Thanks again to debut author JM Frey, @scifrey for hosting the 5MinuteFiction Blog Tour on her blog this week.

DO NOT FORGET, her first novel, Triptych, from Dragon Moon Press will be released next month. I was lucky enough to get an ARC (neener-neener) and, let me assure you, you want to buy this book.

On April 11 you can participate in Make Triptych #1 on Amazon by buying your e-book copy that day!

 

 

But, now that I’ve gushed about a new author I discovered (before you,) let’s give a HUGE SHOUTOUT to this week’s 5MinuteFiction WINNER!

 

NICOLE WOLVERTON, @nicolewolverton

 

Did you say that name looks familiar? Well, it should, she won last week as well! Below is her entry, based on the prompt, DECADE.

But don’t forget, there’s still one week left of the 5MinuteFiction Blog Tour. Be there next week when our final host wraps it up for us.

April 5: Sam Adamson, @FutureNostalgic one of the authors involved in the The Splintered Lands collaborative writing project, among other things!

Now, bask in Nichole’s brilliance. Remember, she wrote this off a prompt in only five minutes. Fabulous.

Grandma Peepee’s voice held the shape of spiraled conch shells, the grit of aged whiskey, and the wisdom of William Shatner.

Believe it.

She told me once when I was ten, just a decade old, that she shook her bubbies at old men to make a buck when she was young. I’d stared at the front of her dress, horrified, but then she’d shimmied her shoulders and yelled out a staccato rhythm, heehawing her loud donkey bray of a laugh. I’d handed her a dollar, and she kissed me, leaving a bright red lipstick mark in the middle of my forehead.

“You’re a good egg, Vince,” she’d crowed.

My eyes felt like boiled eggs, scrubbed raw by the wind and the grit blowing fast against my eyes and skin. The bridge swayed beneath me, sending my stomach ricocheting back and forth. I looked just like any other guy catching a smoke break – sucking down the tar and fire into Cajun-blackened lungs – to the people in the cars racing past.

Grandpa P died yesterday as her confused rooster crowed to welcome in the static violet of dusk.

“Goin’ to meet my maker!” she’d crowed in that voice of hers, full of character even through the wheezing. “Vince, I’ve got a plan.”

She’d pulled me down and whispered her demands, the smell of Ben-Gay and denture cream curling up around my cheeks.

And now, here I was . . . ready to do as she asked. I gathered up the edges of the extra-strength garbage bag – strong like an over the shoulder boulder holder, according to Grandma P – grunting to shoulder her dead weight. She fell and fell and fell, plop, into the river, just like she’d asked.

“Bye, Grandma,” I called, thinking of that dollar.