Embedded Files
I love an epic novel, in the same way that I love sitting down to a meal at 4pm and not wrapping it up until late in the night. However, I also enjoy grabbing a quick snack on the go, and it's for reason that I love Flash Fiction.
I wrote most of the stories in this collection myself, though a few have come from elsewhere. From the latter category, there's Niel Gaiman's classic Don't Ask Jack, and a fantastic horror story, Mother's Love, that's all told in second-person present-tense - there's a moment here where the technique makes everyone cringe! The Shortest Horror Story Ever Written gives younger students a fun game to play, while older ones will be pushed to find new ways to start sentences.
Most of the stories I've written here come from an exercise I do with classes we we develop six-word stories, and then create excerpts from them. In one, "Death extends a hand, smiling: "Deal?"" we hear the story of doctor who discovers a cure for death. In another, which is based on the six words: "The Baby's blood type? Human. Mostly," we are taken into a distant future to dip into an intergallactic war. Students are encouraged to look at stories as portraits of scenes, or even trailers, to help them build dramatic tension or build relationships quickly. For Sale: Baby Shoes, Never Worn gives a fantastic twist to Hemmingway's original 6 word story, and can be read below.
The Garden of Mrs Daisy Greene is a ridiculously technique-heavy piece of writing about an old lady's relationship with her garden. Though I wrote it almost 30 years ago, while dreaming of writing like Oscar Wilde, it still works as a means to explore symbolism in language. Perspective and Voices are for GCSE students. The first uses an unreliable narrator to tell a chilling murder story, while the second breaks itself into sections to tell the story of a car accident from five different perspectives.
For Sale: Baby Shoes. Never worn: that’s what the advert said, and that’s exactly what we needed.
I was expecting my own newborn in less than a month, but what kind of a world were they coming into? It was thoughts of the future that possessed me as I rode to collect the shoes.
We weren’t badly off, my husband and I, and I try to never forget that it could be worse. Our hover-car is self-controlling – with all the safety features – and it zooms up and down the San Franciscan valleys with the speed of an old world roller coaster.
It still feels strange to cross the waters at the bottom of Prospect Hill. Like a lot of people, I remember when San Francisco was seen as a coastal town, nowadays it’s just a series of small islands, each poking their head above the sea like a Pacific volcano. It won’t be too long before it goes the same way as New York, Sydney or Hong Kong. The old timers say that it all happened so fast; but they had warning… decades of it.
As I make my way over what used to be known as Silicon Valley - the rubble of elaborate buildings of glass and steel now sunken beneath a tropical sea - I pass by a government information screen that advertises off-world opportunities: The chance to begin again. I won’t go though. The off-world colonies are a dream – the technology’s a century away, and Mars… It’s a sham; like dropping cheese into the waves while rats are fleeing the sinking ship and I won’t go with them. There’s got to be a better way.
I touch my belly again, and think of the child that grows inside. Is it really fair to bring another living human being into a civilisation that’s on its way out? Beaten by our own blind evolution.
By the time I realise that we’ve reached my destination, I realise I’ve been sitting outside the house for long minutes, lost in thought while I stare out across the bay. Three ships are sitting in dock, waiting to travel to the cool of the North; taking the chosen few to a new life in the scientific resorts of Alaska and the Arctic.
I shake feelings of envy from out of my head and look to the house. Only because I’m waiting for my own child, I remember their advert and am touched by the sadness of this family’s grief. For Sale: Baby Shoes. Never Worn. Their child must have died.
While I’m lost in thought, the door to the house opens and the father beckons me in. I move to position my UV protector mask, but he comes bounding down the garden path, carrying a portashield, and bundles me into the house.
“Come in, come in, get out of the sunshine,” he says and guides me into the living room, where a pair of simple, blue faux-leather children’s shoes sit inside a cardboard box. They have flowers cut out of them, and for a moment I remember a time in my youth when flowers – like baby’s shoes – were commonplace and disposable; but everything was back then.
“I still can't believe that we’re selling them on so soon,” says the grieving father, with a grin that sits somewhere between pride and a schoolboy’s cheek. “We’re not the first though.”
I’m not clear on what he means for a second, but then I turn and see his wife enter the room swaddling a baby who gurgles playfully before being a little sick on her shoulder.
“Oh I’m sorry,” I say. “I didn’t… I thought…” I look between the parents, clearly bemused.
“Oh… you… I mean… you didn’t know?” the father stammers.
“But you must have read about us?” the mother exclaims, joyfully. “We’re the new generation.”
