Sunday, March 3, 2019

Janet Flash: The Battle

by Michael Seese

If you regularly visit Janet Reid's blog during a flash fiction contest, you may have caught onto a subtle undercurrent. One the the "Reiders," Steve Forti, delights in taking the key words and spreading them out across the most unusual combinations. As Janet said this week.

He is my nemesis.
He has more lives than a litter of kittens.
He is Roadrunner
.

In her quest to cry "Havoc!" and let loose the dogs of war, she came up with the "The Stymie Steve Forti Flash Fiction Contest." Use


cry
havoc
loose
dogs
war


in a 100-word short story. I thought about how to split up (Forti-ize??) "havoc," and came up with "Ha! Vocational school?" I did write a nice little piece based on that, a story of a ten-year-reunion conversation gone south. But I couldn't get a few of the words in easily. Then I remembered a story I'd outlined a few months back, one using war imagery. That became "The Battle."


If you're like me — if dieting is more than a hobby, an amateurish avocation — you'll understand.

Pain equals success.

Each pang, each ignored cry from my empty belly, each gut-wrenching twist of my viscera represents one step closer to the end game.

Pants that feel loose.

It's a constant battle. A war. And the enemy is my own body.

The mirror wants to please me, as I look at myself through a beaten dog's sunken eyes.

They say beauty is skin deep. My beauty is in there.

Somewhere.

Hidden.

But I will find it.

Even if it kills me
.


Dieting sucks, doesn't it? (Speaking as someone who lost 30 pounds last year.)



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