Fast & Short is a flash fiction collaboration between eight Literate Ape writers. Each was tasked with authoring one piece of flash fiction that would be combined to create a single short story. The writers’ flash fiction needed to serve two purposes: 1. Stand alone as a unique piece of flash fiction and 2. Serve as a vehicle for building a larger story and driving that story forward. Over the next two weeks, Literate Ape will publish all eight flash fiction stories individually with a link to the growing compilation. We hope you enjoy this literary experiment.

—DH2 , co-editors

By Dana Jerman

AND THERE I WAS, TWENTY MINUTES LATER OUT TRUCKING WITH MAGGIE four blocks away now from our place down Algren Street. It seemed to be nap time for the rest of the world while I took the much-needed air.

Maggie was leading me right to the junk cans. I’d found dog food and treats more than once there, so she picked up the notion she was going to get a snack on our jaunt.

She stopped and barked, and then I heard the annoying buzzing of the pair of light drones that went zipping overhead across the corner. Watching them reminded me of kids playing tag.

My dog tugged me nearly straight into a mud puddle into the alley under the tracks.

Yes! There was cool-looking crapola everywhere. A giant rolled up rug. Two soggy chairs, one with the bottom sort of blown out. Abandoned condiments amid stacks of paper in leaky boxes. Pens and pencils, bits of colored plastic strewn all over. There would be something good here for sure.

Maggie wagged her tail right into an ornate lantern/incense burner/air planter-thingy and it rang like a bell. What’s this? Suddenly it was in my hands. Was it glowing inside?

I smudged on the greasy brass with my thumb at what I thought was a label on the side of it.

And that’s when it started to vibrate.