Cram
A flash fic of precisely 800 words
by Jordan Castillo Price and Edmond Manning
The clock is ticking. I’m aware of each second slipping by. One by one. Relentless. Irrevocable. It’s a distant sort of awareness, like a near-death experience—at least the way they always talk about them on TV reenactments where someone’s standing by calmly watching their body hurtling down the hospital corridor on a squeaking metal gurney while people in scrubs are yelling things like, “Stat!” and “Clear!” and “We’re losing him.”
It’s the distant part of me that hears time running out. The cheers and jeers of the crowd, too, and the retching sounds off to my right. That noise signals the forfeit of one of my competitors, but there’s no time to revel in it. Not now.
I thrust my hand into the vat and come up with a great handful. Gelatin, corn syrup, a hint of fake vanilla, such innocuous little confections for such a cutthroat test of endurance and will.
Behind me, my sister Daria leans in and murmurs, “You don’t have to do this, Junior.”
read the rest...
Edmond Manning has always been fascinated by fiction: how ordinary words could be sculpted into heartfelt emotions, how heartfelt emotions could leave an imprint inside you stronger than the real world.
He finally realized that he didn't have to write like Charles Dickens or Armistead Maupin, two author heroes, and that perhaps his own fiction was juuuuuuust right, because it was his true voice, so he looked around the scrappy word kingdom that he created for himself and shouted, "I'M HOME!"
He is now a writer.
In addition to fiction, Edmond enjoys writing non-fiction on his blog, www.edmondmanning.com. When not writing, he can be found either picking raspberries in the back yard or eating panang curry in an overstuffed chair upstairs, reading comic books.
Jordan says: I had the absolute pleasure of hanging out with Edmond Manning in Atlanta at GRL. If you haven't checked out his work yet, YOU NEED TO. RIGHT NOW. His first book, King Perry, rocked my world. King Mai is the second installment in his funny, freakish and thought-provoking Lost and Founds series.
