Poets Extended Universe: Flash Fiction Round-Up #1

A brief apologia, followed by the Mental and Moral Philosophers' Debate Society, a river in Egypt, and a locked drawer

A point first: I’ve been seeing the entire category of sagas, sequels, and EUs take flak from cultural critics, for reasons I don’t entirely agree with. Are they often done badly by soulless content mills exploiting your nostalgia for cash? Yes, of course, but the concepts involved here are older than writing itself. I could and would argue that the interconnection of tales is one of the core features of traditional human storytelling - it’s how we blur the lines between history and legend until King Arthur feels more real than Edgar the Aetheling. Stories where we start off cold and then never find out what happens after the book closes are the oddity here, a modern innovation if anything in the space is. Of course, I’m not criticizing that kind of story! Standalone novels can be just as satisfying, and writing them well is truly a craft. That’s how your Great Novelists work; that’s where you get the Literary Classics from. On the other side of the big tent of fiction, you have Edgar Rice Burroughs still writing about John Carter’s grandchildren forty years after A Princess of Mars. My writing chair is much, much closer to that side.

All that to admit that 1) I built up a long-term superplot while I was procrastinating on writing Poets and Chess Players, and 2) it’s my default setting for fiction ideas, which is why I’m rounding these up here. Two were previously published on Notes, but the first is new.

The Trinity College Mental and Moral Philosophers’ Debate Society

<Summer 1933: Cambridge, UK>

Isobel Whiddon-Blake threaded her way delicately through the crowded lecture hall. Finally spotting a friend of hers, she smiled and leaned over the back of a chair to remove a hat from its seat.

“Isa, you’re very late,” he said reproachfully.

“I had a prior engagement,” she said, slipping into the chair and giving back his hat.

“Well, I hope it was a good one, old thing. You’re lucky you only missed the debate.”

“Oh?” Isobel was examining the two specimens pacing the floor, neither of whom she was familiar with. Of course, it was only her second time at a Debate Society meeting. The first had been incentive enough to ensure she arrived after they finished the dullest bit of the agenda.

“Yes. They’ve just been deciding whether to make an exception to the Society’s weapons rules - bloody Prussians.” He hadn’t stopped pouting. “I wanted you to hear him talk, you know. Bernie likes him, and I’ve been thinking of making some introductions-”

“Which one?”

He sighed and gestured. “The little Jewish one is Haber. The skinny blond, Krantz, he’s visiting. Somebody invited him up from Oxford - I assume purposely to see him humiliated. It’s been a good show.”

“I see.” She considered the man he’d pointed out. She’d have preferred to look at him with his shirt on, but he was young and certainly looked strong enough to hold his own. “Forgive me, Rog darling, but where do I come into this?”

“I told you, I might introduce him. I wanted your opinion,” Rog said, tapping his fingers absently as he watched another student duck into the room with a long, slim bundle in his arms. “Anyhow, I thought you’d enjoy the gruesome display. It must be, what, almost a decade since I saw anybody try canne, and Haber’s made his reputation drubbing any man fool enough to let him pick the style for the ‘chaser’. Though of course Krantz wasn’t going to.”

Isobel’s penciled-on eyebrows just managed to arch. “Are those sabres?” she said.

“Bloody Prussians,” he repeated, reaching into his pocket for his cigarette case.

The Scientific Approach

<Fall 1942: Arlington, Virginia>

“Jeannie, so help me, you will go out this weekend with a man you like,” Rita said as she slapped down a sheaf of papers on the coffee table. “Enough of this hit-and-miss guesswork - we're taking the scientific approach. Now fill this out.”

Jeanne looked up doubtfully from her knitting. The magazine on top of Rita's stack was folded open to a quiz with a bold headline: Don't Break Up YOUR Marriage Before It Starts! Correct Choice of Man Critical to Attaining Wedded Bliss, Say Matchmaking Experts. And Just As Critical… “Rita, this is an ad for Listerine.”

“Yes? Scientific,” her roommate said, raising one immaculate eyebrow.

Jeanne sighed and held a hand out for the magazine, gesturing for Rita to give her the pencil too. “A, A, D, A, C, A, A, A. There.”

Rita narrowed her eyes. “That was awfully fast.”

Jeanne shook the magazine at her. “D'you want to score it, or not?”

“Ugh. All right, give it here.” Rita took it back and bent over the table to scribble and think while Jeanne watched. Rita - raven-haired, pretty, petite, and very bossy - had little trouble getting dates, or indeed anything else she wanted. She seemed to have taken it personally that her older friend wasn't so fortunate. “...Are you sure you did this right?”

“I think I know what I like,” Jeanne said defensively.

Rita cleared her throat. “Mostly A: Your purely romantic soul demands the attentions of a like-minded lover. No gesture is too dramatic or old-fashioned…where are you going?”

“Science is bullshit,” Jeanne said, already at the stairs.

Rita leaned back to watch her go, frowning. “Hey! …You know we've got six more of these!”

It’s Locked

<May 5, 2017: Jacksonville, Florida>

It’s locked…but why would he lock it?

Nate pulled sharply at the drawer again, hoping it was just jammed, to be pulled up short with the same sudden clunk.

“What’cha got there?”

It was Aunt Deb, poking her head around the side of the file cabinet so suddenly that he jumped. He smiled sheepishly. “Sorry. I couldn’t resist poking around.”

She chuckled and pulled a small key out of her pocket. “Why do you think I’m here? Your grandfather didn’t even let us in the room when he was alive.”

Debbie opened the drawer. They were journals, each an inch thick, fragrant with age as Nate pulled one out and ran his thumb across the pages’ edges, watching Granddad’s loopy handwriting grow shaky and then recover by turns. 1943, 1944… A creased photograph fell out: the woman looked so familiar that she could only be Mamaw, young. There was a man with her who must be a relative Nate hadn’t known he had. He thought of the call he’d gotten just last week, of the funeral only yesterday, and he felt sick. If Mamaw had given anyone these keys while she was alive, there was so much that he would have known he wanted to ask her.

From over another of the journals, Deb whistled low in surprise. “So, you wanna know…well, heck, c’mere. Maybe you better read this yourself…”