
were at a prayer meeting, praying for dry land, I guess, like Noah. This boy was
sweet, was kind, was smart and generous and lovely to look at; this boy was the
love of her life. He moved with his family to Texas the next day and she never saw
him again.
Except: Once a year she rents a rowboat and goes out on the lake that has
drowned her old hometown. She drops a penny over the side, right over the place
where her old house must be. Fifty years, fifty pennies. She imagines them drifting
downward, all those pennies, drifting through the murky lake water, startling the
catfish and bullhead, each penny listing into the open window of her bedroom and
falling at last onto the pillow where she once lay her head against the love of her
life, the boy next door. She imagines their ghost love showered by pennies; she

Flash Fiction Stories

Ms. Matis Grade 8

imagines this love beyond all loves glittering with gold. Then she rows back to
shore and back to my father and me and the life that cant compete with memory.
Every story is true and a lie. The true part of this one is: Love and the
memory of love cant be drowned. The lie part is that this is a good thing.

Bullhead by Leigh Allison Wilson

1. Considering the four ways of developing character, how is the mothers
character developed?

2. What is the conflict? How does imagery to develop the conflict?

3. How does point of view affect the conflict? Be sure to consider the narrators
resolution. How might the conflict and resolution differ if the story were told
from the mothers point of view?

Flash Fiction Stories

Ms. Matis Grade 8

4. Wilson uses repetition in her story. Find examples. What impact does the
repetition have on the story? Does it enhance characterization, conflict,
setting, etc.?

5. Examine the authors use of colons. How does Wilson use them as a
narrative tool?

Currents by Hannah Bottomy

Gary drank single malt in the night, out on the porch that leaned toward the ocean. His
mother, distracted, had shut off the floodlights and he did not protest against the dark.
BEFORE THAT, his mother, Josey, tucked in her two shivering twelve-year-old
granddaughters.
I want you both to go swimming first thing tomorrow. Cant have two seals like you
afraid of the water.
BEFORE THAT, one of the girls held the hand of a wordless Filipino boy. His was the first
hand shed ever held. They were watching the paramedics lift the boys dead brother
into an ambulance.
At this time, the other girl heaved over a toilet in the cabana.
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BEFORE THAT, the girl who would feel nauseated watched as the drowned boys hand
slid off the stretcher and bounced along the porch rail. Nobody placed the hand back on
the stretcher, and it bounced and dragged and bounced.
BEFORE THAT, Gary saw the brown hair sink and resurface as the body bobbed. At first
he mistook it for seaweed.
BEFORE THAT, thirty-five people struggled out of the water at the Coast Guards
command. A lifeguard shouted over Jet Ski motors about the increasing strength of the
riptide.
BEFORE THAT, the thirty-five people, including Gary and the two girls, formed a human
chain and trolled the waters for the body of a Filipino boy. The boy had gone under
twenty minutes earlier, and never come back up.
BEFORE THAT, a lifeguard sprinted up the beach, shouting for volunteers. The two girls,
resting lightly on their sandy bodyboards, stood up to help.
BEFORE THAT, a Filipino boy pulled on the torpid lifeguards ankle and gestured
desperately at the waves. My brother, he said.
BEFORE THAT, it was a simple summer day.

Currents by Hannah Bottomy

1. Consider the structure of the story. How does it help or hinder the story?
Would the story have the same impact if the structure were reversed?
Why/why not?

Flash Fiction Stories

Ms. Matis Grade 8

2. Examine Bottomys choice of verbs. How do her verbs help to develop the
urgency of the conflict?

3. Considering the structure of the story in regard to repetition and paragraph

size, how can the title play a role here? Think about what ideas we associate
with currents.

4. Identify the conflict and resolution. Is there a twist on the ending? Explain.

5. Why does Bottomy give actual names to Gary and Josey but leave the
children nameless?

Weeding by Steven Cavanagh

Joseph's thick fingers wrenched an offending plant from the garden. He studied
the witch's-broom tangle of roots and imagined them writhing feebly as life ebbed
from the weed.
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Hearing a bicycle bell, he looked up. A little girl, perhaps six years old, wobbled up
the street on training wheels. A silky terrier trailed behind.
Joseph tossed the weed aside and reached for the gardening fork. The girl was not
one of the usual children in the neighborhood. He knew; he watched them all.
"Little girl! Hey!"
The girl brought the bike to a halt by scraping her shoes on the road. Almond eyes
peered at Joseph through a black fringe. The terrier flicked its ears.
Joseph stooped like a diving pelican. He plucked a runner of kikuyu from the soil
and threw it onto the compost pile.
"You look funny, girl," said Joseph. "Do you know you look funny?"
The girl made no reply. Joseph jerked at a stubborn tap root.
"Where you from? You look Chinese to me. Is that right, missy? You a little Chinee
girl?"
The girl remained silent, looking at him. The little terrier scratched its neck.
Joseph grunted, stabbing at the soil with a garden fork, "I'm wasting my time. As if
you people could speak English prop-"
"Laos," said the girl.
"What?"
"We're from Laos."
"Louse?" said Joseph, a smirk creeping across his face. "That's like a flea, innit?"
He thrust the fork into the compost and left it there, the handle pointing like an
accusing finger. "New in the neighborhood, huh?"
The girl nodded.
Joseph stood up, brushing soil from his knees. He scanned the street to make sure
it was empty.

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"Well listen, louse girl. I've lived in the area for forty-seven years. I go shooting
with three council members and know how to get the whole district to shake their
fist. I know what to put on paper, and what not to."
The girl made no reply. Joseph stooped and wrenched a paspalum plant from the
garden as if retrieving a bayonet.
"I stopped them putting in a skate park. I blocked the housing commission
development. If you people think I'm gonna just sit here while my place is overrun
by a boatload of slo..."
Joseph's voice of intimidation trailed off when he saw the twinkle in the girl's eye.
The twinkle became a spark, then a star, then a galaxy.
Energy streamed from the girl's eyes, eating at Joseph's arms and face like boiling
water on butter. He only managed a gargling hiss before being reduced to
component particles. A red-brown cloud settled over the compost like dandruff.
"That's the last one in this geographical segment," said the girl. "The humans
should grow unimpeded now."
The dog looked up. "Your human disguise is coming off," it said.
The girl rubbed at her hand as she turned it over, then thrust it into the folds of
her dress to hide the green thumb.

This story was the first place winner of the Magic Casements 2006 Flash Fiction
competition. First published in our Infinitas Newsletter, April 2006 . More on
Steven Cavanagh.
Copyright 2006 Steven Cavanagh.

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Ms. Matis Grade 8

Weeding by Steven Cavanagh

1. Choose two examples of figurative language and analyze how each helps to
develop character and/or conflict.

2. Speech is a common characterization technique. Lack of speech, however,

can also develop character. Examine how Cavanagh does both and discuss
how it develops his characters.

3. Explain your thoughts on what happened to the man and who/what the little
girl is.

4. Explain the significance of the title to the story as a whole.

5. Identify the conflict and resolution. Is there a twist on the ending? Explain.
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