Dark and, at times, amusing fiction from award-winning author Dave Zeltserman

Friday, March 9, 2007

250-word Flash Fiction

I originally posted this on the unfortunately now defunct Flashing in the Gutters. At less than 250 words I think it works well as a fully-realized story. One of these days I might look at rewriting this as a 60,000 word novel.

Danny Smith by Dave Zeltserman

I can’t get Danny Smith off my mind…

He was a good-looking kid. Well-mannered, soft-spoken, just an overall good kid. Only twenty-four years old. Six months ago he hired me to find his birth parents. You see, he was adopted, had great parents, but he wanted to know his roots. There was something familiar looking about him, made me think I had seen him before. The reason for that was his birth dad turned out to be Sam Lombardo, top guy in the Boston Mob. It didn’t take me too long to find that out. It turns out Lombardo had a one-night fling with a dancer, never knew he had this other son. When I told him about Danny, he told me what he would do to me if this kid ever bothered him.

That was six months ago.

Two weeks ago I heard Lombardo was on his death bed, dying of congestive heart failure, and word was he was going down fast. His goons brought me to to see him. Lombardo wanted to know about Danny. I thought he just wanted to make peace with his son before he died.

A week ago Danny’s parents called me. They were frantic. Danny had disappeared. They had no idea where he was.

Three days ago I heard through the grapevine that Lombardo had found a heart donor. A good match, too. Transplant looks like its going to be a success.

I can’t get Danny Smith off my mind…

14 comments:

Anonymous said...

Great story, Dave. I'm impressed--250 words isn't much.

Dave Zeltserman said...

thanks, Miki. Thing with this one is I could've just as easily made it a 5000 word story, or with some effort, a 60,000 word novel (which I'm considering...)

Ali Karim said...

Bloody good story Dave - didn't see the end at all, assumed the kid was gonna get 'hit'

Cheers

Ali

Eric Langberg (@infernoenigma) said...

Great job... although I think I may be confused. I thought the kid *did* get 'hit,' which is where Lombardo's heart came from...?

Stefanie said...

Nice story! I thought, yeah, just another typical, dumb short story, but this one is impressive, and in such short length! I'm impressed; wasn't expecting that ending at all, I just thought that the kid was cruising for a bruising. Very well done :)

Valerie said...

Don't change a thing. It's fantastic!

Unknown said...

good one

Unknown said...

It's great! But is it a 300 work story

Dave Zeltserman said...

not according to ms word--it gives me a word count of 247!

Unknown said...

Short yet stunningly impressive :)

ahmed said...

Exelecent story!!
Keep it up

Ruhi said...

It is simply wow. Great work.

Unknown said...

Absolutely superb

Unknown said...

Great job