My husband and I had just moved into a new split-level house. Even full of our boxes, the house had a deserted feel, of hopes long since abandoned. Every day, I’d unpack more and more boxes, but the house never seemed to give up its sense of self. It remained “the house” and not “our new house.” Coupled with that, my husband was having a lot of problems at work, and was gone a lot. I hadn’t met any of the neighbors, and we were pretty isolated. We had bought the first finished house in the development, not knowing what it would mean for us that our nearest neighbor, despite having purchased their house, wouldn’t be moving in for the next nine months.

Any light that we turned on seemed unable to cast out the ever-present gloom that seemed to lie like a blanket in the recesses of the house. My dogs, the terror of our old neighborhood, would not leave my side. Often I would leave a room sure I had unpacked the last box, and straightened up the bookshelves, but upon my return, I’d find some boxes left and some books mis-shelved in the wrong place. That was easily explained though by my husband, who was forever finding more boxes, and bringing them upstairs into rooms I considered “done”, and pulling out books, saying I’d put them on the wrong shelf. Harder to explain was the music I thought I kept hearing. I looked, but was never able to find the source. It was old Big Band Swing, a type of music that we’d never owned. Still, I shrugged it off; persisting in thinking things would be fine.

Finally, one night three weeks after we moved in, the dark force made itself known. I returned from the store to find lights on, lights I hadn’t left on. Thinking my husband home early, I ran to his study on the ground floor. He wasn’t there. Oddly, noises seemed to be coming from his lower study in the basement.

Throwing open the door, I found his wall length bookcase fallen over, all the books on the floor, the plants in his small atrium dead and dying. Now reveled was a closet door that had been hidden by the bookcase. The door was painted white, the handle old black cast iron. When I tried to open the door, all my energy was pulled down my hand and fed into the door. I tried to let go, but couldn’t. Letting out a scream, I tugged frantically on the handle, trying to get my hand free as my strength of will weakened.

The doorbell above rang out sharply.

With a gasp, I wrenched my hand away, leaving skin behind, and fled up the stairs, the cast iron knob pulsating red.

My mom was at the door with a housewarming gift and some Chinese food.

“Want to share?” I said hopefully, taking it from her.

“I’m in a hurry. Sorry.”

I chucked my composure and pleaded with her to stay, telling her of all the strange happenings.

She dismissed them. “This is just normal new house jitters, especially with you being alone so much.”

I waited until she was at the door, then pretended to faint, hoping to get her to stay. Queerly, she only propped me up on a pillow near the table.

“Maybe its best this way,” she said, then left. Abruptly, the shadows lengthened, the walls seeming to move, as if a force was pushing outwards from inside.

“What are you?” I shouted. “What do you want?”

The walls moved like clay, rippling with the force underneath them. I retreated to my bedroom and shut the door quickly, barricading the dogs and myself in my bedroom.

***

I tossed and turned for a while, recurring familiar noises barely audible from the lower study. Then a knock sounded at the door.

I reached up to turn on the light, but it would not come on. The only light was from beneath the door, the broken beams showing that someone was standing directly outside. Was it my husband?

My dogs were whimpering, scared of whomever was at the door. Gathering my courage, I flung it open.

No one was there. But I wasn’t upstairs anymore; I was in the lower study. A message in blood was written on the wall: JENNIFER, GET OUT!

I desperately tried to run. The walls enfolded me, sealing off my scream.

***

My husband’s arms were around me, comforting me. My dogs raised their heads, then content that there was no danger, went back to sleep.

“It’s alright, Jennifer,” he said. “I know you’re nervous about the new house. But I’m going to be home more now. Our life is going to be fabulous.”I smiled and hugged him, my eyes glowing faintly. “Don’t worry. I know it will. I’ve got something to show you tomorrow after breakfast.”

“A surprise?” he said lovingly.

“Yes,” I said, baring needle teeth. “One just for you.”

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©2011 Tara Fox Hill

Tara Fox Hall received her bachelor’s degree in mathematics with a double minor in chemistry and biology from Binghamton University. Her writing credits include nonfiction short stories, flash, short and novella-length horror stories, and contemporary and historical paranormal romance. She also coauthored the essay “The Allure of the Serial Killer,” published in Serial Killers - Philosophy for Everyone: Being and Killing (Wiley-Blackwell, 2010). Her first E-Book, Surrender to Me, was published in September 2011. She divides her free time unequally between writing novels and short stories, chainsawing firewood, caring for stray animals, sewing cat and dog beds for donation to animal shelters, and target practice.

