The Getaway

The Getaway

Photo @Sunday Kaminksi.  All rights reserved.

I love writing short short stories, otherwise known as flash fiction, the shorter the better (though I’ve never been able to manage a six worder). The word limit encourages risk-taking and experimentation with style, form, character, and plot. I especially love writing flash that accompanies photos.

Below is a flash I wrote inspired by Sunday Kaminski’s fantastically intriguing photo (above) for #fridayflash, flash fiction by writers on twitter compiled every Friday by J.M. Strother.

The Getaway

The heist: their first, a country bank.
The robbers: a young couple, Carla giving Danny the silent treatment.
Their plan: quit the city, get back to nature.
The getaway: their unreliable Bronco, white.
The pursuit: highway slicing farmland, sirens, a determined deputy smarter than he looks.
Then the overheated Bronco dies.
“Out!” Carla screams, silent no longer.
The patrol car rear ends them.
They run. Fields. Stalks like whips. Sun like fire.
A farmhouse: cute, tidy, daisies.
Dogs! Two Rottweilers attack.
Carla and Dan bolt and scramble over a fence, barbed wire tearing jeans.
Ha, dogs can’t climb.
More fields. Gunfire booms. Dirt explodes at their feet.
On the hill, a hunter, reloading his shot gun.
Do they look like deer?
A shout: “No trespassing.”
Woods. Branches thwack. Lungs burn. Lost.
Another road. Thumbs out.
The lift: a pick-up, rusted.
The driver: toothless, wall-eyed, scary, name of Bob.
The cab: tight for three.
Bob leers at Carla and flashes a blade.
This is country life?
Danny punches Bob.
The crash: a swerve, a tree.
The patrol car again, battered, smoking, wheezing.
Carla and Danny crawl out, hands raised, defeated.
The deputy: “Y’all from the city?”

“The Getaway” © Gigi Vernon
All rights reserved. May not be used elsewhere in whole or part without the express written permission of the author.

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6 Responses to The Getaway

  1. Anneke says:

    Haha, this is brilliant. Love the style. Is this your first? Hopefully not your last.

    • Gigi says:

      Thanks so much! Glad you enjoyed it. This isn’t my first flash fiction, but the style and structure of “The Getaway” is a first for me.

  2. LOL as a city girl I can totally relate to this. I’d be doomed.

  3. Aidan Fritz says:

    Poignant. You manage to evoke the full story in these stark few details.

  4. That was fun. Loved the style. Fresh and breezy.

    Welcome to #FridayFlash.
    ~jon

  5. Ha! Love it! Your sense of humor is so suited for this.

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