Friday's Flash Fiction - "Wailing of the Wolf" 4.29.22

“Write a short story every week. It's not possible to write 52 bad short stories in a row.” - Ray Bradbury 

I had this idea at the beginning of the year to follow the quote above my famous Science Fiction author, Ray Bradbury. I thought, sardonically, that I COULD! write fifty-two bad short stories. I'll show you, Ray! In all seriousness it's a great creed to follow when the key to writing is writing (consistently!) Because I'm probably a masochist, I like to have a lot on my plate when it comes to creative stuff. With enough shit thrown at the wall something is bound to stick, no? 

    So I did stick with it on January 1st, but I kept it to myself. I made it a whole seven weeks - about the first week of March until I fell off that. It's the last of April. It's not too late to catch up, right? That means I owe 10 short stories to myself in addition to the rest of the weeks forthcoming. Easy-peasy. 

    The beauty of a short story is that it's, uh... not long. Depending on what source you abide too, a short story fits into a certain varying word count. This is done for publishers' sake of categorizing where to put a piece of work. Whether it's on the shelves as a stand alone book, a magazine, etc. I tend to follow the Nebula Awards guidelines to word counts for different degrees of words count. So much so I have it printed and taped to my wall for inspiration! 

Short Story - Under 7,500 words 

Novelette - 7,500 - 17,499 words

Novella - 17,500 - 39,999 words

Novel - 40,000+ words 

More or less. Then there's Flash Fiction. That's about 100 - 1,000 words. Micro-fiction is about under 100 words, but I'll skip the pedantic nature of word count categories and skip to the point - 1,000 words a week? At least? Can do. 

    So I thought it'd be fun if I blurted out a flash fictional shorty-short every week to warm up my writing habits in addition to everything else I'm doing. That and I can more consistent with the blog posts (I mean to be more productive with it, but the hours just slip away sometimes). And you get to see the progress this time! Sounds horrible and that I'm stretching myself a little thin, but fuck it. This might be fun. And maybe I'll something with all these shorts when I'm done with the year. Who knows? So here's the first one! 

"Wailing of the Wolf" 

    Howls rode with the wind in the empty dark. The calls were not returned. It's been a long while since a response echoed the lone wolf's cries. The day was short in the fact that food was not plentiful. Despite the lack of a hunt it had to keep moving forward. Legs buckle. Sleep calls now, so it manages to find comfort somehow. It feels the world peering in onto its misfortunes. Not without reason since it was recently ousted from its pack. For what reason? Does it matter now? No one's there to take shifts of guarding the uncertainty. Now's the time for sleep. Does this night somehow seem darker than usual? 

    Waking up is not a guarantee tonight, I'm afraid.

    All admire to be a lone wolf. A one man army, but none consider what happens to the wolves that journey alone. They die. The pack survives as such - a pack, allies to depend on, and for them to depend on you. And without that community, the dark begins to feel more occupied. In the dark are allies that benefit the shadows. What a futile attempt to survive the strange world alone. The wolf feels a lot more surrounded than it did with other warm bodies to sleep next to. Oh, how the night howls back as it takes the last whimper of this particular wolf. The morning shines a little brighter for the pack that still remain. 

    Thanks for reading. Subscribe to my blog and tune in next week. If you have a silly prompt idea for me to write, I'm open to all suggestions!