Business Card Fiction

This year, one of the classes I’ve been taking is Creative Writing. Sounds like a ton of fun, right? Well, it does to me, but so far, we haven’t done a heck of a lot of writing in Creative Writing, and what we have done is mostly nonfiction. But we are now finally beginning to write fiction, and I couldn’t be happier. Whenever I get the chance (and the story’s good), I’ll post what I’ve written on here. This first post was an odd prompt – we were given a picture prompt, the painting by George Tooker you see here, and were told to write a piece of fiction about it. Simple enough, except there was a catch – we could only write it on the front and back of a business card-sized piece of card stock. Not the easiest thing to fit a full plot arc on. I tried my best, and I think you’ll like it. Go ahead and read below!

The Bureau of Time

Walter shuffled forward in line. “Name, please,” the man asked.

“Walter Robinson.”

“How long are you requesting?”

“Eight years.”

The man behind the counter punched a few keys. He had the same face as everyone else behind the counters. That was for protection – there were dangers in this job. “I can’t give you that. At most, you have seven months.”

“Seven months!” Walter cried. “I need more than that!”

“I can’t give you more than that, sir. I suggest you live your life while you can.”

“Oh, you’ll give me more than that!” Walter pulled a handgun and pointed it right at the clerk’s face.

“I’m sorry sir,” he said without emotion. “I can’t help you.”

Walter pulled a trigger and the bullet punched a clean hole through the robot. He emptied the rest of the clip in the two guards coming toward him, also robots. As he was taken away, he heard the clerk say, “Enjoy your life, sir.”

And just for a bit of fun, here’s a picture of the front and back of the card, with a quarter for scale.

Tags: business card, fiction, flash fiction. flash-fiction, short story, umstead, zack, zack umstead