To celebrate Michael A. Kechula’s thirty-first post on Flashes in the Dark last week, I had a chat with the author about his art and what keeps him at it.

Why do you have such an abiding love for short fiction? 

MIKE:  I continue to love flash fiction tales, especially when they pack lots of storytelling in as few words as possible.  I rarely read novels or short stories, anymore, because they’re usually so overloaded with trivial details they bore me.    

Do you remember when you wrote your first tale, and what it was about?  

MIKE:  I attempted to write my first flash fiction story just eight years ago when I joined FlashXer, a Yahoo flash-fiction exercise group.   I was a total failure.  I couldn’t develop flash to save my life.  I was about to quit the group when I had a sudden inspiration.  It led to a story that reaped kudos from members of FlashXer.  Encouraged by their responses, I sent the story to Alien Skin Magazine.  To my amazement, the editor bought it that day.   

The story, “$39.50 A Plate,” was also my first-ever sci-fi tale.  The title of the story refers to the price of fresh Martian spaghetti.   It’s quite a mish-mash of storytelling that mentions Planet X  (which is supposed to ram into Mars and Earth),  a Martian female, an American truck driver,  Martian spaghetti that’s alive and must be eaten a certain way,  a radio talk show, a diner that suddenly appears in the desert, and chocolate chip cookies.  I’ll never be able to explain how I worked all these ideas into a flash fiction tale.   

By the way, I’m now the moderator of FlashXer.  I issue three prompts per week to members.  Membership is open to anyone who wishes to exercise their ability to develop flash fiction for publication.   If interested in becoming a member, look up the site on Yahoo, and subscribe.  However, we are not a mutual appreciation society that will say your story is wonderful when it isn’t.  Several members, especially me, give thorough critiques.  Our objective is to help members make their work irresistible to magazine, anthology, and contest editors.   
  
As a writer, what has been the most challenging thing to learn?
 
MIKE:  How to develop any kind of fiction, after a 27-year career as a professional writer of nonfiction.  Before retiring in 1994, I was a successful developer of self-study books and online courseware.  I completed 29 nonfiction books and 15 extensive online courses, most of which were sold by my employer, IBM, to customers.  When I took a buyout from IBM, I figured I’d try something new and switch to developing fiction.  Well, was I ever in for a big surprise.  Turned out I was a complete flop when it came to fiction.  I couldn’t come up with any interesting story ideas.  Worse, I couldn’t get a sentence on paper that I thought was worthwhile.   I don’t know why I was stricken with such a block, but it lasted several years.  I was able to overcome it with lots of help from Dr. Sheri Rosenthal, PhD, who taught creative writing at a college in Las Vegas.      
  
Of all your stories, are there some that stand out as favorites?
 
MIKE:   Yes, quite a few of them, because I’ve been lucky enough to get 400+ stories published in the past eight years in 140 magazines and 43 anthologies in 6 countries.  Also won first prize in 12 flash fiction writing contests and second place in 8 others.  Here are some of my many favorites:
 
“Midnight Hugs” is about a guy who’s hired by a crazed scientist to hug three female corpses for five minutes each, every night at midnight.  The idea is that by doing so, he can transfer his vital essences to the dead woman to bring them back to life.  If successful, scientist figured he’s win a Nobel Prize.
 
“A Great Star,” in which a private detective is contracted by a movie studio to go to Haiti and capture lots of zombies. Seems the studio wants to be the first in history to include real zombies in a forthcoming movie they figure will be a blockbuster.  He manages to capture one, but she is extremely vicious and bites his face, and gets away.  Her bite causes endless streams of pus to drip from his face.  Modern medicines can’t stop the flow.  Neither can his participation in weird rituals and offering sacrifices to voodoo gods.  Obviously the poor slob is doomed.
 
“Alien Fingers,” in which a guy with a push cart sells alien fingers for five cents each.  They make great sandwiches that are super with mustard, onions, and sauerkraut. Freshly amputated from Martians, flash frozen, and shipped to Earth for our enjoyment.  The Martians get a gold star for each amputation, which they paste in a book.  When it’s full, they get a free trip to Disneyland.  The protag finds them quite delicious.  He has six in a row, and that’s when the fun begins.
 
