A Slightly Less Creepy Example of My Slice of Life Flash Fiction

The Friendly Confines

By Tom Allman Jr.

I got a postcard from myself yesterday,  postmarked from Twenty-Three years in the future.  On the front was a picture of New Wrigley Field……

My weary eyes fluttered open, I could see Joe Jr.  He’d hardly left my side in the last week.  My kith and kin had all come and gone, saying goodbye to a skeleton that used to be me. 

Joe Junior and I had butted heads after his mom had left.  I surprised him one day at college and took him to a Cubs game.  Two men, at the Friendly Confines, sharing a few beers and few laughs. 

“Remember Old Wrigley in May,” I rasped.  “Yeah Dad, I do,” his voice cracking.  “I’m taking the boys on Tuesday wanna go?” 

“Yeah I do Joe.”

The back of the postcard said, “Screw work, take Junior to a ball game.”

A Historical Pre-enactment of My next 52/250 and Friday Flash

Lost in Translation

By Tom Allman

We sailed, at dawn, to the last outpost of the Aztec Empire.  Intrepid explorers of the planet we.  I the Gastronome, eating my way across six continents and Fitzhume the cunning linguist, speaking in tongues.

We arrived just in time for second breakfast. I rubbed my belly and shouted for Count Chocula.  Presently they offered Fitzy and I, steaming and pink, a giant conch full of chunky and decadent chowder.

Nonplussed Fitzy attempted to teach the proud natives the vowels and consonants of other General Mills products.  The throng parted and up walked our missing European friend.  Oh fortunes favor, we turned and shouted in unison, “Frankenberry”!

From my 52/250 Collection...The story of a "Bad Haircut"

Ferdinand’s Mom

By Tom Allman

Ferdinand was an excellent dancer; at least that’s what his Mother had told him.  Around and around they would spin in the front parlor to some old Les Brown records.  He begged her to allow him to meet a real girl.

Sheltered but smart, Ferdinand believed that his mother had only the best of intentions.  Ferdinand’s Mother knew that if her boy ever held or smelled a sweet young girl he’d be gone lickety split.  This Saturday’s Sadie Hawkins Dance at the Grange Hall would be a perfect opportunity for her to make sure that never happened.

With his shoes polished and his dead father’s suit hanging nearby he readied himself for the final touch.  Smiling (on the inside) his mother lowered a bowl onto his head.  Clickity Clack went the scissors and his dreams; it was the Birth Control Haircut.

From my 52/250 Collection...A bit of Dr. Who Fanfiction

ARCH RIVALS

The slow, grinding, metal on metal whoosh……whoosh…….whoosh startled the doves sleeping in the rafters of the warehouse.  There/not there/there-an impossible Blue Box appeared from nothingness. 

The door of the Impossible Blue Box creaked open.  Bony fingers, gripping a cylindrical metal MacGuffin, preceded a sharp elbow and the sandy haired pate of the foppish chrono-hippy.  Confidently he maneuvered through the jumbled crates to the fresh, man-shaped stain on the dusty floor.

Was the HE really gone?  Through all of time, back and forth, and back again they had battled.  To have it end with a sickly-sweet smelling stain didn’t seem very cricket.  Stooping, he waved his beep-boop twinkle stick over the patch.  What would he do now? An impish Cheshire grin began to creep across his face.  No, this wasn’t HIS man shaped stain.  He stood, stuffed the beep-boop twinkle stick into his breast pocket and headed back to the Impossible Blue Box, whistling an Arcturian pop tune that wouldn’t be written for another eleven centuries.