Flash fiction is exactly what it sounds like, fiction that can be read in a flash. Flash fiction is perfect for all readers, but it is especially perfect for individuals (like myself) who used to be big readers, but are now having trouble finding the time to read.
In 2009, various writers and writing teachers from North Carolina complied their own flash fiction stories into the book Long Story Short. The story that I read this week is called hey brother by Bekah Brunstetter. Brunstetter graduated from UNC Chapel Hill, and she is a playwright, screenwriter and currently a writer on the show This is Us.
The piece I read is only two-and-a-half pages long, but Brunstetter is able to pack a lot of emotion and thought into those pages. The story is told from the perspective of a girl whose brother is about to join the Marines, but it is written in the second person point of view which makes the story feel more personal. In the story, the narrator discusses what it would be like if her brother died while in the Marines and how that would affect her positively because it would help her write realistically depressing stories which would make her writing famous. This sounds heartless, I know, but keep reading! When I read this story, I thought about the narrator’s strange harshness in two ways. The first way is that she was trying to look on the bright side of her brother’s potential death instead of focusing on how terrible his death would really be. It’s kind of like how people laugh at funerals instead of crying because they are trying to cope with their loss. She does, after all, feel a little guilty at the end of the story for her thinking, but this guilt could be interpreted differently in my second perspective. The second way I think about this is that she secretly hopes that her brother dies, so that she could receive the positive benefits. If that is true, then Brunstetter wrote a story about something most writers who write stories about family members going off to war or the military don’t really explore, and that is how beneficial their service (and death in this case) can be for the family. That’s a really dark and uncomfortable thing to think about, I know, but the best writers write about things that make us uncomfortable.
I think that my first perspective is a little closer to the vein Brunstetter was trying to hit. However, she writes this story in such an elegant way that leaves it open for interpretation, and that is what makes this story so amazing! If you are interested in stories like this (or other quick reads not like this), I highly recommend picking up Long Story Short today!