“First Day of School.”  In this tale, I poke fun at social engineering.  A school board hires a blue gorilla as its newest kindergarten teacher.  How they manage to rationalize doing so this is part of the fun.  However, this tale is quite dark, especially when a mom and her kid run into this new teacher on the first day of school.  Seems the gorilla has a nasty side school officials didn’t know about.  She doesn’t like the smell of donuts.  Unfortunately the kid had just eaten a donut supplied by the principal before the kid met his new teacher.  This spells disaster–which is conveniently rationalized as normal behavior by the principal.   

I could go on, because I had lots of fun writing hundreds of speculative fiction  stories.  Never had a clue that I could create such strange tales.   Actually, I was 64 when I discovered I could write zombie stories, all of which were accepted for publication in various magazines and anthologies.   

What type of story would you like to write that you have not tackled yet?
 
MIKE:  Since I’ve already published sci-fi, fantasy, horror, crime, adventure, and romance stories, I’d like to try a book of flash tales for children.  To that end, I’ve dictated 94 original, children’s, fantasy stories into a voice recorder, as they occurred to me over the past few years.  Total listening time for these tales is about 9-1/2 hours.  Now I need to buy a transcriber, or find out if Dragon voice translating software can work from voice recordings.   Once the 94 stores are transferred to computer files, I’ll select two dozen of the best, polish them, and submit the manuscript to a children’s publisher.  By the way, none of the stories involve dragons, monsters, or dark, nefarious characters.  My intention was to create fantasy tales that young kids would find humorous.  In my tales, nobody dies, nobody is the victim of spells, and nobody gets hurt.       

Why do you think that horror is such an enduring form of fiction?
 
MIKE:  Probably because horror tales are often quite entertaining.   Especially when they have elements of humor.  The idea of humorous horror sounds like an oxymoron. 
 
What makes flash fiction a difficult form to write in? 

MIKE:  I’d like to answer this by giving observations based on my experiences in transforming dozens of novelists and short story authors into flash fiction developers.  First of all, it’s nearly impossible to find anyone who teaches how to write flash fiction that sells.  Consequently new authors aren’t fully aware of flash development techniques, which are NOT the same as those used for novels and short stories.   For example, all my new students tended to make the same errors, a few of which are listed below:
 
1.      Their story concepts were often too ambitious to work as flash fiction tales, which are stories of 1,000 words or less.
2.      Opening sentences were often dynamic.  However, many changed the subject in the very next sentence.  Example:   Frank was on his way to rob a bank.  His mother was making a cherry pie for dinner.   3.      Very often, they moved the story backward via backstory, when flash is supposed to always move forward.  In fact, it should move forward relentlessly.   For example, one of my students opened a story with a guy on his way to rob a bank.  But then, he immediately changed the subject and for the rest of the story talked about the guy’s history as a bank robber form 1950 to 1960.  He used so many words on that, that few were left to tell us about the bank robbery the protag was about to commit. 4.      All had a tendency to write inflated prose.  By that I mean they used a dozen or more words to say something that could have been said in fewer words.  For example:  His mind voyaged hard into several scenarios to try and task out his predicament.   All this really says is:  He tried find ways to resolve his problem.
5.      All had a tendency to load their manuscripts with trivial details that weren’t vital to the plot.  The biggest offenders were action tags that accompanied almost every line of dialog.  For example, a character couldn’t just say, “I don’t like this soup.”  We had to be told what she did with her body when saying these words, such as wrinkling her nose, shifting in her chair, and scratching her head.    
  
 Do you have a favorite monster?
 
MIKE:  Zombies.   Nothing warms my heart more than reading about a bunch of marauding zombies attacking the population.       
  
Do you have any projects on the horizon? If so, would you’ d like to share?
 
MIKE:  I just signed contracts with my publisher for two new books that will be published in October as Ebooks and paperbacks.  The first is a self-study book that teaches how to write genre micro-fiction tales of 200 words or less.  Title:  “Writing Genre Micro-Fiction The Minimalist Way – A Self-Study Book.”   The second is a collection of 100 speculative flash tales, many of which were previously published by magazines and anthologies in several countries.  Title:  “Martians, Monsters, and Pepperoni Pizza.”    
The publication of these two books will give me a total of six in the marketplace.  The other four are:   
“A Full Deck of Zombies – 61 Speculative Fiction Tales”
“The Area 51 Option and 70 More Speculative Fiction Tales”
“I Never Kissed Judy Garland and Other Tales of Romance”
“Writing Genre Flash Fiction The Minimalist Way – A Self-Study Book.”  
All the stores in the first two books listed above were were previously published by magazines in Australia, Canada, England, India, Scotland, and US.  Several won writing contests.   
 
Who are some of your favorite authors?
 
