Happy Howl-oween!
Happy Halloween from ThorntonAusten.com
As I have said before on this blog, this is my favorite time of the year. It’s usually cool enough that the mosquitoes have retreated and kids all getto dress up and do their thing. You get to see all the pretty colored leaves. Not to mention, squirrel season is in and deer season is just around the corner.
It’s hard to post one of my short stories on the blog. Most average around 3,000 words. That makes for a long column. This year I will make an exception to the rule. A while back I toyed some with flash fiction. As a former copy writer I’m used to packing the most wallop into the shortest possible space. Rules dictated that the following tale is a mere 99 words, not counting the title. It won the Saturday Fiction Writers’ Award a couple of years back and MicroHorror subsequently published it. I hope you enjoy fiction done fast.
I never smelled a girl like her in Safeway. She pushed a buggy down the cereal aisle and turned her cheek to hide the striped claw mark that makeup couldn’t. I knew the lacy blouse hid more scars like the crescent on my cheek a pup gave me as a child.
As I sacked her groceries, my heart sank –-
Cat food.
Large brown eyes showed the felines were just a snack.
“Beautiful moon tonight,” I said, “Feel like a howl?”
Her pupils narrowed to slits. She smiled as her nostrils tasted me.
“Sure.”
Finally. My kind of girl.
Thornton Austen is the author of Blood Knowing
from Arkansas Traveller Publishing
© 2011, Thornton Austen
Tags: beast, fiction, flash fiction, Halloween, love, MicroHorror.com, Saturday Fiction Writers, Thornton Austen, werewolf, Writing
