Surprise on the Oblique

Let’s start with flash fiction at its best:

  I Think About Ordering In
 
  When I ask my father how life is these days with my mother, 
  a cavillous woman of cubist proportions and angled verbs, he 
  turns away, points outside to the tractor rusting among the beans 
  and radishes, tells me farm equipment has a half-life and not to 
  expect too much. I ask again, and he reminisces about the mail-order 
  bride his brother divorced, a Bulgarian engineer who lost her hand 
  in a skirmish and wore a prosthesis with a black leather glove. She 
  had an air of mystery, my father says, wistful as I’ve ever seen him. 
  And knew her way around a cabbage. He crosses himself, although 
  she’s not dead. And he’s not Catholic.
  
  I hear pfffffft pfffffft, peek into the kitchen. Mother’s extruding rows 
  of green foam dots onto tiny crescent-shaped plates. An aficionada 
  of reconstruction in any form (never leave well enough alone! her motto), 
  she’s taken up molecular gastronomy. The froth looks like tubercular 
  spit.
  
  I return to Father, rework my question, ask if he’s happy. A little, he 
  tells me. A sparkly feeling in my heart tells me so. Glitter pools onto 
  the floor, and he leans toward the sun in the middle of a luminous lake.
  
  Mikki Aronoff
  MacQueen’s Quinterly, Issue 26, January 1, 2025

Albuquerque writer Mikki Aronoff is an avid practitioner of flash fiction. Dozens of her tiny stories are published every year. Reading one of them, I marvel at how so few words can accomplish so much. The piece reprinted above, for example.

In 203 words, the narrator asks her father a commonplace question—three times—variations on How’s life with Mom? Twice, the father replies by way of a non-answer. But our narrator is paying attention, surprising us by what she notices during moments when “nothing” is happening. A single phrase puts the mother before us. We can see her “cubist proportions.” We can hear the “angled verbs” that account for her peevish presence. And the father! I take much pleasure in the quirky answers Aronoff puts before us—“the tractor rusting among the beans and radishes . . . the mail-order bride his brother divorced, a Bulgarian engineer who lost her hand in a skirmish and wore a prosthesis with a black leather glove.” At second glance, I notice that his non-answers actually do answer the narrator’s question. After mentioning the rusty tractor, surely symbolic, he advises “not to expect too much.” His second non-answer references a brother’s disappointment in marriage—but also two redeeming qualities in the ex-wife, a way of seeing her that might explain how the narrator’s father sees—and why he stays with—his own wife.

A second short paragraph glances at the mother, at work in the kitchen. The narrative eye alights on images that leave a bad taste—“green foam dots” that look like “tubercular spit.” What story telling accomplishes here is so much more than just ambiance by way of details. What we see is how the narrator views her mother—who the mother is—at this particular moment, to this particular daughter.

I write short stories, and I’ve had considerable success seeing them published. But my shortest successful story runs to just over 1200 words. Reading a flash fiction such as “I Think About Ordering In,” I experience envy attack. And the surprise of a complete narrative experience in the space of two or three minutes of my time.

About the Author

Mikki Aronoff writes tiny stories and advocates for animals. Her work has been long-listed for the Wigleaf Top 50 and nominated for Best American Short Stories, Best Microfiction, Best of the Net, Best Small Fictions, and the Pushcart Prize. She has a story published in Best Microfiction 2024 and one forthcoming in Best Small Fictions 2024.

“I Think About Ordering In” is available here ⇒