MIKE:   The French master of the very short story, Guy de Maupassant (1850 – 1893).  Also the English novelist, W. Somerset Maugham (1874 – 1965).   

If there is one thing that you would like readers to know about you, what would it be?
 
MIKE:   When it comes to developing flash and micro-fiction, I’m a minimalist.  That means my objectives are to tell as much story as possible in as few words as possible without sacrificing a smooth read.  When I was an editor for five different online and print magazines, I favored submissions that met those objectives.      

What do you find inspiring as a writer?
 
MIKE:  Everyday experiences that I can distort and transform into sci-fi, fantasy, and horror tales.     

Do you have any advice for up and coming writers?
 
MIKE:   Yes.  However, I’ll avoid the usual clichés published authors typically offer to newbies, such as write every day, and read a lot to write a lot.   Some may find my advice a bit controversial, especially when they read item 3 below.  That’s where I suggest newbies forget most of what they’ve learned in creative writing courses, if they want to be highly successful flash fiction developers.  So, here are three tips for their  consideration:      
1.       Think of yourself as a story developer, not a writer.  Magazine, anthology, and contest editors seek stories, not writers.  To prove this, read lots of magazine and anthology guidelines, and this will become apparent.  Check the guidelines of this magazine you’re now reading to test the veracity of what I’m saying.   Seems the only time editors mention writers in guidelines is when they discuss who owns rights to the story once it’s accepted for publication.
 
Here’s another reason why you should think of yourself as a story developer:  at least 1-billion people on this planet have some degree of writing ability.  Millions can write better than you and me.  However, not all have a knack for developing compelling stories.  If this weren’t true, 1-billion people with would get their work published regularly.      

If you think of yourself only as a writer, you could end up expending lots of word count to show how talented and artsy you are as a word smith.  The danger of that when it comes to flash fiction is you’ll burn up word count on needless, word-wasting, trivial details.  Here’s an example of a word-waster:  opening stories with weather reports when the weather has absolutely nothing to do with the plot.  Another kind of word-waster is the inclusion of similes in flash fiction.  They often draw attention to themselves, and away from the story.  Sometimes they are so unusual they throw readers out of the story.  

If you want a full list of word-wasters that can creep into your first drafts, see my book, “Writing Flash Fiction The Minimalist Way – A Self-Study Book.”  It’s available as an Ebook from www.BooksForaBuck.com  and paperback from www.amazon.com.  I wrote this book after analyzing and formally critiquing 6,000+ flash fiction stories over the past eight years.   If you go to my Ebook publisher’s site, you can read the first chapter of this book for free.   
2.      Acquire at least one voice recorder.  Keep them at strategic places around the house. For example, put one on your nightstand before you go to bed.  Never know when you’ll wake up with a story idea that’s been marinating while you’ve been dreaming.  Put one in your car when you plan to be on the road for an hour or more.  This will allow you to record fleeting story concepts that often come to mind at the most inopportune times.  It’s far easier to dictate your thoughts the moment they occur, than to write them on paper.  Pen and paper aren’t always handy when a story idea hits you out of nowhere.  And even if they are, you might not get to them fast enough, before the idea slips away, forever.   

The recorder is also valuable for fine tuning and polishing your stories.  When you finish your first draft, read your story aloud and record it.  Then play the story back several times, and listen closely for potential weak points in your narrative and dialog.   
By the way, I have 4 voice recorders spread around the house.  Best investment I ever made for story development.               
3.      If you’re going to focus on developing flash fiction, forget 99.99% of what you learned in creative writing courses.  Almost nothing you learned in those courses prepared you to develop flash fiction.  I know from experience after attending a bunch of them at colleges and universities in California, Nevada, and Arizona.  The thrust of those courses is to help you develop novels and longer short stories.  Meanwhile, development methods for novels and short stories are vastly different from those used to develop flash fiction.  That’s because they’re different literary forms.   What works best for one doesn’t work well for the other.   

Many new story developers forget that flash fiction refers to a story that can be read in a flash.  Further, they often try to make flash a kind of mini-novel.  I’m very familiar with all the mistakes new authors tend to make when attempting to switch from developing novels and short stories to developing flash fiction.  That’s because I’ve conducted online courses to transform dozens of novelists/short story developers into flash and micro developers.  I’ve done this at no charge on a Yahoo writing site I own.   All my students have found getting published very quickly and very frequently.  One of them did so well, she beat me in a fiction writing contest.  I’m extremely proud of her.  

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©2011 Lori Titus