Tag: Dialogue

Old Girl by Virginia Reeves

By Virginia Reeves | Flash Fiction, Fiction, FFC | April 2, 2020

The last time I picked Hallie up at the airport, she was wearing a ratty beige shift that would’ve been a nightshirt if not for the decorative navy rickrack at the neck. Instead of hello, she said, “You hate…

Cedar Court, 2011 by M. K. Anderson

By M.K. Anderson | Fiction, Short Stories | March 20, 2020

I picked Jeff up from the airport. We’d met online and chatted for a few months. Newly divorced, he said, about fifteen years older than me. But he was normal, and he was from somewhere else. I’d spent hours…

Rain Tomorrow by Charlie Watts

By Charlie Watts | Fiction, Short Stories | January 24, 2020

“I wish she’d just hawk it up and spit it out. You know? Loogie-style.” That’s what I say to Dave in front of the Kwik Stop. We’re on our lunch, drinking off-brand iced tea in plastic bottles and as…

Dialogue as Character (and Narrative) Complexity in Monica McFawn’s “Out of the Mouths of Babes”

By Guest Author | Craft, Critical Essays, Classroom | January 14, 2020

By Gwendolyn Edward • I’ve often battled with how to better develop secondary characters in short stories that use a limited, third-person point of view. While I’ve learned how to use my main character’s memories and current thoughts to…

The Caregiver by Bernard Grant

By Bernard Grant | Fiction, Short Stories | January 3, 2020

“Can you get to Heaven with broken teeth?” Louis asks Margaret. “Sure can,” Margaret says, as she yanks his dresser drawer, derailing the shelf and spilling clothes onto the floor. Two hours into her shift, already exhausted and dreading…

My Heart Goes Out by Amanda Bloom

By Amanda Bloom | Fiction, Short Stories | December 6, 2019

Fred was a runner, so it’s been hard to keep him still. Now we’re both still, save for his tremors. A once-in-a-lifetime athlete, they called him. And not that he didn’t run fast, he did, but Brewster was a…

Sacred and Profane by Melissa Goode

By Melissa Goode | Flash Fiction, Fiction | November 8, 2019

Our hotel in Rome is a former monastery, darkly shadowed, stone. There is no elevator. He hauls both of our suitcases up three flights of stairs. I wait for him at the top. His muscles flex, his forehead creases.…

Delaware by James Davidson

By James Davidson | Fiction, Short Stories | October 18, 2019

Amy had never noticed it before. It might have just appeared during the night, but it was so innocuous, it could have been waiting there, unobserved, for years. This childish symbol, something like a diamond with rays emanating from…

Winters by Marilyn Hope

By Marilyn Hope | Fiction, Short Stories, SFP | September 27, 2019

“You’re a spring now,” says Hee-Bon, wintering Soo-Na’s complexion with a chilly setting powder. “Pink undertones, freckles—lot of sun in you. And I love your hair. Mom’s going to hate it. Why’d you dye it so bright?” Because her…

I Married This by Meg Pokrass

By Meg Pokrass | Flash Fiction, Fiction | August 23, 2019

My husband, Gordon, looked as though he’d found religion—as though he’d never tasted real food before this beef stew meal at Angie and Ron’s. He appeared to be sucking his teeth after every bite, taking his time, thinking about…

Author’s Note

The idea for “I Married This” came to me while my son was in grade school in San Francisco. The school was filled with parents who, unlike me, were looking younger every year because of cosmetic enhancements. I started to notice how plastic surgery was being opted for more and more often, not just with people in the public eye, as in the old days, but regular everyday folks. So many of the moms, it seemed, we’re going that route. What did it all cost? And why?

And I started thinking about what it meant to be a woman who chooses, instead, to age naturally. It seemed that this was becoming more and more a radical idea.

I also began to think about the tenuous nature of female friendships. My friendships with the mothers of my kid’s friends at the school, though enjoyable, were centered around our children. Whenever I tried to talk to them about real things in my life, real issues, the conversations died.

I began writing a story about two couples having a dinner together in which one of the women friends has had both her face and breasts redone. I’m intrigued with how this now “normal” occurrence in affluent western culture effects not only the lives of those who are enhanced, but the lives of those around them. In the story, the husband of the enhanced woman is very proud of his wife’s new appearance. It’s as if he’d suddenly married a pedigreed show dog.

The biggest conflict in the story has to do with the absent and vulnerable teenage son, a messy kid, who has been shipped off to boarding school. The son represents the embodiment of the mother’s own perceived flaws, and like her aborted wrinkles and sags, needed to be hidden in order for the parent’s marriage to stay intact. This is also true with their poor cat, “Tuna,” who we see, in the end, is being offered to the neighborhood raccoons.

I’m thrilled that CRAFT chose to reprint this story. It was first published by The Center for Fiction in NYC. It’s one that I feel especially close to.

MEG POKRASS is the author of six flash fiction collections and an award-winning book of prose poetry. Her work has been recently anthologized in two Norton Anthology Readers, Best Small Fictions 2018 and 2019, the Wigleaf Top 50 List, and has appeared in 350 literary magazines online and in print, including Electric Literature, Tin House, Tupelo Quarterly, SmokeLong Quarterly, Wigleaf, and Five Points. She currently serves as Flash Challenge Editor at Mslexia Magazine, Festival Curator for Flash Fiction Festival, U.K. (Bristol), Co-Editor of Best Microfiction 2020, and Founding/Managing Editor of New Flash Fiction Review. Her latest collection of flash, The Dog Seated Next to Me (Pelekinesis Press), will be out in September of 2019.