I step back, thrown slightly. The mother approaches me, in a way that leaves me strangely enguard, and begins peeling off the layers that surround her child.
“Look... but look, he’s the future…” she says, almost pleading. And then, as though performing some kind of magic trick, she extracts her baby’s sausage- like leg, and I realise with horror why they are selling the shoes.
His leg is normal – pudgy and healthy – but it leads down to a foot that’s splayed like the flipper of some fat, pink frog. It’s as long as my hand and for a second I believe it’s plastic, but then the child laughs and flexes his flipper and I turn to face its father, who’s still smiling as though he wants reassurance or acceptance from me.
“We’re the future,” he says. “That’s what we’ve been told.” He’s silent only briefly, though it feels longer. “We’re going to Alaska soon,” he adds with a kind of apologetic pride.
“They’ll try to make you all like this,” the mother says, as she reaches for me. “There’s still… hope...” she gestures at my belly but I turn and run, out of the room and back to the car. I slam it into motion and take off, dangerously leaping between two peaks.
I’m almost home before I allow the car to slow down and then stop. Fearful sobs desperately try to breathe something like calm back into my body. I think of my sister, and remember her decision to leave. I miss her so much it hurts.
And then my hand rests again on the child that grows inside of me, and my thoughts return to that evening, many months ago, when my husband and I decided to try.
“Oh my baby,” I whisper. “What have we done?”
Comprehension Questions (10 total)
Comprehension Questions (10 total)
1. What is the main purpose of the narrator’s trip?
A) To visit a friend
B) To collect baby shoes
C) To attend a meeting
D) To buy groceries
2. How does the narrator describe the condition of their hover-car?
A) Self-controlling
B) Electric
C) Able to fly without fuel
D) Expensive and luxurious
3. What does the narrator reflect on while crossing what used to be Silicon Valley?
A) The beauty of the tropical sea
B) The future of technology
C) The remaining buildings
D) The government information screen
4. Why does the narrator feel envy when she sees the ships in dock?
A) She wishes she could travel to the Arctic
B) She wants to leave San Francisco
C) She desires a new life away from the city
D) She wants to escape the heat
5. What emotion does the narrator initially feel upon seeing the baby shoes?
A) Joy
B) Confusion
C) Sadness
D) Anger
6. How does the narrator react when she meets the father at the house?
A) She immediately leaves
B) She feels touched by his grief
C) She is bemused and confused
D) She is angry and upset
7. What is unusual about the baby the mother shows to the narrator?
A) The baby has a plastic foot
B) The baby has a flipper-like foot
C) The baby has no foot
D) The baby has an extra foot
8. What future plan does the father reveal to the narrator?
A) They are moving to a new house
B) They are traveling off-world
C) They are going to Alaska
D) They are staying in San Francisco
9. What does the mother suggest about the future for people like her baby?
A) They will be isolated
B) They will be cured
C) They will be the new generation
D) They will be ignored
10. What is the narrator's final reaction after leaving the house?
A) Relief
B) Acceptance
C) Fearful sobs
D) Anger
Vocabulary List (10 words)
Vocabulary List (10 words)
Prospect
Flipper
Civilization
Hover-car
Desperately
Radiation
Rubble
Evolution
Colony
Envy
Definitions with Blanks
Definitions with Blanks
Broken remains of buildings or structures — __________
A feeling of jealousy or longing — __________
The gradual process of change in living things — __________
A vehicle that moves above the ground using air power — __________
Harmful energy released from decaying materials or machines — __________
A flat limb or fin used for swimming — __________
An advanced human society and culture — __________
The view or outlook from a particular place — __________
A settlement made by people living away from their home planet — __________
In a way that shows great urgency or distress — __________
Sentences with Missing Words
Sentences with Missing Words
There was no __________ of San Francisco being saved from the sea.
Their __________ hummed quietly as it skimmed over the broken islands.
The ruins of Silicon Valley lay buried beneath heaps of __________.
Scientists once claimed that human __________ would lead to a brighter future.
The baby’s strange __________ made her realise how far humanity had changed.
The government still promised safety in a northern __________, far from the heat.
The dying __________ struggled to rebuild itself as the seas kept rising.
She watched the ships leave and felt a sharp sting of __________.
The air shimmered faintly, carrying a trace of invisible __________.
Alone in her car, she sobbed __________, unable to quiet her fear for the future.
This story creates the need to take a journey across the landscape, and uses this to introduce the world in which the story's set. Create your own journey across a landscape and use it to introduce a new world...
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