EDITOR'S CORNER
Flashing Back
by Antonios Maltezos
I struggled with this essay for a couple of weeks, trying to recall some of the big words I used at school when I wrote my papers. It wasn't until I realized I'd forgotten most of what I learned that I turned my attention to my own flash writing, and my own method for finding stories. Hopefully I can offer some insight into the bias of at least one of the editors who evaluated the submissions for this issue: namely, me.
Good flash, I think, comes from the same place we keep our memories. For a writer, it's a great place to visit.
I can still see myself filing past that dead pigeon just outside the schoolyard, staring at the gaping wound at its neck, hearing the whispers — the name of the boy who'd thrown the rock, and then me moving on, two, three steps. That's as far as this memory will go. I may have told my mother about it, how bewildered I'd been by the sight of death. I may have discussed it with my friends walking home that day. I don't remember. The scene is trapped as if in a picture frame, and it feels authentic, always comes back to me in the same way.
In another memory, I remember playing on the downward-sloping asphalt leading to the underground garage of our apartment building, the sudden charge in the air when I realized some of the bigger boys had cornered a girl, not much older than I was then, where the dirt and leaves and garbage always piled, the nervous laughter coming from those boys as they sprinted past me and the edge of the frame. And I remember being mesmerized by the rocking motion of her body; the unintelligible rhyme coming out of her mouth, over and over again; the way her eyes looked sideways at the garage. I know now what she was probably wishing for, that she could slip into the underground parking, bury herself as deep as possible into the bowels of the earth. I left when the saliva started pouring out of her open mouth and onto her torn shirt. It seemed like a whole lot of blood to me then, or just as brutal a situation. I was sure her parents would come rushing out from behind me somewhere and blame me for what had happened. Those few seconds of my life are crystal clear, framed against the grainy backdrop of a million other moments that may or may not have happened. But my two examples aren't yet stories, not until I've gone back as a writer and taken the place of that little boy.
Some of my memories are more pleasant than others, though most are painful in one way or another, and make for the more emotional flash stories, the most satisfying to me as a writer. It's like going back in time and fixing things. Instead of being haunted by the various scenes I've stored in my mind, I'll flip through the pile hoping the proper reaction for my character will jump out at me. And then I hope for the perfect ending, or at least a file folder rather than the wastebasket.
The best writing comes from writers who aren't afraid to look back on the extraordinary moments in their lives with eyes wide open, and then behave accordingly. Such writers write the most believable stories. No matter the setting of the story, the circumstances the protagonist might find himself/herself in, you just know the writer has been there before. It's that element of truth coursing through the prose, the poetry that makes for a satisfying read. This issue is full of such writing, flash fiction and poetry, perfectly framed scenes, moments in time when extraordinary things were happening, transcribed here for us with extraordinary flair and skill by all of the writers. I'm truly inspired by them, and thankful to the staff at flashquake for giving me the opportunity to share in the gift of putting together this issue.
Antonios Maltezos is presently working on a novel told entirely through flash. "It's been a real journey," he expects to say when someone finally asks about the process, all the time he wasted flipping pages. "But it was well worth it."