Snippet
27: Putting pieces together
Hi readers!
What makes a piece of short fiction capable of more? I often wonder when I open up those small windows into my imagination. It’s difficult to let a work just be, to exist as a snippet of life and go no further. To be sure, each piece is capable of being tucked into a larger story or to be spun like silk into a larger tapestry.
This next piece sat in my drafts as I thought about the before and after, wanting to build something further off this small moment.
Breathing heavily, they crouched down behind a dumpster in the alley. No one had seen them and they were certain to leave no traces behind. Darren pulled out his cellphone and sent a one-word text: “Done”. Going deeper into the alley and exiting onto a desolate side street, he and Kyle settled in an empty lot to count the night’s haul: $400 in cash, jewelry, an interesting looking book on mechanical engineering, and a gaming console. There were no real jobs in this town and trade school was a bore. They’d graduated from donut shop to home invasion and the transition was alarmingly seamless.
Darren decided to sell the items in a pawn shop the next town over and have a night out, after the boss’s cut, of course. A simple transaction.
Just then, a man approached, asking for the time. Kyle barely got a word out before the flash of a long hunting knife scattered the light. He’d scoped them when they came down the side street and without another word, the boys handed over the loot.
“Little shit,” he said with a satisfied grin. “Gotta be more careful ‘round here. Young bucks like yourselves could get hurt.”
Darren had managed to hide at least half the cash under his thigh and a pair of earrings. The man didn’t touch the book.
This piece stayed as a capsule but ended up kindling a sense of adventure in a short fiction series I wrote on my Ko-fi page called “The Red Door”. It’s the tale of a little boy and his uncle who are in search of their destinies through an unusual portal. In essence, every piece contributes something to the tapestry. With each peace I learn something.
What snippets have inspired you?
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Currently spinning a snippet about “ghost” writers--my ancestors