SELECTION OF FLASH FICTION FROM:

Groyon, Vicente Garcia (ed). Very Short Stories for Harried Readers.
Milflores Publishing, Inc., 2007.

Manila,

FLASH FICTION SET B:

1. BAGELS
2. AT THE TRAIN STATION
BAGELS by CECILLE LA VERNE DE LA CRUZ
Its Jewish bread, he says. Id like to order ten pieces.
Misrouted call. One of the many she receives each shift. Prison, her screen
warns, Louisville, Kentucky, a place she imagines to be full of lonely old men in
cowboy hats and checkered shirts.
Im sorry, she begins, standard spiel, rote memory, if youre not placing a
valid call
He laughs. Sensuous. Deep. By his voice, she knows him already. She knows
what hes going to say next. That his name is Gee, and where he will claim hes
calling.
Sorry about that. Im placing a call to Guatemala.
May I have the number you are dialing, Sir? she asks. Please.
Yes, but first I want you to know you have the sweetest voice I have ever
heard, he says.
She has heard him say that line more than a dozen times. Still, she feels
stirred by the words. She believes she can believe he is sincere, even if she knows
hes lying. She likes the way he says it sound more personal, more human than

the lines she uses each night, the eternal Hello. May I have your number. Thank
you. Thank you. She thinks his accent is Texan. She wonders if the call is being
recorded, if shes being listened to and monitored like a ward patient. She wonders
what would happen is she flirted back.
Thank you, she says. Now may I have the number youd like to call,
please? As professionally as she can, flat-sounding. Like an answering machine in
good working order.
Yes, 502- oh, can I have your name first, please?
Hes running her in circles. And hes ruining her call handling stats. Suddenly,
tiredness hits her. Suddenly, she has a vision of herself falling, not hitting the
ground or anything. Just a plain, free fall, like a feather in a void.
Im sorry, she plunged into her spiel, but were not allowed to disclose that
information.
Thats terrible, because you really sound nice and sweet and I want to know
your name.
Shes falling again. She wants to tell him a name, her favorite ball player,
where she thinks the best bagels are, and why, she, too, likes them, how she likes
their texture, the roundedness you can bite into, the circularity you can disrupt, bite
by bite. The infiniteness you end, bite by bite.
Im sorry; if youre not placing a valid call, I will disconnect.
She disconnects.
She looks up from her console. She regards the other operators talking to
strangers nearly eight thousand four hundred miles away. She thinks how they all
look the same, like batches of cookie or muffins. Bagels. How theyre all but voices ,
mouths. Her console beeps, another call.
This is the operator. May I help you? she says, as lively as yeast in dough.
Just before she keys in her callers number, she overhears the woman nearest
her work station.
No, we dont have bagels. I believe you reached the wrong number, Sir.
GUIDE QUESTIONS:
1. Who is the narrator and what narrator point of view was used?
2. What are bagels?
3. What do these words mean: misrouted call, spiel, rote memory, call
handling stats?
4. What was the narrator warned about her caller?

5. What other information about Gee was given in the text?

6. What feelings or thoughts did the narrator have for Gee?
7. Was it true that the narrator had no idea what bagels were (at the
beginning of the story)? Whats your basis?
8. What was the narrators epiphany at the end of the story?

KEY TERMS:
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.

Simile
Personification
Idiomatic Expression
Irony
Unreliable Narrator
Unreliable Character

EXERCISE:
1. Write a standard spiel for a call center agent whose main tasks are to
take orders for only 3 types of gym equipment (barbells, jumping rope and a
kettle bell). The company only sells one specific and trademarked size for the
equipment: the wonder fit size (5 pound weight for each equipment).
2. Write an alternative ending for the story. Begin from the point where
the narrator disconnects Gees call.

AT THE TRAIN STATION by CELESTE FLORES-COSCOLLUELA

He lets go of his mothers hand. How easy it is, he discovers, to simply loosen
his grip around her clammy fingers, let his hand slip away and drop quietly to his
side. It dangles there, the tips of his fingers brushing against the frayed edges of his
shorts. When he glances up, she is only staring ahead at the lines of rails stretched
out before them beyond the edge of the platform. She doesnt seem to notice her
empty hand.
At the mall today, she stared down at his list of school supplies for a long
time before leading him through the stores entrance and through a maze of narrow
aisles. But standing between rows of line paper she paused, blinking. She flashed
him that grin of hers, already reaching into her purse. in here, Mama, he said,
pointing to her back pocket where he remembered her tucking the list before she
reached for a shopping basket.
Later, it was he who remembered the scissors. She let him pick one on his
own while she sat on the floor with the red shopping bags slumped around her. He

held up a pair and then another, but she would only nod at everything. Just pick
one already, Christopher. Why not this one?she said, reaching into a basket for a
pair of tiny yellow scissors with plastic blades.
Thats for babies, he said, shaking his head. Besides, Papa says he sent
you a ton of money, so I shouldnt be getting the cheap stuff.
Really? He said that?
He was turning a pair over and over in hands, liking the red curved handles
that opened and closed easily and which fit his fingers perfectly. He pretended to
cut invisible lines in the air. Do you think this is sharp enough, Mama? he said.
I could murder him.
Mama.
She did not say anything, but instead grabbed the pairs of scissors from his
hand and promptly snipped off a neat clump of hair from the top of his head. Looks
sharp enough to me. She marched out of the store, only looking back once. He
thought about what she might have done if he had not been there trailing dutifully
behind her.
A month ago she had sat him down at the kitchen table after his father left,
and she had used one big word after another. Fidelity. Compatibility. And then that
word that somehow comforted him, for she had reached out from across the table
and ruffled his hair. Eventually, youll understand, she drew a deep breath and
smiled. Eventually.
He looks at her now, standing apart from him like a stranger, her hand
hanging limply at her side.
The train comes into the tunnel, filling the subterranean passage with a
deafening noise. Around him, the loose clump of people turn into a solid mass as
the train slows and stops at the platform. Doors open somewhere in front of him,
and he feels the push of the crowd crushing him from all sides. His hand flutters up,
instinctively, to search for hers. But then he stops and drops his arms. Anchorless,
he is pushed forward. Christopher? he thinks he hears her say from somewhere
behind him, but already he feels his body being lifted by the surge of the crowd. He
blinks once, twice, and finds himself borne away, past the doors and into the womb
of the brightly lit train. He hears her calling still, but the sound of her voice is
drowned out by the doors sighing closed behind him.

GUIDE QUESTIONS:
1. Who is the narrator of the story? What narrator point of view was used?

2. Why was the price of the scissors such an issue for the mother?
3. What proof do you have to show that the mother did not have enough
funds for all the things they needed to buy from the mall?
4. What do you think was the mother holding back or hiding from
Christopher?
5. Was the father telling the truth when he said he sent a lot of money to
the mother for Christophers use? Why do you say so?
6. Why did the mother decide to cut a clump of hair from Christophers
head?
7. Why did Christopher let go of his mothers hand while they were at the
train station?

KEY TERMS:
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.

Narrator and Narrator Point of View

Round and Flat Characters
Metaphor
Irony
Plot
Flashback and Structure
Displacement
Foreshadowing
Epiphany

EXERCISE:
1. Write down a short essay where you recount an instance when your
parent or parents told you that they were going to buy you an
item/toy/present but gave you a different/cheaper item/toy/present. Did you
feel shortchanged?
2. Place yourself in the shoes of the mother in the story, would you have
done the same and spared Christopher from harsh truths about his father?
What would you have done instead?