Five Microfictions

by Matt Leibel

Hide and Seek

We sucked at hide-and-seek because the places we liked to hide were so different from the places we liked to seek. We hid in dark alleys, behind trees, under piles of leaves, in dank attics. The places we sought were more abstract: mythical islands, the distant past, the landscapes of our dreams. Our games lasted for hours, sometimes even days: the last game we started, more than 34 years ago, still hasn’t finished.

Realism

The artist made his car paintings more realistic with each piece until the distinction between painted and real cars vanished. Eventually, the cars drove off the canvasses, leaving images of sad, abandoned lots. The lots filled with rats, trash, graffiti, gangs. The artist drew himself into the scenes with whiskey bottle & crack pipe: the show was such a hit we never stopped to think he may have really needed help.

Small Town Girl

“I was born in a small town,” she said. I asked her how small. From her purse, she pulled out a city the size of a gumball. Tiny people scurrying from tiny houses to tiny offices, shops, bars. “Sometimes I wish I could go back,” she confessed. “But I’ve outgrown it: folks’d say I’ve got too big for my britches.” On impulse, I grabbed the town, popped it in my mouth, chewed it, and blew a bubble as big as Los Angeles.

The Transitive Property

The guitar wanted to learn how to play the piano. The piano wanted to learn how to play the drums. The drums wanted to learn how to play basketball. The basketball wanted to learn how to play Playstation. The Playstation wanted to learn how to play house. The house wanted to learn how to play it cool. Coolness wanted to learn how to play dead. Death, as you might expect, already knew damn well how to play guitar.

The Sky Writer

A writer of very short stories was thinking about what he might do, were he to suddenly become very wealthy. He decided he would hire a skywriting company to write one of his stories 10,000 feet above the beach, one sunny afternoon. This is (or would be) the story he chose. Like all stories, it is as ephemeral as a puff of smoke. I hope you enjoyed it, but if not, no worries: it will fade into the blue, soon enough.