FLASH FICTION MEETS THE SHORT STORY

Or does it? You know, this electricity thing has spawned a lot of things. Car batteries and electric doggy fences and lady consolers and flash fiction and—wait, I hear you say. Flash Fiction? Really, Mr RB Machines? Yup. Granted, it was written many moons ago, probably before there was any electricity to go around, by guys like Barthelme and his coterie of little midget monk acolytes before the internet was spawned. But it was the Electric Internet that made it a form, the way plastic dolls are made from molded plastic forms. Attentions spans became spider sized, so the fiction had to accomodate. Now all sorts of places are publishing Flash Fiction in addition to Short Stories, and the only thing that separates the two is a tenuous line in the sand made up of less then a hundred words.

Flash Fiction is a genre [sic] noted for its tiny form and vague, woolly tongue that conjures with both eyes on the prestige. Flash fiction bugs me, like ringtones bug me. It starts, has promise, then ends, for some ungodly reason, usually because someone picked up the damn phone. Flash fiction is just a short story that didn’t interest the writer enough to finish it, and a ringtone is a melody that intrigued enough to synthesize, but not enough to harmonize. The similarities end there, though. Unlike the ringtone, the flash fiction doesn’t get stuck in my head.